Puerto Vallarta

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So, I made it safely to Puerto Vallarta. Wendy and I rode took a cab with Nori and Danny, who were traveling to Mexico City to retrieve Dannys car and Noris passport and visa, both of which were stolen on a subsequent Tequila tour and found by the Mexican Police in Mexico City that night. The bus ride was about 6 hours and we took Primera Plus. I had bought a headphone splitter (7 pesos) and headphones (90 pesos) the day before, so we could listen to music on her MP3 player. The mexican countryside was gorgeous, once we finally escaped Guadalajara traffic. This country isn{t built for highways. Anyway, amazing. Mountains, beautiful weather, agave plantations, little towns here and there... The last couple hours of the drive it was raining, as it apparently does every night almost in Puerto, and especially east of the mountains. It had slowly morphed from an arid place to a foresty place to, finally, a rainforest. It was quite beautiful. Once in Puerto, we received some help in locating a bus to take us to the hostel, which had canceled my reservation because I was a day late and which had never received Wendys, which was made by a friend who was not there. So... we talked to them and they gave us beds anyway. I love how nothing is ever really a problem here. Anyway, we went out, found a really crazily lesbian'looking buddha lounge where vegie food is served with aromatherapy, massage, and past life readings... but it was closing so we asked the woman where we could find a taqueria. We found a tiny little place across a bridge and ate there. Tacos of pork, with salsa, onion, and cilantro. They were delicious and 50 cents a piece. The pork was on this big rotating stick thing, like gyro meat, and I asked why they put a pineapple on top of the spit and an onion below the meat. The lady responded that the onion is there to hold the meat up and to gather meat juices, the pineapple because many people like pineapple on tacos. Wonderful. We ate them on the sidewalk sort of below a bridge but it smelled bad. Then we returned to the hostel, listened to music together some more and lip synched, and went to sleep.

The next day we awoke just in time for continental breakfast, which in this case meant a glass of watered down orange juice and 4 pieces of bimbo white bread. got ready, went out briefly to get a jist of the town, some money, some sandals for me, and some food items. When we returned, we met a guy named Matheu from Montreal, who immediately asked if I liked Scuba diving. We agreed to go back to town together and find a place to go scuba diving tomorrow. Puerto Vallarta is much different from Guadalajara in that the ratio of tourists to mexicans is like 1 to 7 instead of 1 to 100000. Almost everyone at the hostel is from the US or Canada and it is a much more party'like atmosphere. Very beach town. Anyway, we found a couple dive shops, the first of which was closed but had a really sweet VW thing out front with a dive flag painted on the side. The second was Chicos, the most popular, but they were not going where we wanted tomorrow. Las Marietas islands is our chosen destination. Wendy wasn{t sure if she should come with, but eventually decided to go horseback riding and then parasailing as she hates swimming. We asked the Chicos guy, Geraldo, if he could recommend a taqueria and his eyes LIT UP and he told us to go this place really far away that he didn{t know the name of but it was two doors down from Super Pollo (Super Chicken). We eventually found it and it was incredible. I had a marlin taco, a machado taco, and a octopus/shrimp taco. Octopus is OK, not worth saying no to. After some time spent at the beach laying in the sun, swimming, walking, talking, we revisited our dive shop search and found one that was going to Marietas and booked, we{ve gotta be up super early tomorrow so that{s it for now. btw i can{t find the apostrophe on this mexican keyboard... or the quotation marks. the last one had them, i dunno...

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