Click on a photo to enlarge it.
We loved our little spot near the restaurant and ended up staying until Wednesday afternoon. It was very quiet and peaceful, with the sound of the
roaring waves in the background. Another Winnie joined us for a few hours on Tuesday!
We went for walks along the beach several times and walked far enough to see Puerto Vallarta, a large tourist area and our next destination.
We left on Wednesday afternoon and went through a time zone on the short drive to Puerto Vallarta (PV) and lost an hour. We parked up at the marina
and went in search of information on whale watching tours.
One man tried to get us to hire his boat for $200! That was a bit out of our price range. Then he dropped his price to $70 if we would go out on
the water with him now! We didn't trust the guy so we started walking back to Winnie and then found a good offer for the next day. We booked and
left a deposit and then went to park at Wal-mart for the night.
We did lots of shopping at Sams and Wal-mart and it was so late that we just had bread rolls for dinner.
Unfortunately we didn't get much sleep that night due to a very loud pile driver banging in various concrete posts throughout the night!! The alarm
went off at 7-30am and we felt as if we hadn't slept at all!!
After a cup of tea, we walked across the road to the harbour and paid the entrance fee to get into the marina. Our boat tour was due to leave at
9-30am but there was entertainment at the marina in the form of a "hugging" sea lion!
We set sail at 9-30 am and got a breakfast of fruit salad. The whole trip lasted over 8 hours and we saw lots of humpback whales and hundreds of
manta rays that are not very difficult to spot because they float on the surface. We also saw turtles, at least 70 sea snakes and a couple of sharks.
And that was just in the first few hours!!!
Day trip - Bahía de Banderas.
We stopped at the Islas Marietas rocks where Kirsten went snorkelling for 30 minutes in the cold water. On the sail across to Manzanillo Beach we had lunch
- BBQ chicken, rice, salad and bread. We got back to Puerto Vallarta at 5-45 pm, really sunburnt and impressed with our boat trip.
On Friday, whilst shopping in Wal-mart, we met Bob and Annette from Álamos! Small world! Then we drove to the south side of the city to Hotel
Frankfurt but there wasn't any space so we parked up on the road outside. We were waiting for someone to move a car from one of the spaces so we
could get in, so we used the shower and filled up with water.
Nearly 3 hours later, the car still hadn't been moved so we went for a walk into PV. We went across a very rickety swing bridge to an island with
lots of stalls selling everything you can think of - but no Germany football shirt!
We walked past Casa Kimberley which used to belong to Richard Burton and Liz Taylor in the 1960s, along steep, cobbled streets and then walked
along the sea front. We had pizza and then swapped a lot of books at an excellent book store we found.
By the time we got back, there was a different vehicle parked in the spot we wanted to use, so we decided to stay out on the street - at least it
was free!
On Saturday, we headed south, a lovely drive over the mountains. We stayed at La Perúla for two nights at a campground, did some work on the
computer and, on Sunday we went for a long walk along the beach.
