Viva Puerto Vallarta!

We are back! We spent 7 wonderful nights in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and arrived home at midnight Wednesday night, threw a birthday party for Johnny Thursday, then packed and started our drive to California on Friday. So here we are in Cali with my family and trying to get onto some kind of schedule and grasp some sense of what is normal. Putting all of that aside, let me brief you on our little second honeymoon. We are celebrating our 10 year anniversary this year and everyone we met on our trip thought we were on our honeymoon. Kind of nice we don't quite look as old as we feel.

We saw lots of fun animals roaming around like peacocks, parrots, crabs, iguanas and other lizards. Here's an albino peacock that lives at one of the resorts. He was very willing to pose for pictures although I'm told if you give him any trouble he quickly turns into "Diablo Blanco" (the white devil).

One of the first things we did and one of our favorites as well was a 50 min massage on the beach. The spa had a few canvas rooms set up on a peninsula that was right next to the ocean. I don't know why I've never had one of those before but I definitely know it won't be my last.

Here's one of us, exploring the beach near our hotel.

This is the view from our room. The windows in the middle open out for an unobstructed view of the horizon when desired.

Another favorite activity was swimming with the dolphins. We spent some time with "Apollo" and "Azteca" the dolphins our third day there. They lived at a water slide park where we spent some time one day as well. They showed us many tricks of their own as well as many that involved us like the foot push, where the dolphins push your feet with their noses until you rise out of the water like superman. They were lots of fun and it was interesting to see that this was for their entertainment just as much as ours. The trainer had to keep mixing things up or the dolphins would get bored and ask for something new. We'll be taking the kids to swim with the dolphins at Sea World next year. Highly recommended. The pictures of us with the dolphins are on a hard copy back at home that I need to scan into the computer. Of course you weren't aloud to take your camera with you anywhere so they could charge you an arm and a leg for their pictures once you were done.

Sadly, we don't have any pictures of us scuba diving or even in our scuba gear. But we did go 45 feet under the ocean surface along a coral reef and saw a few puffer fish, balloon fish, a moray eel, star fish and a few urchins. Apparently this is the wrong season for scuba diving because the water is just too murky to see anything further than 2 feet in front of you. We'll try it again in clear waters next chance we get. Here is a picture of us on the boat on the way back.

Another fun adventure was our Canopy Tour through the trees. Multiple zip lines from tree to tree, 100 feet above the ground and 80 foot repels. Not for those scared of heights although many in our group were. Lots of fun though!

Our last night we went to a "Mexican Luau" on a remote island an hour boat ride from Vallarta. It was the perfect ending to a wonderful week of boogie boarding, beach volleyball, reading under one of the many thatched umbrellas or sipping drinks at the beach side bar.

The evening consisted of a theatrical dance performance, candlelight dinner and watching the sunset on the beach with rhythmic music playing live in the background.

We were able to watch the sun set every night from our hotel and had fun watching the many different boats sail past our beach each day and night. My favorite was the pirate ship that would sail past each evening offering a sunset dinner for all on board. Well worth the ten year wait but I don't know if I'll be able to wait another ten years before taking off for a week with my husband to another tropical location.