Current Mood: rejuvenated

All my life I’ve lived in the South and while people here tend to be more friendly than people who live in the North, I am here to tell you that southern hospitality ain’t got nothin’ on Mexican hospitality.

The second we stepped out of our cab at the hotel, there was a nice young man who ran up to take our bags from us while we checked in. That process took only a couple of minutes and while we were waiting, another guy ran up and handed us mixed drinks. Then the one holding our bags promptly took us to our room. When we got there, we found our room to be clean and spacious and we had a beautiful view from our balcony. He showed us where the alcohol cabinet and refrigerator were and told us that if we were to run out of anything to simply let them know and they would replenish it. In addition to sodas and bottled water, we had a stock of tequila, vodka, gin, and some other liquor I don’t recall in our room! I’m telling you, all-inclusive is definitely the way to go!

After setting our stuff down, we decided to go explore the hotel. When we got down to the ground level, we discovered they had an open bar set up outside in front of the lawn. A friendly guy named Daniel stopped us, asked us our names, and offered to make us a drink. We accepted, chatted with him a few minutes and continued on our exploration. We had seen beautiful pictures of the resort online before we booked the trip, but never expected the real thing to be quite as nice. It absolutely was though! The grounds were very well kept. Everything was gorgeous!

It was late in the evening when we arrived so we didn’t have time to go a whole lot the first day. We noticed the restaurants were opening so we went into one and started fixing a plate. When we found a table, we immediately had several young waiters run up to help us get seated. They pulled our chairs out and put our napkin in our laps and then rushed off to get us each a shot of tequila. After dinner, we spent the remainder of the evening at one of the bars drinking it up and chatting with a nice couple we had met. Daniel from earlier walked by and saw me sitting there; he called out my name and waved to me. I was shocked he remembered.

The second day, we decided to catch a bus to downtown Puerto Vallarta. We were in pursuit of authentic home made tacos and I wanted to see the sand sculptures on the beach that we had heard about. We weren’t downtown 10 minutes when somehow we got schemed into going to a timeshare presentation. They had offered to reimburse us the $180 we had spent earlier that morning on our excursions. Yeah… to make a long story short, we didn’t get our reimbursement and we wasted half our day. Lesson learned: Don’t trust any guy offering to give you all this free stuff even if his shirt and name tag look official and say “Board of Tourism”.

The third day, we did the Outdoor Adventure excursion through a fabulous company called Vallarta Adventures. We rode a speed boat to the south end of the Banderas Bay. From there, we took a Unimog up to a base camp in the Sierra Madre Mountains. From there, we rode mules even further up into the jungle where we did zip lines and rappelled down waterfalls. We were completely exhausted, dirty, and soaking wet when we finished, but it was amazing and the tour guides were fantastic. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who ever has the opportunity to do it.

On our fourth day, we did the Las Caletas excursion also through Vallarta Adventures. We took a catamaran across the bay to Las Caletas which used to be the home of film director John Huston and is accessible only by boat. It was beautiful there! They had snorkeling, kayaking, massages, sea lions, parrots, monkeys… it was very relaxing.

On the fifth day, we still hadn’t even been in the pool or at the beach at the hotel so we took the day just to relax and sun bathe. Still sore from the Outdoor Adventure, that was just what was needed!

As I mentioned earlier, our stay was all-inclusive. All our food, drinks, and alcohol were included. And they don’t hesitate at all to be very generous with the alcohol. I found all of the servers and bartenders there to be very eager to get you anything and everything you could want and do it with a big grin. There was one guy, Armando, who worked on the patio outside the restaurant we frequented most. He was just as sweet as he could be and developed a particular liking for us. He would tell other people I was his wife and his friends referred to me as his girlfriend. He paid special attention to making sure we had enough to drink and anything else we needed at all times. I must say that Armando and I were rather fond of each other. hehe

The trip ended much too soon, but I have very sincere intentions of returning soon. I’d like to go back in September and am hoping to find some people who want to go with me. It really was very affordable and I couldn’t have been more impressed with the hotel and everyone who worked there. Oh, and if you haven’t yet seen them, the pictures are in my Flickr.

So, anyone up for going back with me? I’m thinking September 6th-12th…