Friday January 1 2010

While we sat at the New Years Eve party we discussed the plans for the following day. It was time for a trip to Puerto Vallarta to see all the madness. We ate breakfast at one of the roadside restaurants and packed up for a bus ride to the big town. We transferred once to a City bus that takes us to the town center. We walked along the shore boardwalk that has all of the statues and waterfront eatery’s and hotels. We ended up on the south end where we spent two winter vacations in a rented condo along the shore. It was like memory lane with all of the same beachfront activities and internet cafes scattered along the back street. One of our tour guides in Sayulita grew up in a home along the beach and his mother still owns the place. It is right next to the Blue Chairs Hotel where some of our friends stayed in the past years. She now rents the place to special people and we wanted to see about it for future reference. We have the information for contacts. We had an early dinner at one of our favorite classy restaurants called Brazil. It was much different than our taco stands along the roadway in Sayulita. After dinner we met some of our Puerto Vallarta friends at the new meeting place in downtown area.

It was getting late and Tom was ready to hop the bus and head for our winter retreat. We took the local bus to the pick-up point and waited. After an hour we were told that the bus to Sayulita stopped running after 9:45 PM. We could have gone to another town closer to our destination and then take a cab ride to Sayulita. We decided with Eric paying that we would take a taxi all the way. Gary discussed the price with the driver, bargained, and we got the price down to something respectable.  We arrived at the town square and headed up the hill for home.    

Saturday January 2, our last day in the sun.

We packed up our belongings and walked down to Rollie,s Restaurant for our last breakfast and to say good bye to Rollie and his wife Jeanne. We arranged a pick-up at 11:00 AM to take the three of us to the Airport, another luxury for the last day.  The Airport was packed and the Security was even tighter. Eric was on a different flight leaving at the same time so we were in the same madness together. His flight left on time, bur ours was an hour late leaving. We arrived at Houston and after going through Customs and then back into Security we missed our flight to Detroit by five minutes. No more flights until Sunday at 7:00 AM. Continental gave us a voucher for a hotel, but they were all off site and the madness at Security suggested we stay in the secured area and stick it out. Besides we had no luggage to allow us to change clothes and become civilized. I am sure that some of you world travelers have spent several hours in an Airport waiting, so you can appreciate our 12 hour wait for morning to come. Gary slept on the floor and then rearranged the furniture to make things more comfortable for the long night. He always wants to rearrange the furniture whenever he gets a chance. The seats, the floor and the rearranged chairs did little to make the night acceptable. Our morning flight was on time and we changed our seat assignment to the Exit row, more room for us to stretch out.  We were home by noon and the cats showed their madness for us leaving them, but finally crawled into bed with us for our afternoon nap. It’s cold and cloudy, but it is good to be home.