Bob and Jan's Travels: One Month in La Penita de Jaltemba, Nayarit

We arrived in Puerto Vallarta at about 4:30 to bedlam at the airport. As we landed, there were 5 planes sitting on the runway ahead of us because there were no spots to unload. Rush hour on the runway. If you have been to Puerto Vallarta before, as you turn to the baggage carousels there was a lineup of people with their bags all the way to the end of the carousels and back again and then another line from the start of the carousels to the customs area. Once you picked up your bags, you had to line up in the first line - it took us about 1.5 hours to get out of the airport. Gilberto was there to pick us up for our 1 hour drive to La Penita. He was so busy that day, he actually took us towards Bucerias for about 15 minutes and then handed us off to another driver for the rest of the trip as he had to go back to the airport to pick up more people. We stopped at Mega and did a huge grocery shop and arrived in La Penita about 7:30 pm. We dropped our stuff off quickly and headed to Hinde y Jaime's for Margaritas, guacamole, tacos and some garlic butter fish. It felt like we were back at home.

On Sunday, Jan had a terrible migraine so we stuck close to the Casita. By evening, she was feeling a little better so we ventured out for a walk and had some tacos and margaritas at Hinde's and then some ice cream. Apparently it was the first sunny day in over a week.

On Monday, we walked to Rincon de Guayabitos (the neighbouring town) to the Tiangus (market). It was moved due to construction in the main square and we had a little trouble finding it - but got in some extra walking exercise. It was a little disappointing as it was much smaller than last year - probably due to the move. We bought some frese (strawberry) empanadas and then headed to the beach. It is much busier in Guayabitos with people and vendors everywhere. We enjoyed some street meat (as Robyn calls it) on the beach - actually camaron (shrimp) barbecued on a stick and a crazy pineapple where they cut out the heart of the pineapple and mash it up with some grenadine, salt, ice and chili peppers and then put it back into the pineapple with some watermelon, orange, cucumbers and some other root fruit/vegetable - then sprinkled with salt and chili peppers. Delicioso! We walked along the beach and forged a river to get back to our place. We then walked down to Hinde's for some tacos and crevasse for lunch (you might have guessed that it is our favourite place) and we ran into Jan's cousins Margie, Winnie and Bill. We came back to our place to change rooms - we will now be in Unit 6 for the duration of our month long stay. After settling in, we had a nap (mandatory in Mexico) and then went for dinner to Xaltemba (nope not Hinde's) - it was delicious - we had a camaron appetizer cooked in a garlic oil and then had spaghetti with prosciutto in a tomato sauce and some mango mahi mahi. We then strolled along the Avenida for some ice cream and back to our place - dropped into bed at 9 pm. No wonder we are up so early.

Tomorrow we are going to look at some real estate ...