Monday, May 5, 2008

Mazatalan and Puerto Vallarta

We left Cabo and sailed over night to Mazatlan. Our shore excursion there was a bus tour with stops along the way including by mom and dad's time share in the "Golden Zone" -- which looked very much like San Diego to me. The tour stopped near a historic lighthouse and we saw a cliff diver jump...

We also stopped at a neat little restaurant overlooking the harbor. We didn't eat there (too early at the stop) but it was definitely a place we'd like to return to in the historic section. The tour also went through some of the less attractive places in Mazatlan so the kids did get to see some of "real life" outside the US. One staple of Latin America is the Cathedrals with town squares across the street. Mazatlan is no exception. Here's a picture of the kids outside one very large cathedral:



The day after Mazatlan we hit Puerto Vallarta. Of all the cities, Puerto Vallarta I liked best. Puerto is far enough south to be in the tropical jungle area with much more natural vegetation. Unfortunately there were some fires nearby the day we visited so the air was a little smoky. Our shore excursion was a trip to a secluded beach for snorkeling, beach fun, and relaxation. As it turned out, the Snorkeling was awful (no visibility there) and our beach day was cut short (we ended up getting a refund for time lost). But we did have a good lunch and I found a new fun activity I need to do more on these trips: ocean kiyacking. It was a blast playing in the waves on those little boats.

Puerto Vallarta is very long and narrow situated right by the shoreline as the mountains become very steep leaving the beach. Here's a picture of part of the city:


There was a small animal show on the island and Katie got to hold a parakeet:


I'll finish up with pictures of the trip and the tales of the "incident" coming home...

4 comments:

Heidi P said...

Seriously?! That dude doing a gainor off that cliff!?
Sounds awesome. Glad you got to play in the Ocean? Did Nicol?

Stephanie F. said...

That is a great picture of the cliff diver!
Your girls need to blog about the trip too.

Darren Hintze said...

We did play in the ocean... Nicol sat on the beach. Krista and Kira snorkeled enough in Cabo to see some fish but we couldn't see anything in Puerto.

Kira has some stuff to blog but can't remember the e-mail address she set hers up with...

Stephanie F. said...

I just commented on Kira's blog, hoping she set it up to email herself comments.