Honeymoon #1

At the beginning of the year, we planned 3 major trips (Mexico, Southwest state highest points & Michigan, and Australia and New Zealand), all before we even knew that we were going to get married, let alone that we would happen to get married in April.  Our first trip was planned for Mexico in late April, with our friend, Shu-ling, and her boyfriend.   She took to calling the trip our honeymoon trip, so we started calling all of the trips we’d planned “honeymoon” trips, since they are, after all, after the wedding took place.  This is a brief look at honeymoon #1, in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Shu-ling was an old hand at vacationing in Puerto Vallarta, and had been there many, many times, before.  She’d rented a wonderful apartment overlooking what everyone called “the boardwalk” although it was made entirely of cement.  Jay spent a LOT of time sitting on the balcony watching all of the entertainment, below.  In this picture, he captured 2 female singers/musicians who were about to set up, a man selling all sorts of handbags, a cotton-candy/apple vendor, and a donut vendor:

We all spent a lot of time on the balcony eating wonderful meals that Shu-ling whomped up:

We all enjoyed watching sunsets from the balcony, as well:

We did go out and investigate the city, beaches, and other areas.  Here is a picture of Jay and me, courtesy of Shu-ling, at a river on one of our hikes:

I had a passerby take a picture of all 4 of us on this wonderful city staircase, but, alas, it didn’t come out well, and that was our only 4-some picture, so we’ll have to do with just the 3 – Shu-ling, Jay, and Bret.  Note the tile on the edge of the stairs – in some places there was different tile on every stair edge:

And finally, after a week, we moved to a time-share unit that was more northerly, near the marina (for those familiar with Puerto Vallarta), and when Jay and I got up to run on the beach, we had to get the gate to the beach unlocked.  When the guy unlocked it, he knew to look for baby turtles that had hatched and followed the lights toward the resort area, instead of following the moon’s light to the sea water.  Below is a picture of me with 3 of the baby turtles as I took them from the sand wash “sink” where they were caught, to the sea water:

It turns out that every year, the beach resort people try to capture all of the eggs and put them in a storage unit, and then release the turtles when they hatch.  They’ve seen a marked increase in the survival rate by doing so – the turtles had apparently been teetering on the brink of extinction before this practice was started. 

And, while we are on the topic of animals, we saw many iguanas while over there.  Here was a particularly nice specimen:

Thank you, Shu-ling and Bret, for sharing your accommodations with us, and for giving us such a great wedding present and honeymoon!

May you all have such generous friends in your life!

Leora