Rob and Anna's travel adventure: Puerto Vallarta and Melaque, Mexico

Friday, November 25, 2005

Puerto Vallarta and Melaque, Mexico

Anna's entry

PUERTO VALLARTA- Gorgeous coastal views, stunning nature, and unfortunately, too many Gringos. However, compared to other touristy areas, the city offers true authentic culture and gringos blend in pretty well. The Bahia de Banderas (Bay of Flags) that shelters PV owes its name to a blunder. When one of the discoverers landed therein the 16th century, he mistook the colorful headdresses of the thousands of natives awaiting him for flags. Bahia de Banderas was supposedly formed by an extinct volcano slowly sinking into the ocean. It now has a depth of 1,800 meters, and almost every large marine animal is found here, except for sharks. Apparently dolphins mount an antishark patrol at the entrance to the bay, to protect the young dolphins that are born here year round. Highlight of the trip – Los Arcos Islands. We read in our books that it was possible to swim to the islands. We climbed down to the coast and prepared for a swim. The islands seemed pretty close to the shore; however the waves were pretty strong on the rocky area we were planning to swim from. So, it took us a good hour to get acquainted with our swimming-from platform. Once we were in the water, we had no regrets. Besides plentiful tropical fish, we saw stunning eagle rays (pic at the link below), under the arch of the island (about 8 of them). These were graceful marine creatures which we were observing in awe. Snorkeling that day was a lot of fun, except for a few scratches we got while trying to get out of the water on the rocky shore, with waves still forming a high tide.

MELAQUE is such a pretty peaceful coastal town. When we got there around 4pm, the city seemed all empty. I even kept asking Rob if we perhaps missed a tsunami warning- it just seemed so dead. However after about 7pm, the community was in full swing- tons of taco stalls opened up, mercados, lights, music- apparently the life there starts in the evening. We stopped by a local street taco stand and voraciously began consuming pollo tacos. I was so hungry that day, and did not notice that I ate the whole fried jalapeno pepper. After a short delay, I realized that I could not breath.... It took me about 10 minutes and 1/2 liter of water before I could return to normal again. I must say however that my flu was gone by the end of the day, and I no longer needed any flu medicine. The next day, Rob and I went snorkeling around the rocky area of the bay (which was just a few minutes waling distance from where we were staying). The abundance of marine life was amazing. Just a few feet away from the shore we say many species of tropical salt-water fish, as well as an incredible number of sting rays. When we were swimming over the sandy area, Rob noticed about 20 sting rays hiding in the sand. We could detect them by two big eyes staring at us, and long tales shaping the sand. Also, this was the first time we encountered an angel shark (pic at the link below). The front half of the body looked like a sting ray, and the other half was like a shark. It was a beautiful graceful animal to watch, a great example of evolution of marine species. Also, to me, it looked almost mystical. Snorkeling that day was definitely a highlight of our stop in Melaque! The next day, on the other hand, we did not anticipate to be so LONG. We got up around 5am to catch a 6:30 bus to Manzanillo (to continue further south to Zijuatenejo). However, when we got to Manzanillo, our only option was to take an evening (overnight) bus, which we read was not advisable. Not having too much of a choice, we decided to take our chances, our goal is to get to Guatemala by the end of this month. So, we’re writing this blog sitting at the bus station. We should head out further south to Acapulco by 18:30 tonight. By the way, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone reading this blog today (Nov. 24th) ;)

PS Just wanted to let everyone know that we did make it safely to Acapulco, which is where this posting is originating.