Rob and Anna's travel adventure

Rob´s entry (#1), Beginning to Puerto Vallarta

Lots to catch up on. This is all being composed in the Manzillo bus station on thanksgiving morning. I’ll try to summarize events to date.
The bus ride from Nebraska to the boarder was fairly uneventful. A few things happened, but not too much to mention., It as slightly interesting to note that from San Antonio south, we were the only native English speakers on the bus. That, naturally, set the tone for the trip so far. Of course, that was the intent (to leave our own culture behind), but im surprised at how few other travellers we’ve encountered. It may be a bit early however.
As Anna has done a good job covering the positive aspects of our voyage, I´ll try to fill in some of the other side, to provide a more complete description of our travels.
My one year of Espanol has helped, but is woefully inadequate for getting a full cultural experience. We are looking forward to exploring language options to enhance our voyage.
I was surprised at Laredo Tx, not what I expected from a boarder town. It was very modern and tidy. Nuevo Laredo, on the other hand, was as expected- not good or bad, just a boarder town. Zacatecas, our next town (and the first real stop) was unexpectedly diverse with its architecture. We received an excellent tour from our host family, and got to see much more than we would have on our own. After Zacetecas, our next stop was Guadalajara. Again, presenting a more ´balanced description, it was a very busy and somewhat gritty town. Our location where we stayed at, I dubbed ¨Hooker Hotel¨ as there were several business girls always there. Fortunately, we were placed on the third floor (we suspected that for convenience, the first two floors seemed to cater towards a more transient-hourly clientele. Also fortunately for us, our things were safe (at least while we were there), and the room adequate for our purposes (and cheap- $11-day). I was unaccustomed to being in a city of this size fore some time. The frenzied pace, traffic, pollution, and various characters around the center was a little overwhelming for a while. It got to Anna a bit more than I however. The market was a similarly overwhelming place, but no more traumatic (the meat section) than others. Guad served as a good, cheap base to get on our feet, and plan things out. We took a side trip to Lake Chapala, nice, not anything too memorable.
From the mind-boggling enormous bus station, our next stop was Puerto Vallarta. We both immediately felt easier there, not because of the Gringos (those we mostly avoided), but because it seemed more manageable than Guad. in terms of traffic, pace, etc. We are also big fans of nature, and PV delivers. The highlight of the trip was swimming out to a couple of islands in the bay. Along the way were the normal plethora of pretty fish, a few stingrays, but the big highlight was the school of eagle rays residing under the rock arch. I counted at least 8 swimming (looks like flying underwater) close under us. One notable aspect of PV is that with a few exceptions, almost everyone we met wanted to know where we were from, and then segwayed into trying to sell us something (time shares, property, hotel, etc.). It got a bit tiresome to continually being viewed as an object to exploit, a bit of a harsh word, but that sort of idea. One great exception was a lady that helped us find a bus station that we would have been helpless to find on our won. Thanks again Valerie! Unfortunately during this time, I picked up a little flu and didn’t feel 100%. Fortunately, that is over.
Leaving PV took us to Melaque. A very beautiful and peaceful area. More to come on that.

posted by Rob and Anna @ 2:23 PM