Mexico pt 2

September 2022

If you’re wondering if we are ever going to leave Mexico the answer is yes. After Oaxaca, we did a short 2 night break (a vacation vacation you might say) in Puerto Vallarta, where the weather was sublime, the tourist season was low, and the hotel pool was the size of Lake Erie. At our old favorite, the Marriott Puerto Vallarta, they gave us an upgrade to a suite larger than many of my apartments and we passed 48 happy hours there. Then (using the last forlorn drop of our Southwest Airline points) we flew to Albuquerque and on to Santa Fe!

It was autumn there, always an extravaganza of color, with that smell that can only be found in Santa Fe: wood smoke + pinon + Hatch chiles. We ran errands, made a few drives out to Abiquiu Lake and beyond (code for the casinos), and saw as many of our friends as possible. We were housed by more generous friends, we are indeed blessed. There is no point in asking yourselves what we ate, just know it was everything: almost all our old favorite places were still going strong: Cafe Fina, Pantry Dos, Plazuela, Pasqual’s, Geronimo. It was a particular goal of mine to eat as much bacon as I could without actually dying, since it has so far been impossible to find edible bacon in Spain. And I must say I performed admirably.

Then back, yes, to Puerto Vallarta for 2 weeks. We have been very lucky all through Mexico to be catching all their monsoon seasons, so we had sunny, warm days, with dramatic thunderstorms in the late afternoon. We did a couple of beach days (Mantamar Beach Club, gay, gay, gay) and a lot of walking around, since we chose not to rent a car here. In Vallarta, taxis are plentiful and cheap. The city was very clean, maybe all that rain. We visited some of our restaurants, although September is so quiet that a lot of places shut down for the month. A new discovery was Tintoque, just around the corner from our airbnb, on the bank of the Rio Cuale. It’s a beautiful spot and the inventive menu changes daily. Fusion has arrived in Vallarta, as well. Hector visited a lot of street taco places, we visited Garbo’s bar a few times and had late night al pastor tacos at Los Molcahetes.

It was also apparently earthquake season in Vallarta because we caught a 7.6 one afternoon. Our building started to shudder and shake and by the time we agreed yes it was, indeed, an earthquake, we were rolling and tipping and the people below us were screaming bloody murder. I opened our front door just as waves of water crashed down through the atrium, escaping from the rooftop pool. We gathered our passports and cash, building still rocking, and raced down 4 floors to the street, where we found pandemonium. It was thrilling. In the end, there wasn’t much damage in Vallarta but it was felt as far away as Mexico City.

The weather in September can be dramatic along the Pacific Coast. With the strong waves, sometimes they close down the malecón, the coastal walkway, and there are constant rumors, gleefully spread by the locals, of crocodiles washing down the overflowing river into the bay, and eating the tourists swimming there. We will keep you posted on any confirmed sightings.

Next stop, Mexico City with our old travel buddies Tere and Martín, and it was a week so jam-packed with fun and adventure that it deserves its own post, coming soon.