Mexico is for Lovers

Since we've been home from Mexico (for about 3 days) I keep having to resist the urge to scroll through our pictures a thousand times and relive our experience- we had such a great time!

It was kind of a spur of the moment, not for any good reason kind of a trip. Those are the best kind if you ask me. We found a steal of a deal on Groupon and just went for it!

Step 1 of our trip:

Change our dollar bills to Pesos!!!!!! This was the most confusing part of the trip for me. I am a bargain hunter by nature so signs like this

put me into a state of panic. Every time. The exchange rate is roughly 10 pesos for every US dollar. After getting that out of the way and flying many, many miles, we arrived in Puerto Vallarta!

Things we enjoyed in Mexico:


1. Everything

2. Our awesome resort, pictured below

                                         
3. Pina coladas (sin alcohol, por favor). I literally drank at least 3 of these every day. The ones without alcohol were called "pinatas"
                                        

 4. Yummy restaurants- There were 2 restaurants in our resort, so we tried both of them out multiple times, naturally. There was also a buffet, "Le Buffet" (I guess they thought buffet sounded more fancy in French), where we ate breakfast and lunch and sometimes dinner. All of the food/drinks were included in the price we were paying for the hotel, so we made sure to make the most of that. These pics are of the Italian restaurant, Los Olivos. It was the fanciest one. We had to make reservations and there was a dress code! Men had to wear close-toed shoes and long pants. Who brings long pants on a tropical vacation? Not us. Luckily, the concierge let Richard borrow some :) Size 38, Richard is a 33.

                                              
                                                  
                                                           Look at that presentation!

 

 There are the pants- we borrowed them twice...

Los olivos was our favorite because of the desserts.

  

 Had to go with the "volcan chocolate" or chocolate volcano. It was fantastic. And of course since we are fat Americans, we ordered 2 desserts each 

5. Beautiful sunsets over the beach every night

                                      
                                      
 6. Walmart! Had to take a bus here our second night to get some aloe for what may have been the worst sunburn of my life. It has since blistered and continues to peel daily.

 7. Transportation- we rode on the buses to get around because they are cheap and quite a cultural experience. Since Richard lived here for 2 years, he knew how to use them. Once I got over how hot it was inside of the buses and how crazily they drive, it was really fun to ride on them! They get REALLY full too. At one point all of the seats were taken and there were about 15 people standing in the aisles.

 8. Puerto Vallarta! Our resort was in Nuevo Vallarta, so we had to take 2 buses to get to Puerto Vallarta. It was so pretty! There's a boardwalk there where all the shops are and there are restaurants and fun statues!

 Made the mistake of wearing my Boise state shirt. All of the vendors try to get you to come have some cervezas (beers) or get you to look in their shops, so between my BSU shirt and Richards Saint Louis hat, we got a lot of direct comments. Most of the vendors just called to us by saying "hey honeymooners". Probably every person we encountered in Mexico asked us if we were honeymooners and commented on how young we were (thanks for the ego boost).

 9. Sports! Our resort had a tennis court, sand volleyball court, and kayaking. We literally played tennis every single day. By the end I had actually managed to hold my own on the court, meaning I could consistently hit the ball and make it go in bounds on the other side. This was big for me. Volleyball was hands down my fave, but we didn't discover it until the last 2 days. I don't even want to talk about kayaking. The ocean scares me so I was a nervous wreck the entire time. Also our kayak flipped over and I lost my sunglasses and Richard was nauseous by the end. We only did that once.

                                      ..

                                          
10. Fun shows every night! The first night they had kareoke, and by some miracle I convinced Richard to sing "Quit Playing Games with my Heart" with me. It was a blast! I only wish I had pics of it, but this is the stage it was on.

                                    

Another night people did dances from the different states in Mexico, dressed in the traditional garb.             

 

There was also a Mr. and Mrs. Occidental competition (our resort was called the Occidental Grand). Richard was asked at dinner one night to participate in the Mr. Occidental but we were going to go get gelato instead. Our last night they did the Mrs. Occidental one and chose people out of the audience. There were very few people in the audience when they started, so I got to go up (against my will and better judgment)

Here I am on the stage, feeling awkward! Luckily Richard got to share in part of the experience with me. We had a number of challenges we had to do solo, including dancing on stage, doing modeling poses, dancing with a grass skirt, carrying a small coconut between our knees and dropping it into a cup, etc. But we got to choose a celebrity and find a man in the audience who looked like him, so I said Matt Damon and chose Richard! We had to dance together on stage and had a good time!

 

There were 5 contestants and I came in 2nd, with a little help from Ricardo.         

My prize!

11. Wildlife- can you see it? One day while playing tennis, we ran into this little guy. I think it's an iguana. You can sort of see his tail and back legs in the bushes. Those guys are FAST.

 Birds. These guys were not afraid of people, no sir. They would come peck food off of your plate if you left your seat for 2 seconds. Little scavengers.

 11. Mexican tacos! Legit.

 12. Tan lines! We have awesome tan lines. Richard especially, homeboy is DARK.

13. Using my Spanish skills- One night we had a domestic dispute of Jersey Shore/Real World proportions happening in the room next to us. Yelling, swearing, things hitting the walls, etc. I had to call the front desk while Richard had his ear to the door listening to what was going on (of course). This was happening around midnight and the guy at the front desk didn't speak english so I explained what was going on in espanol! It was awesome. And Richard and I spoke to each other in Spanish quite a bit just for fun.

 The only things I didn't like were
1. Sunburn
2. Humidity
3. Bees- I got stung by a bee for my first time!
4. Saying goodbye
                                       

Best vacation ever. We had such a great time, we've already talked about going back!