Gemma's World Teaching Journal My pictures and comments from my teaching experiences abroad.

We'd been planning this trip for months as a bit of an Independence Day and birthday treat, so we were pretty excited about it.

The holiday didn't start out that well as our 10 hour bus ride turned into almost a 13 hour one, there was a lot of traffic and we seemed to crawl along between the first stop in Guadalajara and our destination Puerto Vallarta. We finally got there and took a taxi to our hotel, which was very very pretty, but up a lot of steps with no lift and it was hard work lugging the suitcase up there. But worth it. We had almost sea views and the room was lovely, very spacious and a pretty design and a really nice little shower room. It wasn't luxury like the big chain hotels in the town but it was comfortable and better than what we're used to! It was sunny when we arrived so we got changed and went for a walk along the beach and just generally wandered. We were both tired from all the travelling and knew we couldn't have a late night because we had to get up early the next day for the buggying trip. We really just spent the day relaxing and ended up getting a take-away pizza in the evening which we took back to our hotel room and ate on the terrace.

Sunday was an early start as we had to be at the buggying place for 8:30am. Ed was really excited and i was a bit nervous especially when i found out we had to drive the buggies on the road before we got to the off-roading part and it was the other side of the road and the gearstick was on the other side and everything! Eventually we set off in our slightly wet seated buggies (wet bums right from the start!) and the other side of the road thing wasn't such a drama when you're just following the person in front. We got to the off-roading pretty quickly and promptly got covered head to toe in mud and got very very wet too. It had rained a lot and so the ground was thick with mud and there were a lot of puddles. We drove through a couple of rivers too. Unfortunately my buggy had some problems and so i joined Ed as a passenger, which was also fun because i got to see the scenery more. But Ed decided to drive trough a river at full speed and we got soaked, like really soaked and my new trainers still stink of pond water and he broke his phone! We stopped for lunch and a tequila tasting session at a restaurant and then headed back to the buggy centre. Then back for a much needed shower at the hotel!!!
In the afternoon we walked up into town and had a wander along the "malecon" which is basically a promenade with lots of sculptures on it. It was very humid and i got tired really quickly, also because i still didn't feel 100% after the food poisoning. We enjoyed wandering though and looked at a lot of little shops. We also got convinced into going on a boat trip the next day... It sounded really good and really cheap - they said they offered snorkelling, kayaking, hiking or horse-riding to a waterfall, lunch, free drinks and finally a stop at a beach. So we went for it... more about that later!
I wasn't hungry that evening, so we just grabbed some snacks and had an early dinner before going on the turtle release trip. We got to the pick-up point and found we were the only people going on the trip, except one of the guide's friends and his kid. They drove us up to Nuevo Vallarta, where their camp was and on the way told us about the turtles and the projects they're running. First we went to the turtle camp where the student volunteers work and saw the buckets of baby turtles that we were going to release later. Then we walked along the beach to find mother turtles laying eggs. They found one and we watched her build her nest, lay her eggs, cover them over and make hher way back to the sea. It was a wonderful expereince and something i'll never forget. The guide's friend was filming everything for Czech TV and it drew a bit of a crowd, but it was still really nice. then we went back to the turtle camp to relase the baby turtles into the sea. They literally speard the bucket-load of them out on the sandand then Ed used a torch to guide them to the sea and i helped turn around the ones that were getting confused and trying to climb back up the beach. We got back to town quite late but were both really happy because it was such a lovely experience and we were looking forward to our boat-ride the next day.

We got up early to go for the boat ride, and we'd been told to be at the pier for 10am, but the boat didn't come until 11am, which was our first indication that this might not be what we had expected. The weather wasn't great either and the sea was quite rough. They gave us a tiny, not very exciting breakfast, which wasn't the tea, coffee, juice, fruit and sweet bread that we had been promised and then we got to Los Arcos where you could snorkel. The water was very deep and we'd been told there were al kinds of tropical fish down there, but the water was very cloudy and i think i saw a total of 3 fish, only two of which i would've described as "tropical" in the colourful sense of the word!Also we were in a huge group and i got kicked and grabbed more times than i would've really liked by other swimmers! It was disappointing especially as going to Los Arcos had been one of the selling points for us. They took us on to La Quimixta next, a small fishing village where you could hike to a waterfall. I felt really sea sick on the way there and was glad to get off the boat.
They said it was best to hire horses to go to the waerfall, but this was at an additional cost and we hadn't brought quite enough money with us. So we walked (as many other peopple did) but they hadn't mentioned that the hike was a knee deep in mud walk for about 1 hour! It started out as being quite fun, byut became less and less so.
We finally got there but to be honest the waterfall wasn't that spectacular and we only got to spend about 10/15 mins there. We decided to spend every last peso we had on two horses back to the town. It was a nice way to get back and we enjoyed it, and the lunch that was provided for us at the restaurant there was quite nice. As sson as we'd finished lunch they herded us back onto the boat. When we got on the boat they announced that we wouldn't be visiting Las Animas beach as promised as we were running late and the weather was bad. Instaed they had a party on the boat.
It started raining quite heavily on the way back but the Mexicans were having too much fun playing party games and drinking tequila. We started to wonder if we were actually going to be dropped off where they had picked us up in the morning and so Ed went and asked. The answer was no. After that we certainly didn't feel like getting into the party spirit as we were going to be dropped off several miles from our hotel with only 11 pesos between us... That ruled out a taxi and we weren't sure how much the bus would be so we were panicking! We finally got back and then had to find a bus to the centre - it was exactly 11 pesos!!! However it didn't go anywhere near our hotel so we had a bit of a walk after the bus, when all we really wanted to do was get home. The tour also got back about 2 hours after it was meant to and so we were worried that we were going to miss the evening celebrations in town.

Well, we didn't entirely miss the celebrations. We went home, speedily got changed and tried to look a bit glam cos we were thinking of having a night out. We were really hungry and headed for the vegetarian buffet place we'd read about right next to the main square. It was small but quite nice with a really good selection of food. We stuffed ourselves and headed out to the main square where the grito (cry for independence) was meant to take place at 11pm. It was really busy and we were trying to get a good place to stand to see the grito and the fireworks (there were a lot of trees). We had to wait about for quite a while but finally they shouted Viva Mexico! and the fireworks went off. They were really good fireworks and we really enjoyed them. We grabbed an icelolly after and decided that we were pretty tired and couldn't be bothered going out after all. So back to the hotel for our first night where we wouldn't have to wake up early the next day!