Puerto Vallarta Journal
Getting Ready for Christmas
December 10th, 2006
Yesterday we went and got our Christmas tree! It's decorated a little sparsely since this is our first Christmas together out on our own, but we think it's beautiful. We're really settling in here--I've gotten a job with a fantastic multimedia design company so we're both working now. Dave's birthday was yesterday and I got him a Lego Mindstorms set which he is playing with as I write this, and we are adopting a pair of Siamese kittens, just in time for Christmas.
We've been trying to make the most of being so close to everything by going out every weekend to a new gallery or museum or going for a hike, and a few weeks ago we walked all the way around Howth Head. It was the windiest two and a half hours of my life, but fantastic nonetheless. And considering what a windy day it was, I was amazed at the amount of people from all over the world that were out there, including a group of French students who were having the most amazingly in-depth conversation about cheese.
Our place is in Rathmines which is really close to downtown and right beside a beautiful old church whose bell rings 106 times every Sunday. Unfortunately it's locked up all the time except during mass, so I haven't been able to look inside. We're also very close to the Grand Canal which is a lovely place to go for a stroll or a run in the evening, although it will be even nicer in the summer when it's not getting dark at five o'clock.
As this isn't technically a Puerto Vallarta Journal any more, we probably won't be posting on a very regular basis in here, but we may start up a Dublin Journal or something to that effect if time allows. In the meantime, we hope you've enjoyed following along on our travels!
We're Still Alive!
November 3rd, 2006
Well we've made it to Dublin in one piece, and we've had a crazy couple of weeks since we got here. We've managed to sort out all the legal requirements, find Dave a job, and get a new apartment in a great area of town, and all in two weeks!
It'll take a while longer to line up an internet connection--that's definately an easier process in Mexico--so we won't be updating very regularly for the next while, but we'll try and post some pictures soon.
In Transit
October 11th, 2006
Here we are just outside Ladysmith, British Columbia. It's been two days or so since we arrived, but we're only just getting used to the idea of not being in Puerto Vallarta any more. On the journey up there was surprisingly little pain or frustration involved, but man was it a long trip. The problem was that it neither began nor ended with our time on the plane.
We were set to leave Saturday afternoon, but we had to get up early Saturday morning to get our rental deposit back from our landlord (who was very difficult to track down), and we figured that finding her right after she woke up was our best bet. Secondly, we had to figure out how to get a taxi to take us and our stuff to the airport, when we were in a neighborhood where taxis rarely stopped, and we didn't have a phone or know a number to call for a cab anyway. Oh, and we needed a big car-- our luggage wouldn't even fit in a regular taxi, at least not with us along with it.
Getting up early wasn't hard, since neither of us slept much that night. That would come back to haunt us later, but at the time it was a blessing to be awake bright and early. We caught up with our landlord, who (surprise!) short-changed us by fifty pesos even after deducting a heretofore unheard-of cleaning fee, and set off to find a cab.
Our luck was really with us that day. We decided our best bet was to walk down to the main road and try to flag down a cab. No sooner had we got to the road, when a big station wagon taxi came rolling by, so we flagged it down, and after a quick trip back to the apartment to get our luggage we were off to the airport.
We were amazed at how smoothly everything went, both at the Puerto Vallarta airport and at Salt Lake City. No troubles whatsoever, we just flew through check-in and customs (well, as much as one can) and that was that. It's funny that for all the big talk about airport security, the TSA officials are essentially a bunch of bored teenagers. In a good way, though. They seemed to get a kick out of Danielle's violin, and arguing whether my iMac was really a full computer or just a monitor.
The only snag we hit was, oddly enough, with Canadian customs. Upon arrival in Vancouver, we were promptly grilled on the what and when and why and where of our time in Mexico by a downright surly little cuss at the passport check. It was more annoying than anything, especially since we had such an easy time with the US Customs, who might have actually had some amount of power over us. We just rolled our eyes knowing that there wasn't really much the Canadian guy could do short of holding us up for a few minutes.
After that, the waiting began. We were headed to Vancouver Island, but we got in to the airport at quarter to eleven in the evening. The ferries to the island stop running at around ten. Say hello to the life of an airport hobo. We slept as best we could, what with being absolutely frozen and having to endure Scarface playing very loud on a TV in the waiting area.
My parents arrived to pick us up at around eleven the next morning, and we all headed back to their place in the country where we'll be staying a little over a week in preparation for our trip to Dublin. It's nice here. It's no Puerto Vallarta, but it's nice.
Adios Vallarta: So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
October 4th, 2006
Well, this is it. Our time in Puerto Vallarta is drawing to a close, and we're sad to be leaving. We've met a lot of wonderful people down here, seen a lot of wonderful things, and had an awful lot of fun, but the time has come for us to move on. One might ask, why? The simple answer is that as much as we love it here, we feel a little bit called to pursue our talents elsewhere, namely in Dublin, Ireland. That's where Danielle is from, and it had been in our heads before we'd even set foot in Puerto Vallarta that Dublin was a place where we could pursue our talents and have access to a city with all the cultural and technological amenities to do so. So off we go.
We do love Puerto Vallarta, and this place will always have a very special place in our hearts, as will the friends we've made down here. And it's not goodbye! Once we're famous and well-to-do, we'll be back. Oh yes, we'll be back.
There are No Fruit Bats in Mexico!
September 28th, 2006
The other night we saw the impossible, apparently. To set the scene, we were having dinner at Jeff and Liz's apartment with Rick and Sarah. Now, they have a beautiful apartment. It's in old Vallarta, right across the street from the Cuale river. Being on the fourth floor, and given that across the street is a little park with no buildings of any kind, this gives them a wonderful view of the river and the city right out their front balcony. The times we've been over to their apartment, it's been a very nice and relaxing finish to the evening, just sitting on the balcony and watching the river full of birds and kids playing.
This particular night, there seemed to be an awful lot of bird-like critters flying and swooping all over. The kids in the park seemed to be having fun with them too, making lassoes and trying to catch them as they swooped around (They never caught any, though). As we looked at that scene we kept trying to identify what type of birds they were, but they were always moving too fast to get a good enough look. We were perplexed, especially since they didn't really look like normal birds somehow. Could they be bats? No, impossible, Sarah told us. She'd read from fairly authoritative sources that there are no fruit bats in Mexico.
So we had a lovely meal prepared by Liz, and spent a lovely evening with our friends, and before long it was late and we all decided to call it a night. As we headed out into the street, we noticed that the bird-things were still swooping, even though it was very dark now. That's very odd, we thought, and the six of us wandered across the street to investigate.
Seeing them up a little close we saw that they were, of course, bats. There they were, swooping and ducking over our heads, going crazy all over the place! It looked as though they were interested in some kind of little green fruits that were falling from the trees in the park, and believe me, they were VERY interested. We all had great fun teasing each other by holding the fruits very close to other people's heads and waiting to see if the bats would swoop in to get them. They did, though luckily no one got a bat in their hair or anything.
It was great fun playing with the bats. I've never seen them up close like that before, but there's just something very magnificent about those little guys. Once in a while they would swoop in from afar and you could see them clearly for a moment while they flew directly towards you. It was neat too, the way they would swoop in and pluck the fruits right off the branches and be gone in an instant. (They were always too cagey to go after the ones we threw up in the air for them). But we weren't fooled: they may have been after the fruit, but they can't have been fruit bats. After all, there are no fruit bats in Mexico.