Mexico Day 1, Feb 13th 2007

Sara and I decided on a trip to Mexico for Feb 13th-20th. Sara had come across this place called "bungalow's lydia" located in San Francisco (aka San Pancho) about 45 minutes north of Puerto Vallarata. I reserved a jeep wrangler for the entire trip and we both could not wait for the day to finally come that we would be leaving the cold for the sun!.

Our flight was at 5:30AM, so the alarm was set for about 2:15AM. I was restless and had a bunch of things to take care of and did not go to sleep until 1:45AM, so there wasn’t much rest for trav.

Sara’s dad Dave drove us to seatac and we were off. Flight to Phoneix wasn’t bad and mostly spent the flight watching dust to glory, just enough battey on the laptop to nearly make it through the entire movie. From phoenix we flew to Puerto Vallarta. Nice arriving at such a relaxed airport. Took about an hour to get the rental car, unfortunately our reserved wrangler wasn’t available so for the first day we had to take a jeep cheorkee. With that we we on our way to San Pancho.

Along the way we were getting hungry and not seeing much in established restaurants but plenty of little road-side joints. I was not even sure what they were serving, but Sara was for it and I was completely excited so our first meal in mexico was a ½ bbq chicken with some rice and fresh tortillas. It was excellent!!! Some of the best bbq chicken I’ve had. I think with drinks we paid $5 for the whole meal! I can’t tell you how good it was.

Back on the road again we were entering jungle like terrain and we were both becoming excited. We were driving a twisty road over minor hills with vegetation and trees making a canopy over the road. I commented to sara that it’s probably only the tall vehicles that keep the trees/vegetation trimmed.

We entered San Pancho and were both taken instantly taken back by the little Mexican town. Entering is a cobblestone style street with an old traditional look throughout the town. Many small shops and locals selling goods, some just for tourists but many businesses obviously cater to local use (e.g., hardware stores, pharmacies, veterinarians, etc.).

As we followed the directions to Bungalow’s Lydia we drove closer to the beach and along a gorgeous street with many beautiful houses, hotels, and other bungalow style places with a great beach. As we drove I kept thinking “if ours is like this that would be great”. The road turned to dirt and after about 2-3 kilometers we reached the driveway which went down and then made a turn up a ridge. As we crested the ridge I could not believe my eyes, the view was absolutely amazing! I remember when I saw the pictures on the internet that it looked remarkably exotic and assumed that like many places it would not look as scenic in person as in the pictures, but this was the exact opposite. I immediately whipped out the camera and started shooting away and could not get enough!

We had to walk around for a bit to find Lydia, she simply asked us if we had a reservation (in Spanish), sara answered yes and gave her the simple email confirmation (which I don’t think she even read as sara mentioned her sister handles emails and such) and she showed us to our room. There was no signing paperwork or anything!

After checking out the beach we headed back into town to find some food. We discovered that Monday-Tuesday seems the day off or something in mexico as nearly every place to eat was closed except the few Americantized joints. We were still pretty much full from the chicken earlier so we had some coconut shrimp and margaritas at one of the American style places. It was a bit disappointing as it was overpriced and more American style menu. We found the beach in town and enjoyed the sunset and then bought some corona and lime and headed back to the room for a movie on the laptop.

click here for all pics