I hate dogs. There, I said it. I don’t find them cute, I hate when they lick you after licking their nether regions all day, and I hate that people buy them clothes. Or at least I did before our encounter with her. It was on a peaceful mid-morning stroll down a quiet beach trail that we first met Maria. We didn’t call her that then – for now she was just stray dog number #127 in this sleepy little beach town. But it wasn’t long before we realized she wasn’t like the other neighborhood canines. We didn’t know exactly [...]

A lot of changes take place in Mexico during summer. While there are many such changes, there is one in particular that doesn’t become apparent until you get behind the wheel of a car. The defining feature of a Mexican summer, particularly so the further south you are from the US border, is the heavy, ever present tropical rains. The rain itself changes the face of many Mexican towns. Streets flow with water, local kids float about their neighborhoods on their bodyboards and nobody but the gringos carry an umbrella.  Mail this post Technorati Tags: Mexico, Puerto Vallarta

In Mexico, even an improvised game of street volleyball is a family affair. A few weeks ago some of the boys in our street painted what is basically a full size volleyball court, (complete with boxes for the servers) on the cobblestones of our street. They tied up a proper net between a drain pipe on one side and a neighbors fence on the other and presto: our quiet little calle got completely consumed by a noisy afternoon sports arena. But you find kids playing in the streets everywhere right? Sure. Only in Mexico something is different.  Mail this post

Elysia and I started a fun little travel game recently when we decided to see if we could visit each of the top 20 restaurants in Puerto Vallarta according to TripAdvisor.com As yet we’re only half way but it’s certainly lead us to some special spots and allowed us many a lasting memory. Here’s a short list of brief mentions from the adventures – a more full list to come! The highest up the list we’ve hit is number 3 – called El Bacalao. This was a place we walked past almost every day for months and almost never gave [...]

After 3 months in Vallarta, Elysia and I are beginning to take our Mexican food sparingly. Having eaten so much of it we’ve tended to hunt out the other cuisine options of late, if for no other reason than to keep things interesting. Fajita Republic was a restaurant just off Olas Altas at the very beginning of Basilio Badillo that while always looking popular and interesting on the inside, we’d so far passed up for the aforementioned reason. Fortunately last night we decided to change our minds. This place impressed us in almost every way that a restaurant can impress. [...]