Things I wish I hadn't said

What an interesting day from the start. Firstly, our port of call today was Puerto Vallarta. It is a classic Mexican coastal city bustling with tourists enjoying the modernity and antiquity as the same time. But before I talk about our time here, I have a confession.....well, two actually. The first is that I am a geocacher. If you don't know what it is, please google it. Suffice it to say, it's a world wide scavenger hunt that is part game and part educational, unlike Pokeman, which is just a game. A few days ago when logging a find from Cartegena, I noticed another post from our boat. So I texted them through the app and we exchanged a few pleasantries. Yesterday, I was in the hot tub with 3 French Canadians and we had a nice conversation. Two were getting off in LA, 1 was on for the whole 111 days. She's 78 and was wearing a bikini. Gotta love that kind of confidence and if I may say so, she looked better in one than a lot of younger ladies on this ship....and as Forrest Gump would say, "That's all I have to say about that". Today, as soon as we got off the boat, my wife and I began looking for a geocache about 7/10 of a mile from the ship near a turtle hatchery, which was so interesting to read about (remember the educational part of geocaching I spoke about?). After about 10 minutes of searching, this older lady with a french accent joins me in the hunt and she's determined to find it. She even climbed over a rail to get to where our devices said the cache was. As we searched, I asked if she was from our ship and then the light bulbs went off for both of us. She was the geocacher I had texted AND the lady from the hot tub. I said, (and I quote), "I didn't recognize you with clothes on". And there you have it, things I wish I hadn't said to anyone, much less a 78 year old lady. We laughed and continued the hunt for the geocache a bit more before we agreed to record a DNF (did not find). She accompanied us for the rest of our day in PV and we found 2 more caches before returning to the DNF on our way home. We found it that time in under 5 minutes. I love calling out "found it".

I started the day by calling in to my Monday Morning Bible study. It was nice to see familiar faces and hear their voices. I gave them a brief tour of the lido deck and the surrounding port of PV, where we docked during the call.

Now about PV. It's a nice city overall but the best part for us was the Malecon, the old part of the city that's pedestrian friendly, along the waterfront, with dozens of bronze statues that unfortunately didn't have plaques to tell us their significance or meaning. There's plenty of shopping, restaurants and bars, outdoor seating and lots of people watching. We were blessed with another beautiful weather day, mid 70's with a gentle breeze. We walked approx 3 miles from the ship to the end of the Malecon and then back, so 6 in total. We love the hustle and bustle of a vibrant town like PV, which though having a lot of history, has settled into the history books as a place to simply relax and have fun.

In Hualtuco, I mentioned that we had shopped for pendants there but didn't find "the one" and their prices were too high. Along our walk to the Malecon in PV, we stopped at a jewelry store that didn't seem touristy and voila, we found the one and for 1/3 the price we would have paid in Hualtuco. Here's a pic:

I thought that PV was a very picturesque place and took about 25 pics, which you'll find under the Ports-of-Call tab. Scroll down till you find Puerto Vallarta. We returned to the boat about 2pm, where we had lunch and then I worked for an hour. Internet is spotty on the ship, but in PV, I could tether off my phone and downloaded what I needed in no time at all. Uploaded the results too. By this time, we were ready for dinner, which was all seafood for me, veal for my wife. It was Italian night. We split Lasagna for the appetizer. I loved my salmon, shrimp and scallops. My wife was just OK with the veal. Menu and food pics below:

After dinner we watched the comedian/magician/singer for the second time with a different act. He's great. So much energy!!. I then gambled a bit in the casino while my wife went to see our favorite guitarist. Sad to report the casino wasn't as gracious to me tonight, but it was a small loss overall and I was overdue for a loss.

Now we have 2 sea days until we arrive at LA, where I think we have to disembark and re-embark. I'll let you know how that goes.