Things To Do In Puerto Vallarta #2

#2: Fly Through The Air With the Greatest of Ease

See the tiny grey dot? That is me zipping from one tree to another across a canyon. What you can't see is the river about 400 feet below me or the expression of sheer exhilaration on my face. On Monday last week, we took a bus about 15 miles south along Banderas Bay to do the Los Veranos Canopy Tour. This isn't so much about learning about trees and wildlife as it is about zipping from place to place at high rates of speed. Fun! I highly recommend Los Veranos if you're considering a tour. Everyone we asked said it was the safest and best of the four tours offered in Puerto Vallarta. Safety, a good thing. A little tip- sign up for the 9:00 a.m. Monday tour. Most visitors arrive on the weekend and haven't had time to think about what they want to do yet, so the Monday morning tour is smaller. We met a really fun couple from Chicago, another from L.A., a nice family from Montreal, and three 20 year old gals from San Francisco one of whom recovered from puking out the bus window on the ride out just to flirt with all the cute tour guides. Would y'all like a mint?

But wait, it gets better. At the end of the canopy tour, you can go play with MONKEYS!! I heart monkeys! These are little cute things of a variety I can't recall that climb all over you with their cold little toes and fingers in their enclosure as you feed them bits of salad. Then they go face first into your pockets looking for stuff to steal. You are instructed to empty your pockets, but some dude had an unopened granola bar that was instantly pilfered by a clever monkey. The keeper retrieved the granola bar, which sort of pissed of the monkey since possession is the law in monkey land.

What To Do In Puerto Vallarta #1

#1: Buy Pretty Things

Puerto Vallarta has some great little galleries tucked away in the Old Town, and even in downtown, which is otherwise dominated by flea market stuff. The galleries range from higher end fine art to galleries featuring traditional folk art. Every Wednesday evening, the fine art galleries host an art walk from 6 - 10 pm, which can be fun with free snacks and drinks, and good people watching.
When I'm in Mexico, I love shopping for things Mexican. For a pasty boy of Scandinavian descent, I'm unusually drawn to Mexican folk art, particularly images associated with Dia de los Muertos. There are tons of folk art shops, but you need to shop around to find the quality of work that tickles your fancy. I was thrilled to find these three lovely Catrinas by local artist Tadeo Cruz. (Actually, the Frida representation wouldn't technically be a Catrina, but we won't get into that here.) They are delicate little clay beauties, standing only about six inches tall. Clearly they love to have their photos taken, even though my photography doesn't do them justice.
One shop we always visit is The Puerco Azul (The Blue Pig), owned by Nancy & Lee Chapman. Nancy writes children's books and Lee illustrates them. Their shop is filled with very lighthearted, endearing prints, books, objects and general curiosities. It is in Old Town just off of the great restaurant street, Basilio Badillo (more on that later).

And We're Back!

We're back from another great trip to Puerto Vallarta! I've missed reading your blogs and need to get that done before updating you with some highlights of our trip.

Pictures from the Northwest: The Puyallup Fair

On the last day of our northwest vacation last week, I mentioned that we went The Puyallup Fair, a huge 3 week long shindig that gave us a whole other perspective on the lovely northwest. Here are a few images from that day:

If I were reincarnated as a chicken, which somehow seems likely, this is how I would want to look. I might work a little harder on the dry skin around my mouth, but this is a pretty chicken none the less. And I would do just what this chicken is doing- sit and wait for food to fill my dish. When I was done eating, I would sit around looking pretty, nap, then wait again for food to fill my dish.

This is my favorite food vendor at the fair. I didn't eat there, but I thought the name was quite fun. It brought to mind for me certain male hygiene issues and a particularly virulent strain of STD- neither of which I have experience with, thank you. Notice that the smaller Krusty Pup has a yellow something on its tip. God almighty. It just couldn't have gotten any better. I made Curt stand beneath the smaller Krusty Pup and you can see he is NOT happy to do so.

This little girl and her pumpkin are just about to set a new fair record. Something like 1161 lbs. That's just a bit smaller than a SmartCar. If you click on the picture to enlarge it you can see just how cute she is. After she won, her dad, who was also kind of cute, was on hand to pick her up in a big bear hug. It was a sweet moment.

Behold the Gazing Globe!

This is a picture of me in a gazing globe at Butchart Gardens. Can you see me? This is the geek equal of our friends Pete and Tami having their family picture finished to appear as though they and their baby are in a brandy snifter, only thiers was really cool and classy.

And We're Back...

It is Sunday morning 10:02 a.m, making coffee, just finished downloading some pictures to the computer and will be off to the farmer's market shortly, then back home to watch the Vikings for as long as I can take it. The Vikings suck. Curt and I have given up on getting tickets to the games, not because they are hard to get, but because the Vikings suck and watching the games is painful. At home we can turn them off to go do other things. At the dome, we can only leave early and feel cheated. Why do we keep tuning in? I have no idea.
Yesterday, we got home earlier than expected because we took a standby option to get on a 12:15 flight instead of our 3:30. Standby is great except for two things: you now have to pay $25 for it (bastards!) and you almost inevitably get seated in the lousiest spot on the plane. Curt got seated in a center seat a row in front of me next to seemingly normal people. The woman to his left was one of those airline princesses who doesn't think the announcements apply to her. Ever been next to one of those? She didn't think that she needed to have her seat in an upright position for take off or landing. She didn't think her things needed to be stowed in an overhead compartment- then told the flight attendant to do it for her. You get the idea. I was seated in a window seat next to two really large women, which is not a problem, except that the one next to me kept gradually pushing her way in to my seat. She was really warm too. The guy in front of me kept bouncing back hard on his already reclined seat and nailed my left kneecap once so hard that I yelped. By the end of the flight I was curled into a crabby ball on on the window ledge.
Getting home early was worth the irritation though because the dogs were so thrilled to see us. Both Louie and Claire were beside themselves pretty much until we went to bed. We love our dogs.
One more quick thing about our vacation. Curt and I travel together remarkably well considering how we're both a little bossy in different ways. The only times that we get on each other's nerves are:
1. When the other person is driving and not accepting of quality navigation coming from the passenger seat.
2. After a long day of walking around when the other person isn't taking quality navigation from the other.
So, one night after a long day of tooling around, Curt is getting ready for bed and says, "Sorry for getting crabby with you earlier. I need to get some sleep so I can tolerate your intolerableness tomorrow." We had a good laugh.

Greetings from the Northwest pt 2!

Hello again! Today we are flying back from Seattle to Minneapolis, ending our quick tour of the Northwest. We miss our dogs desperately so are happy to be heading back.
Thursday, we took the ferry from Seattle to Victoria B.C.. This was 2.5 hours of ferry time, which itself is not so bad. However, we were surrounded by a huge group of tourists from Alabama. They seemed like decent folks, a little loud with proudly thick drawls who started drinking the moment they stepped on board. One interesting thing- I did finally figure out who watches the Redneck Comedy Tour because they kept quoting Larry the Cable Guy, and boy howdy, were they howling at that stuff. Fortunately for them, there wasn't a piano wire or anything else capable of providing a good strangling in my hands. Nor could I get enough distance between the ceiling and floor to hang myself, so I suffered silently- or at least as silently as I ever suffer.
From Victoria we cabbed it to The Butchart Gardens- the gardening envy of every gay man on earth only without the plant labels. I'm not even going to try to describe how stunning the gardens were. Let's just say we spent about 4.5 hours strolling around taking it all in. The only slightly disappointing bit was the Japanese garden- this after seeing the Portland Japanese garden. It was still quite lovely, but very non-traditional in its form. After the gardens, we tooled around Victoria for a little while, then sat with our Alabama friends for another 2.5 hour cruise.
Yesterday, we trotted around downtown Seattle. When on vacation, I feel obliged to do at least one stupid tourist thing. So, this time I chose the Space Needle. Yawn. Pretty view, but geez, $16?? After that we ate at Mama's Mexican Kitchen which seems to have the coolest wait staff I've ever encountered. We heart Blithe the waitress. She recommended we visit the Puyallup Fair and so we did. This is a massive version of the Minnesota State Fair that goes on for 3 weeks. The crowds were spread out a lot so getting around was easy. We watched a 12 year old girl win the largest pumpkin contest with an entry that came in at 1161 pounds- a new fair record. The strangest thing we saw was the 4-H cat display. Girls, and maybe some boys, created cat homes from kennels. Strange, especially since the cats were in there too. Another interesting thing- you know how we have lines for Sweet Martha's Cookies? The Puyallup Fair has LONG lines for hot scones filled with butter and raspberry jelly. 3 later I was hooked. Yum. All in all a fun day.
Today, we return the Jeep rental and head back at about 3:00. Goodbye, Northwest! (One day I hope to say that to the airline of the same name.)

Greetings from the Northwest!

Hello all! Curt and I are having a great vacation in the lovely Northwest thus far. Saturday we flew in to Seattle and promptly drove to Portland to begin our mini tour. The primary reason we came out is to visit several gardens that have interested us for some time. Saturday, we visited The Grotto, a massive catholic grotto / garden in northeast Portland. Very lovely and majestic, but how many times can you view the stations of the cross in one life time? I love religious iconography, but come on. Maybe my Lutheran upbringing has something to do with it. We didn't have a bloody Jesus doing anything in our church.
Sunday, we drove to Canby, OR, just southeast of Portland, to visit Swan Island Dahlias for Dahlia Fest'07. Woo hooo! We had a fabulous time and very nearly overloaded on the thousands and thousands of glorious dahlias. There were over 40 acres of dahlias in full bloom, plus hundreds of huge arrangements of dahlias. Of course, all of this was designed to sell dahlias. Miraculously, we got away with buying only 6 varieties. Whew!
After leaving the dahlias fairly breathless, we proceeded into northwest Portland to view the International Rose Test Garden. About three acres of amazing rose varieties all in the lovely Washington Park area. Stunning.
After the roses, we ascended into the Portland Japanese Gardens. I had heard from a reliable source that this garden is considered the best Japanese Garden outside of Japan. It was STUNNING! That word is completely inadequate to describe the serenity and awe inspiring subtlety of the place. I highly, highly recommend a visit.
Monday, we decided to see the coast and fell deeper in love with Oregon all day. We stopped to pick blueberries about half way there and ate them for the rest of the day. The coast was lovely. We were really taken though by driving through the coastal mountains.
Tuesday, we visited my friend Kristin in Corvallis, then drove through Silver Falls State Park on the way home. The South Falls are 178 feet and drop from a thick basalt base into the river below. All this is surrounded by 100 foot pines. Gorgeous.
Today, we set out for Seattle again. We tooled around near the market and scoped out some restaurants for later in the week. Seattle is a beautiful city, but we did notice a high volume of homeless people and sort of wondered why the concentration was so intense throughout the downtown. Maybe it is the temperate climate? Anyway, tomorrow we are going to Victoria, B.C. and will be on our way to Butchart Gardens- another destination garden. Fun!