(And Yelapa and DFW)
Two Mondays ago, upon arrival at LaGuardia after spending the weekend in Chicago, I checked twitter (and checked in to the airport Five Guys) to discover via @AmericanAir that a “winter storm” headed for Texas would quite possibly be shutting down DFW on Wednesday. Being that I had a connection at DFW that coming Wednesday afternoon on my way to Puerto Vallarta, and being that I’m not one to mess with Texas (though I may be one to speak poorly of it), I finished my arrival hamburger and made my way to the surprisingly empty American Airlines ticketing counter to investigate the possibility of rebooking. Rather than lose a day in Mexico, I decided we would fly out ahead of the storm, which meant I’d be back at LGA to fly down to Texas in exactly twenty four hours- essentially an overnight layover at home and a free bonus day in Mexico.
As I was technically supposed to be at work on Tuesday, I walked across Williamsburg with my luggage at 8:45 AM to open the office until a coworker would be coming in to cover the day at 10:30. After a cab to LGA, a flight to DFW, an extra large frozen yogurt and box of Dayquil with a side of Popeyes fried chicken, a flight to PVR, and a cab downtown, we found ourselves at the front desk of Hotel El Pescador a day early with no reservations. This proved to be a non-issue and shortly after dropping off our belongings we walked down the block to enjoy an eighty peso (roughy US $7.50) dinner of six tacos and two beers.
The majority of the following five days were spent wandering the city sampling delicious street food, consuming irresponsible amounts of mariscos and micheladas, exploring local markets, lounging on many beaches, and becoming regulars at a moderately seedy downtown pool hall.
We kept everything pretty local, despite talk of renting a car and driving to Guadalajara for a night. One day we did actually make it out of the city and took a water taxi to the small, no-roads village of Yelapa, where we hung out with a giant iguana and hiked to a waterfall.
On Sunday we had possibly the best American breakfast ever at Fredy’s Toucan, followed by pasta at Sbarro for lunch at PVR Airport, which was in fact the only subpar decision made the whole week. After a rushed layover at DFW complete with slow agents at customs and full body scans at recheck (no time to opt-out when you risk being stranded overnight in suburban Texas) we were on a packed flight back to New York.
Upon landing in New York, the LGA Five Guys was closed, the guy at T&A Deli sneezed all over the cheese while assembling my sandwich, and the deli across the street refused to take my debit card despite the obvious presence of a card machine and a large Visa/Master/Discover sticker in the window. I had my first full flavored beer in almost a week and went to bed craving tacos.
Downtown at night
I bought a sweet painting from this family
Best tacos in Puerto Vallarta
More good tacos- 5 for 35 pesos
The northern end of the malecón
Canned Spicy Mango Margarita from OXXO
Chicago worldwide!
Oceanside patio at Hotel El Pescador
Don’t swim at night!
Classy roof rack
Convertible Beetles
Rebuilding the pier at Playa Los Muertos
Leaving PV for the forty five minute ride to Yelapa
Dropping people off on the far side of Yelapa
Coming into town
Yelapa Beach from the main town stairs
Open invitation to the election and crowning of the Queen of Yelapa at the village casino
The trail to the town waterfall
Approaching Playa Los Muertos
Sunset at 7:00 on the malecón
Texas bound!
This entry was written by , posted on February 21, 2011 at 12:51 pm, filed under Mexico, Travel and tagged jalisco, Mexico, puerto vallarta, yelapa. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.