day 5: Puerto Vallarta:
Once again in order to reach land, we would have to take one of the tenders / lifeboats to shore. We decided to go quite early this time as when we were in Cabo San Lucas, the day had evaporated more quickly than the water in our bodies. The main areas of interest in Puerto Vallarta (henceforth known as PV) were a short taxi trip away ... once again too far to walk and particularly so, considering the temperatures were already getting quite heady despite the fact our breakfast hadn’t even begun to digest yet.
We were dropped off at the beach front, which was quite frankly beautiful, with a nice mixture of quirky sculptures, sand castle style art, and giant flocks of frolicing pelicans. We tried to find an impartial tourist guide, as once again it seemed that anyone you asked had some form of bias towards a product they were punting.
We found a guy in a tiny little office on the shore front who gave us all the information we required regarding the local attractions and was also seemingly duty bound to give fair warning of the gay area, which unless we liked seeing men in thongs holding hands, we should avoid.
I had received an email from John Sanders complaining that if this was supposed to be a biker’s holiday, where were the babes? With this in mind, we headed to the hooters bar that the same tour guide had pointed out. However, when we got in there, it seemed that none of them were really of high enough quality to bother the digital camera with, so I think we will save that one for Hooters of Santa Monica (be patient John...).
Having paid for the water and orange tangos in the Hooter’s bar with a hundred dollar bill, it only dawned on us when the girl was on her way back that we we’re unlikelly to receive American dollars in change. Sure enough, we ended up with a load of pesos instead. This wouldn’t have been a problem if it weren’t for the fact that this was going to be our last day in Mexico. We were going to need a pretty healthy excuse to spend the rest of this money.
Sure enough, as we strolled towards the end of the beach, there sat some Sea-Doos for hire. A bunch of kindly Canadians agreed to watch over our possesions and we went to hand over 550 pesos (~ 25 quid) for the two of us to get our much needed motoesque fix.
During our mild deliquency, we seriously considered whether we had enough gas to reach Cabo San Lucas and it’s tantalizingly enourmous margaritas. Amy did the maths, taking wind direction, slip streaming of cruise liners, and possible tows from friendly dolphins into account and begrudgingly admitted that we may just have to come back to Cabo San Lucas on holiday for a week. After half an hour of giggling and air time, trying to create our own ramps in the waves, we headed back to shore, resisting the temptation to bump the bald heads of the bathers with the hull of the SeaDoo.
The moto fix had given us an appetite and naturally a thirst for tequila, so we went and had lunch and some drinks having collected our belongings from their benevolent guardians. We continued into the old part of town and after have taken some pics of some interesting spots, I happened upon a shop selling the most awesome Mexican wrestling masks you ever did see.
I literally had 250 pesos to my name, 100 of which was required for the taxi back to the ship. The street-wise and somewhat aggressive sales woman demanded 250 pesos for the mask. I explained to her that I would happily pay this were it not for the fact that it was very hot and we needed 100 pesos for the taxi back to the port, otherwise we were walking and would very likely die.
She seemed to think that I was just playing the bartaring game, and as she came down in quantities of 10 pesos or more, I kept telling her “No, you’re really not getting this, are you? It’s 150 pesos, or we end up walking.” Finally she relented and said “Ok, just give me the money. 150 pesos.”
It was great that I had managed to bag such a quailty mask for such a good price, but we then both realized that we really badly needed a drink and couldn’t spare any cash. The search for an ATM became more like the search for the A-Team, eventually Mr. T and howling mad Hronek found a bank and with it an ATM that dispensed enough cash to buy water, energy drinks, and the bread covered with sugar that Amy was desparate wasn’t just a figment of her imagination and that all of the time she spent in England asking for granulated sugar to put on her bread and butter wasn’t just some sort of perverse personal kink.
At this point we both decided that the weather was way hotter than we had given it credit for even for December (I guess you’re a lot closer to the equator in Mexico) and realized that it was getting the better of us. A quick rest in an internet cafe was all that was needed to convince us that the next stop should be a taxi, then a cold shower on the ship.
Traffic in the taxi was pretty heavy and I thank god that when I asked the guy if he had air conditioning, he finally realized what we were talking about, wound the windows up and gave us sweet relief from the unreal heat. Son of a bitch, December.
When we got back, I decided that there was no way I could resist making some comedy use of the wrestling mask that I had bartered so hard for. We had a beach towel that matched the mask exactly, so I tied this around my neck as a cape, hoisted my underwear up to my navel and just as an unsuspecting old man was arranging a sun lounger outside our cabin window, I flung back the net curtain, hammered on the window, and squeald “I am a famous Mexican wrestler” at the terrified old chap. Me and Amy fell about laughing for what seemed like ages and tried to recreate on video for posterity a little later on, but the first time is always the best, and it just wasn’t the same. Fook me it was funny, though.
We monged out for a bit and by the time dinner was due to be served at 8:30, we were both on song again. Having gotten away with the dolphin story so convincingly, we decided that Amy had been subject to an attempted mugging in the center of PV, but that she had used her kickboxing skills to great affect and floored the sqealing Mexican man with a quality roundhouse to the jaw. Naturally this tale was told in animated detail to David and Gerry but we both soon realized that Gerry wasn’t as green as she was cabbage looking. She whispered something in David’s ear, and as his face dropped, it took on a look that could only have meant “Really, they’re lying? I’ve been such a dumbass.”
Our dining guests, Gerry and david. Nevertheless, we continued to chat and offered them a glass of “good” wine, which David took us up on. The reason we knew it was “good” wine was that in a lame attempt to make Antonio show us his Flava Flave / wine tasting cup, we’d asked him to taste the replacement bottle for us. During this display we learned a surprising amount about his hip hop apparatus and it turned out that the design of the little dish was far more complex than we could have ever imagined. We anxiously await using this new found knowledged on the next unsuspecting wine stewart we encounter.
Strangely, despite Gerry’s new found and highly justified distrust of us, we found a bizarre common ground in that they were huge fans of Ricky Gervais and particularly “The Office”.
We spent a good while discussing this and as usually the case when I am somewhat inebriated and spewing forth verbal diahorrea I was completely unaware that a slightlly bored Amy, who knew nothing about Ricky Gervais, was blatantly theiving my alcohol from under my very nose. It was therefore a shocked Otei that went to take a sip of his very expensive Long Island Ice Tea and discovered that it was pretty much only ice left in the glass.
I had been eating steak quite a bit, during our mealtimes, but had sadly been without any english mustard, so I asked the waier, gabriel if he had any at all. he went off and came back with exactly what i expected him to, Dijon mustard. It was then that the somewhat pompous Polish maitre d, (Rsyksyard or somethin, it was pronounced Richard, anyway). I said that they realy should have English mustard for the English steak lovers on board, and he proclaimed that they did have some and would go and find it.
He was gone a litle while, and returned with an unbelievably smug grin on his face as he goosestepped up the restaurant with a dish of English mustard in hand. Good skills mr Poland.
The final bit of mischief as we were heading off to bed was at the expense of a young girl that had knock one of the phone recievers off the wall mounted telephones. We arrived just as she turned her back, having finally managed to replace the handset. I flicked it off its mount as i walked past muttering “Oops, look what you did!” Poor little lamb then gamely struggled to get it bacl on the wall again as we strolled off s******ing. Pure evil, but maybe it builds character...or something!