We left the hotel and took the shuttle to the airport at 6:20am. The airport was very efficient with kiosks for printing our luggage tags and short lines to drop off our luggage. We took the train to our gate location in terminal E. We found a lounge and stayed there until about 9am, when it was time to board.
At 10am, we were leaving the gate when the captain said that we needed to go back since the navigation radio wasn’t working. It took about 1 hour to have it fixed. The flight was uneventful besides for a lady who used the bathroom about half the flight. I think it was the pâté.
We arrived in PV around 2pm (3pm Vermont time). We were almost first in line for immigration. We waited for our luggage for about 15 minutes. By then the line for customs was pretty long with people from the previous flight. As we were getting closer, they opened up a new line right in front of us. Before we knew it, we were outside waiting for a taxi to bring us to our rental car agency called Gecko. In no time, we had the paperwork done and noticed that they had loaded our luggage in our car.
We also noticed so much new construction on our way to Nuevo Vallarta, starting with Vidanta which is now called Vidanta World. It is getting so big that they have gondolas going over the highway. It’s nowhere finished but it is already a monstrosity.
We stopped to get a few items like milk and beer (yes, Pogo has his priorities), and finally arrived at the condo around 4:30pm.
We got the key at the gate from Roberto. We realized that they had changed the lock for an electronic keypad when we got to the door. The key didn’t work. Pogo called the owner Daniel who gave us the code. Of course it didn’t work. Without our knowledge, Daniel had called Marta, the cleaning lady, to come open the door. Meanwhile Pogo looked online and was able to bypass the code and got us in, of course 2 minutes before Marta arrived…
After emptying our luggage, we went on our balcony and saw Mario and Josée next door. They were checking out the condo for their friends. It was so nice seeing them for the first time in 2 years! They invited us to their condo for a margarita which turned into two and finally into a steak dinner with potatoes and wine. We had a Rosca de Reyes cake for dessert which is a 3 kings cake popular during Epiphany, very similar to the New Orleans king cake but instead of displaying the mardi gras colors, is decorated with multicolored candied fruits and figs. Inside there is also a tiny plastic baby representing Jesus. If you find it, which I did, it is supposed to bring you luck. Fingers crossed!
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