Sylvie's Travels Home

I woke up seeing one of our neighbor trying to cast his line while 5 big dogs were running around him, trying to eat his baits, while the 2 oblivious ladies walking them were chatting.

Pogo went for a run and I did Jazzercise for the first time in months.

We went for breakfast at La Isla. Andreas wasn’t too busy so he came to chat with us a few times. We had decided to go walk around the bigger marina in Nuevo located on the other side of the river. There were a lot of pretty boats, a few good restaurants and lots of big condo buildings. It looked old and in need of TLC. Andreas had told us about a place where we could see crocodiles in the wild on the way to Boca de Tomates so we decided to go check it out. We had to take a dirt road right before the airport for about 1 mile. It was really dusty and I found so many cars completely covered in dust. We saw amazing trees, lots of mangroves and a huge beehive.

We found the crocodiles while crossing a little bridge at an intersection where the only building was a restaurant called Cocodrilos. The high fence on each side of the bridge was also a good indication. We parked and went to the fence and saw at least 12 huge crocodiles. They were not moving at all. They must have been so tired…For all we know, they were props but we were not about to find out. A few local families had stopped as well to look at them.

We continued the drive to Boca de Tomates. The quiet beach full of rustic restaurants called Ramadas, cannot be used to swim due to its proximity to the Ameca River and the Boca Negra Estuary because the presence of crocodiles is a constant. We had a soda at Eduardos, one of the dozen restaurants there than walked part of the beach. We could see Puerto Vallarta in the distance. We saw people fishing, a few kids playing in the waves and lots of birds. It was totally empty but considering the amount of restaurants, it must get crowded at some point. On the way back, we found another dirt road with fields of growing cantaloupes that brought us under the highway and we found an entrance to it.

We came back around 2pm, went to the beach to catch up with our friends who all had caught a 24 hours stomach bug, one after the other, Josée and Alain on Thursday, Mario on Saturday and Diane on Sunday. We then spent an hour by the pool.

We went to an early dinner at La Insu Sky Bar, at the Marival Hotel for tapas. We were lucky to get a table with a great view of the ocean. We had a few drinks, took our time ordering tapas and watched the sunset. We shared 6 plates and were not too full but satisfied. We had pork dumplings, tequila shrimp, shrimp tempura, duck tacos, roast beef bites and some kind of shrimp sushi thingy. Everything was delicious.

Shaun sent me some pictures of snow squalls. The weather has been horrible this winter in Vermont.

It was a lovely day!