Well, here I am back in Mexico again. I’d sort of planned to go somewhere else this year, but the wanderlusties struck about two weeks ago and I found out that it was cheap to fly to Puerto Vallarta, so I grabbed a plane ticket and here I am.

For those just joining this blog, last year I spent two-plus weeks in Guanajuato, a lovely colonial town in the highlands of Mexico. It was small, quaint, artsy, friendly and butt-freezing cold at night. This year I decided I did not want to be cold, so I chose the beach — I’m ready to kick back and be warm. Portland obliged by being freezing this week. I could not be happier about sitting here with the doors wide open to the veranda, at midnight, wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

Today was an easy travel day. All the flights ran on time, there was free wi-fi in the Phoenix airport during my layover and I breezed through Mexican customs. I packed super-light this year, so I have one bag that isn’t even very full. Expect multiple blogs about doing laundry “soon.”

Upon landing at the Puerto Vallarta airport, we left the plane via a stairway and were ushered onto a bus which shuttled us (I’m not kidding), maybe 500 feet to the terminal. It was about 1/20th of the distance I had to walk between gates in the Phoenix airport. It took longer to herd people onto the bus than it would have taken to walk to the terminal.

Upon passing through customs, you walk through a surreal “timeshare room” where you are assaulted by timeshare salespeople offering a “taxi” (and presumably a lengthy sales pitch). The entire room is done up in stark whites, and the salespeople wear white as well, so the effect is similar to what I imagine it must be like to alight in heaven (assuming heaven offers timeshares and everyone speaks English with a Mexican accent). After skirting TimeShare Zone, I was assaulted by slightly-less-officious taxi drivers, and I arranged for a cab to my apartment.

The taxi driver was chatty, in Spanish and English. We made a stop so he could buy peanuts for his wife and then took a detour because he wasn’t paying attention to where he was going and we needed to avoid a large festival. I think this is what he said. My Spanish is still rusty. I might have been kidnapped.

It was a bit of a challenge to find the apartment, as addresses in Mexico are often just expressed based on cross streets, and he didn’t, technically, know where either of the cross streets were. Eventually we found the apartment and I got myself situated. The apartment is nice. It’s night, but I have a lovely view out the window of a lighted display of someone riding a seahorse.

Tomorrow I will go find food and get the lay of the land, and hope I can find my way back here.