Thoughts from Starlight Cascade

This is it! Our last day!  Hmmm.. have to do something special… let’s go down to the beach at sunrise and drink some tequila!  So Hank, Kim and I trundled down to the beach and saluted the morning. We also did some long exposure (15 sec) shots looking south at the star Fomalhaut and walking towards the camera.. Pretty neat effect.

A morning of taking it easy, packing up and hopefully not forgetting anything in the rooms, making sure none of the room geckos got into the luggage and we were off to check out at noon and hope on the bus to the airport at 4. Before we headed out however, we were treated to a show, the weekly feeding of the crocodiles? alligators? I always get those confused.

We got to the airport, went through a few security checks, and then trundled through the most massive duty free series of retailers I’ve ever seen. In Toronto there were a couple on the arrivals side. In Mexico we walked for 10 minutes through dozens and dozens and dozens of them, sometimes right through the middle of the stores to get to the other side. They make a huge effort at seperating the last few pesos from the departing 🙂

Around 7:15 our plane arrived, disgorged a full load of gringo touristas and 40 minutes later we boarded on a turned around flight… one seat free on the 757. Packed solid but at least a faster flight home with prevailing winds. We left Mexico in 35 DegC and 95%+ humidity to arrive in Toronto after 1am in near 0C temps, cleared customs and waited for the bags for about an hour. Back to the vehicles and home by 6:30am and right to bed… what a long day!
What a trip!

For a slideshow of 350 odd selected images out of the 1400+ we took on this trip, click here.

Our last full day at the resort saw us down at the beach .. we made a brief siting of the newlyweds getting their feet wet as well.

Where did the day go? Before we knew it, it was sunset on the last day here. Time for reflection and the realization that 7 days is not enough. This was the first day we actually had nothing to do and felt the stresses leaving, leaving.. gone.
That evening we went back to the theatre again. There was an inhouse group of dancers/actors/singers that put on a show most nights. They were very very good. Here in the next few images they put on scenes from Rocky Horror (Sweet Transvestite from Transexual Transylania!), the Phantom, Thriller and a couple more.

We actually made a few videos with our Canon Powershot A540 camera as well that did not turn out too bad.. not of the show but of the audience. Kim, Di, Katie were all dancin up a storm to the Time Warp!

Tuesday saw a group of us get up at the crack of dawn and head out on a bus tour of Puerto Vallarta and surrounding areas. The level of construction was phenomenal. The amount of manual labour employed was phenomenal. The condition of the roads was scary bad. Huge series of really deep potholes right outside 5 star resorts. Leaving our own resort in the daylight let us see how bad our own road was. The highways were not too bad but the on/off ramps were another story.

Cervandro was our guide for the day and we quickly toured through Neuvo Vallarta and onto a great whale statue.  A little farther along was a great big statue of Triton? or Neptune? God of the Sea type guy.

Kim was amazed at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company (from the movie Forrest Gump). Quite real and all over.  Never did get a chance to stop in and sample though.

We made our way to downtown and were immediately struck by tourist attractions, including these natives flying around a pole while playing music. It was something else to experience.  These 4 guys climbed up the pole, wound up the rope and platforms to the top, climbed in and started spinning around unwinding the rope as they went.    It was a little surreal.

Downtown was full of things to see.. we could have spent the entire day there but only had an hour or so. This hotel was seen in the movie “Night of the Iguana”, which started the entire tourism boom back in 1964. We just watched that movie with Richard Burton and Ava Gardner. Wow. Great Movie!

The church just off the Square and City Hall was magnificent. Here are a couple of images, inside and outside.

After touring the church we started walking into some of the older sections of town, up and down up and down.. good exercise! Then off for a quick bite of lunch and through a market near the river. Too bad most of the items were very similar to each other.. I was looking for some specific items and they were not to be found.

Back on the bus and we headed out of town along the south shore to Mismaloya, the main area of shooting for Night of the Iguana. Beautiful place!
Much more developed now as you can see then it was back in 1964.  Back on the bus and we turned inland following highway 200 up into the hills. We turned off  up yet another sideroad, washed out and narrow .. up and up and up… to a Tequila factory!  One of the highlights of the trip to be sure.

We sampled all six kinds that they made, before during and after touring the factory… basically a tin roof with no walls and a lot of stainless steel tanks and equipment. One thing we could not get over was all of the outdoors to the weather buildings. The tour guide had to sample each shot first, to demonstrate either a shot technique or to give a different toast. Then he would splash around the group filling cups and do it again with us. Then he did one again so we could watch the technique. Later on in the afternoon he admitted this was his 3rd bus tour of the day and that he “really LOVED his JOB!” We fell for the almond tequila, which was so similar to amaretto that we had a hard time telling them apart. Just as we were about to leave, the sky made a big booming thunder noise and the skies opened up in an afternoon downpour. The washed out roads quickly got worse and we headed down the mountain. Phew!

A long 1+ drive home in the rain and we had little energy left that day.
But it was fun!