MEXICO Continued - Saturday, Dec. 13

This morning Mick woke up before Chad and I and was "waved" over to Ricardo's for breakfast(Ricardo's deck kind of overlooks Chad's deck). Ricardo treated Mick to hueves rancheros with shrimp and Chad and I joined them later. This is a picture taken from Chad's deck of Ricardo painting out on his deck.After our delicious breakfast, we packed a backpack and headed to Las Animas desolate beach. In order to get there, we had to take a water taxi. This is a picture of Chad and Mick while we were waiting to leave.

I had to take a picture of this pelican while we were waiting.
And a picture of lots of pelicans on one of the water taxis (not ours).

Here's a picture of Mick and I on the water taxi on our way to Las Animas beach.

And here's a picture of Chad on the water taxi.

As soon as our taxi docked a man approached us with this HUGE iguana asking we wanted a picture taken with it. And before we could say anything, I was holding the iguana. I thought the boys would love it though.

Just another view of the iguana.

We had to hike to get to the isolated beach Chad was taking us to and we passed this family owned donkey. I thought it was a fitting picture with it being close to Christmas (you know, Mary riding a donkey).

I thought this stairway was cool - you can tell it had been around for awhile.

Here's the beach. Isn't it beautiful? We were the only ones on it - it was very peaceful.

Here's Mick walking to find our "spot."

Chad reading his book in the shade.

Here's an iguana we discovered in the rocks next to where we were laying down.

While Chad and I were reading our books, Mick was "exploring" with Chad's binoculars and discovered at least two gray whales that were jumping and playing. It was unbelievable. We took turns with the binoculars and just watched them for a half hour or so (until they were out of sight). They would slap their "arms," go under water, and jump out and land on their backs - over and over again. I've never seen anything like it. It's like what you'd see on the Discovery Channel. I tried getting a picture of them, but it was really hard with just my point-and-shoot camera. I was so wishing I had a zoom lens. But I have to say, I was impressed with what I did get with my 10x optical zoom - I didn't think I'd be able to catch them. Watching the whales was one of my highlights of the trip.

After we were done at the beach, Chad thought it'd be fun to hike to Boca Tomatlan through the Mexican jungle. Here's a picture I took from the trail.

Here's another picture from the trail (my most unfavorite part of our trip) - Beware! Mick just told me, "Don't look and run." Now, how could I not look and I definately couldn't run - the paths were NARROW with DROP OFFs.

Now this picture doesn't show how HUGE this spider really was. The spider was almost as big as my hand. Aaaaaaaah!!!! And wouldn't you know, after I get past it - we decide to hike down to the beach and flag down a boat that we could see because the hike was turning out to be LONGER and HARDER than we thought. So, I had to pass it again. But we were able to catch the boat and the fisherman kindly took us to Boca Tomatlan - I was so relieved.

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Boca Tomatlan beach had a few little restaraunts to choose from and we just devoured our food. It was so good!!

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After we ate, we caught the public bus and rode back into Puerto Vallarta. We thought Chad should make an appearance at the silent auction they were having at his art gallery, so we went there all gritty and sweaty and me with my baseball cap on (we really stood out with all the fanciful dressed people there). We met the gallery owner and Chad's friend Ted and he graciously took us out to a five star restaraunt for desert for us and dinner for him. It was amazing.

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We were more than ready for bed by then and took a taxi home.

More to come...