Volver a Puerto Vallarta

During the initial planning stages for Thanksgiving Break, I discovered that the rest of the family does not fully share my enthusiasm for Sayulita.  Daddy has some concerns about navigating the hills, irregular sidewalks, and improvised bridges with his still-recovering joints;  Brennan expressed frustration about going to the same place again; and everyone has some trepidation about the water, given our 100% morbidity rate for GI illness last time.

I put a little research effort into other Mexican towns, as well as getting really ambitious and seeing if I could somehow make Costa Rica happen (SPOILER, I couldn't), but ultimately settled on the place that sold us on travel to Mexico - Puerto Vallarta.  

Specifically, Conchas Chinas, on the south side, away from the cruise ship port and high rise hotels, but walking/short cab ride distance to the Zona Romantica and Old Puerto Vallarta. When we started chatting with our cab driver from the airport, I was kind of surprised to realize our last visit was 6 years ago!

Luckily, not that much has changed: the beach is still ridiculously beautiful, and pretty quiet most of the time.  There can be a wedding ceremony or two, Sundays the locals come to play, and the golden hour around sunset brings out a handful of quinceañera and engagement photo shoots.

Since I was indulging in nostalgia I thought it could be nice to stay again in one of the Casa Tres Vidas villas, or even a room the B&B beside it (the sister property where we stayed before kids), but both buildings were fully booked.  See above, re: wedding ceremonies.  But this dog doesn't give up the hunt that easily. After some careful sleuthing of property photos on VRBO, I found a condo in the building right next door.  At least we got to see the mariachi band walking up Calle Sagitario for the ceremony.

No trip to Puerto Vallarta is complete, at least in my opinion, without a meal at El Arrayan.  We even ate the cricket tacos.  ALL OF US.  (although Lucie was only persuaded on the grounds it would give her bragging rights to Mr. Philip, her school computer lab teacher/bee-keeper/eco-club leader/drop & roll chief/bug-eating-enthusiast/and all around school favorite)

And La Playita is still the go-to place on Conchas Chinas, when you don't feel like going "to town" or you want to sit by the water without it being a big production.

OK, we've fueled up, gotten our bearings - now it's time to hit the beach:

While Conchas Chinas doesn't have the nice long surf break like Sayulita's town beach, what the waves lack in duration they make up for in intensity:

After a few hours of getting pummeled by Banderas Bay, we're hungry again.  Time to check out the ice cream flavors at Lix, and churros at the Plaza.  

I have no idea what was going on in the Plaza the night we arrived (and the next night as well), but it was filled with food tents, live music, and street performers targeting little girls likely to overspend on balloon animals.

As much as we love the beach, I've found we need to take a break and mix things up a little.  Which is how we ended up at Los Veranos, whizzing down zip-lines through the jungle canopy somewhere in the hills south of Mismaloya.

Full disclosure:  I did this same zip-line course ages ago, with Daddy, on our first trip to Puerto Vallarta.  At the time, I'd processed the words "canopy tour" to mean some sort of eco-walk through the jungle with maybe some tree platforms and suspension bridges, and was taken somewhat aback when we were given the harness, helmet, and gloves.  So at least this time I knew what I was in for, although I had kind of blocked the 500 foot drop to the river valley from my memory.

As dodgy as zip-lining at life-ending heights in Mexico may sound, Los Veranos has been around for a long time and is very popular with the cruise-ship and big resort visitors, which I reasoned would be hard to pull off with a crappy safety record.  Anyway, we made it, and quite enjoyed the mango smoothies at the riverside cafe at the end.

Some of us hadn't had quite enough danger, and needed to repeatedly leap from a platform into the river after lunch until we almost missed the van back.

In between eating and adventuring, there was plenty of pool time.  We did have to rein the kids in from time to time, as all the other residents were retired/semi-retired ex-pats and generally used the pool area as an outdoor office or napping spot.  But we found ways to have fun without bothering everyone too much. 

We dedicated an afternoon to shopping, each kid's review as follows:

We found al pastor tacos that were almost as good as Tacos Ivan in Sayulita.  In fact, Pancho's Takos are probably just as good, but come with a ridiculous long wait, so I have to dock a few points for that.  We probably wouldn't have braved the wait, other than the restaurant we meant to go to was closed that night, we were all walked out from shopping, and there were still chairs available in the waiting spot.

The week went by too fast - we had a Thanksgiving dinner of fish & lobster tacos at Tuna Azul, followed by fancy churros at La Romantica - and then it was our last morning.  We left the boogie boards behinds and just played in the waves.

Then dried off and headed to PVR to catch our flight back to San Francisco, where the winter days are short, and often rainy -

- but we can still daydream about the water & the sunshine & our next trip -

Sun & Friends & Halloween

School starts mid-August, so by September we are settling into our routine - when to leave the house, where to go, how much time we need for homework, and how to earn a pajama day from Mr. Draven:

I also made a concerted effort to let Brennan have an actual party reasonably close to his actual birthday this year, instead of just having him invite 2 buddies over for a movie and sleepover night and calling it good.  I took a Subaru-load of boys to the Westfield movie theater, handed them tickets for Fast & Furious Part 27 and a half, or whatever sequel it's up to now, bought them some junk food, and shuttled them home 2.5 hours later for pizza and video games.

Fall is the best beach time in San Franciso:

whether it's playing ball with Roux -

Shell hunting with friends -

Or - now that Brennan's school is so close to the ocean - just a before-school beach walk:

We had a nice day for the Cole Valley Fair, too -

Lucie was super excited to meet up with school friends and run wild, wasting money on cookies and stickers.  Brennan was also excited to meet up with friends, but he disappeared to someone's house and they probably spent as much time playing video games as they could get away with.

I had a dentistry seminar in San Diego mid-October, and it was a pretty gorgeous weekend there as well.  It would have been better to have my crew along for the trip, but I made the best of it and used my little bit of free time to enjoy stuff the kids wouldn't want to do, like walk in Balboa Park (which is seriously so lovely I'm embarrassed to have never gone to, despite 3 prior trips to San Diego) -

- eat Baja style fish tacos for dinner EVERY NIGHT - 

- or sit and watch the sunset.

Since I came to my senses and decided to fly, rather than drive most of the length of California solo, I got home in time to enjoy the last day of the Columbus/Indigenious Peoples Day weekend.  Since the 3 of us had the day off, it seemed as good a time as any to head to Sonoma County to try one of the massive pumpkin patches.

This was our first try at a corn maze - we tried for the longer route, but must have missed a turn, or made a path of our own and merged into the short path, and found ourselves back at the start point about 20 minutes later.

I briefly campaigned to start over, and then gave up because it was hot, and approaching lunch time, and they really prefer to bounce on whatever this thing is -

- or use a hydraulic cannon to fire tiny pumpkins at junker cars

- or shop for extravagant candy apples.

We celebrated the end of an era, with a final trip to the California Academy of Sciences before our membership lapsed.  

For years it was a favorite spot - a great place to burn toddler energy in the play room, warm up in the rainforest when it's wet and grey outside, wonder at pretty fish and giant planetarium shows, or just enjoy the half hour of peace that an over-priced bowl of mac & cheese will buy.  But as the kids have grown and their days have filled with school and sports and friends, we just weren't going much any more.

We had a good run, from October 2008 -

- to October 2019.

And we had farewell cupcakes:

Thanks to a tip from a co-worker, I found a riding instructor who is willing to put up with my screwy schedule, so Lucie is back the saddle this fall!  We only have to drive to Pacifica, her teacher is really nice, AND I don't wake up at 4 am wondering how I can afford it, so that's nice, too.

Of course, the real highlight of fall is Halloween!  We showed off our questionable parenting skills by  letting Lucie dress up as one of her heroes, Eleven from Stranger Things, the fairly age-inappropriate TV show we watch as a family. 

And doubled down by getting Brennan this costume, a straightjacket-burlap sack combo (it's a Batman villain called Scarecrow) that both obscured his vision and completely restricted the use of his hands when fully dressed.  He managed to trick-or-treat by keeping his arms under the jacket and sticking his hands under the bottom.

And, of course, there's soccer from September to November.

Unfortunately, my big camera died again early in the season, already having outlived its planned obsolescence by a few years, so my ability to get decent action shots was very limited.

Due to Walter the Chihuahua's bad eating choices, I missed both kid's last games in favor of some emergency gut surgery.  Thanks to another parent, we at least have video of Brennan's assist on the Championship winning goal for the Gorillas.

Now we're on to Thanksgiving break - which for us usually means it's beach and taco time...