Life Savers: Mexico Cruising

(Tuesday, August 8th, 2023)

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then 100 pictures is like a novel. Are you ready for the novel of Puerto Vallarta? It was such a fun adventure and I can't leave a single thing out, so you get lots and lots of pictures. Let's go!

Tyler and Pearl got up early to watch the sunrise. As a bonus gift for rising early, they also saw dolphins playing in the wake of the ship. Very cool.

We were all up somewhat early because we had an excursion. Breakfast was quick and we all decided to wear our cruise shirts this day. It makes it really easy to find us.

Getting off the boat was easy. We had a short walk over to the Los Veranos office building. From there, they take you to different locations. Ironically, we just ended walking back to the dock to catch speed boats. We had about a 45 minute wait, so we braided hair and everyone was set.

The speedboat was another half hour on the water. I was worried about kids getting seasick, but it was one of the smoothest rides I've ever been on. The coast was so pretty.

We ended up at this small village. It is much faster to get there by boat since the cars have to go through the mountains and hills. Our guide said that beyond that area, you can only get there by water. We hiked into the town a ways and got on an open bus that drove us to the canopy tour.

Once you get outfitted, there is a tutorial to make sure you are doing things correctly. Every place is a little different when it comes to ziplining. I really liked this method. You carried around your own gear, so you weren't forced to stay in a line in the same order. You didn't use your hand to break, you simply twisted side to side to slow yourself down and most of the time, they told you not to slow down. It is harder to go get something that is stuck in the middle than it is to catch them at the end. So we came in hot a lot of times, but they always caught us. It was so fun.

They called us cute nicknames the whole time. Princessa, Mamacita, and bonita were the ones we heard the most. The whole crew was so nice. Sometimes they would zip with us to get video and pictures. They also allowed us to take our own pictures. Some places don't do that. Of course, if you drop your phone, too bad for you. They aren't going back for it. So take it out at your own risk. This was the first time ziplining for all the girls, I think. They were spoiled to start at the longest zipline system in the world. With 19 different zips, we got our money's worth.

When we got to the end, they showed us pictures. They were really good, but we were happy with our own. We had some time to kill. There was a restaurant there and if I went again, I would eat there, but Tyler was trying to save money? Or was worried about people getting sick. Anyway, we didn't eat. But there were other things to check out. There was a mini animal sanctuary. There were lemurs and toucans that were awesome.

Then they had a parrot you could hold.

But the coolest thing was the monkeys you could feed. It was free too! We happened to get the marmosets, which might be the cutest animal alive. We each went in with our little cup of smoothie and the monkeys licked them clean. It was so fun!

We stopped for an epic photo shoot. We dipped our feet in the river. (It was a little too strong to swim.) And we explored and took more pictures.

Eventually, we were all tired and just had to wait for the bus.

The return trip was everything in reverse. Bus ride, speed boat (which was bumpier) and then back to port where most of us shopped, but Daisy went back because she was not feeling the best. I don't blame her. It was a really long day, albeit fun, but we had been super sweaty and most of us had bug bites. But what a day!