Puerto Vallarta

Our home for the next 6 weeks

We arrived yesterday afternoon at our favorite condo in our favorite Mexican city: Puerto Vallarta.

We’ve stayed here several times before, back when we were still working and vacations came with an expiration date. Every visit ended the same way, with us saying, “I wish we could spend more time here.”

So when we started planning travel for my first year of retirement, Puerto Vallarta was one of the easiest decisions we made. This time, instead of squeezing it into a week or two, we booked six glorious weeks.

Our condo is actually someone’s home, so we were incredibly lucky that her travel schedule lined up with ours and we could snag it for this long. It feels much more like living in Puerto Vallarta than vacationing here, which is exactly what we wanted.

Now, about the weather.

It is HOT. And HUMID. I’m talking sweating in places I didn’t know could sweat.

We’re at the tail end of the rainy season, and walking out of the airport after coming from Arizona was…an experience. Walking outside in Arizona is like walking into an oven. Walking outside here is like walking into a sauna.

Fortunately, I have a solid tropical-weather survival plan:

Ponytail. Spicy skinny margarita. Repeat as necessary.

The remnants of the passing hurricane have also made their presence known. The tides are incredibly high right now, with much of the beach near us completely underwater. The waves have been pounding the shoreline and have even done some damage along the boardwalk.

We headed out for our morning walk and got some great shots of the waves in action. It was wild, and beautiful, to watch.

And, naturally, I had other important business to attend to.

Meeting the local cats.

I cannot walk past a cat in any country without stopping to say hello. They did not seem nearly as excited about our reunion as I was, but I’m confident we’ll build a relationship over the next six weeks.

Today’s agenda is considerably less glamorous: Costco.

Because nothing says “We’re living in Mexico for six weeks!” quite like buying enough toilet paper and tequila to supply a small resort.

After that, I suspect the pool will be calling our names.

We have another five or six days of this truly impressive heat and humidity before things are supposed to settle down a bit. Until then, we’ll keep getting up in the wee hours to walk, spend plenty of time in the pool, and keep the margaritas flowing.

And really, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be, and no one else I’d rather be sweating my bits off with.

¡Salud!