Yesterday wore us out, but we made it!

We got to Mexico. Hallelujah. I have been saving my personal training money for months to get us down here, then AFTER I bought the plane tickets and reserved the airbnb condo I realized I didn't have as much money in my account as I thought. Guess which family had to live mostly off of our downstairs food cache for a month?
Well hopefully it will be worth it!

A few years ago, Jeff and  I went to Cabo San Lucas with my sister and brother in law. We got a great deal on a resort, and it was absolutely beautiful. There was even this signature flowery fragrance that was pumped throughout the place that you could buy if you wanted when you left.(And now whenever there is something that smells like that I think of that vacation.) We had the greatest time, but felt like we were so removed from, well, Mexico. We wanted to talk to Mexicans if we were going to Mexico, get to know the people and a little bit of what it is like to live there. Kind of. I doubt it is hard to replicate that without air conditioning for most native families and I am a super whimp about air con.
So that is what I was looking for out of this experience. We found a super nice condo in a little village south of Puerto Vallarta called Mismaloya, and like I said, I booked it. Then I forgot about everything (except what kind of shape my mask and snorkel are in) for three months. The Friday night we were supposed to leave we were out with friends and the subject of passports came up. Oh.My. Crap.

There was nothing I could do about anything that night, but I didn't sleep much and was up at 5:30 am to try to figure out what to do. Jeff's and my passports were expired and we were supposed to be on a plane to Mexico at 6:00 am Monday morning. I got the nicest agent in the world when I called Alaska airlines, and she waved the fees to change our flights to a week later. A week. I lost us a week of our trip because of my dumb mistake.
I went to Denver to renew our passports because there is an agency there -none in Utah- and an agency can do them on the spot. Or they would if you had SIGNED THE APPLICATION. It was a whole thing.

I'm gonna condense. We made our new flights, with our million carry-ons and got to Mexico yesterday evening.

{notice the tired eyes?  We did have an early flight and long layovers}

Getting our rental car was an experience. We got a good rate, but such a tiny car we all (except Jeff) had to ride with our big backpacks -and then groceries too -on our laps and feet. Tiny was good though with the crazy traffic. Did you know that on the highway here, you have to go to the outer right lane to make a lefthand turn? We had a few times where we were glad we were small and nimble!
By the time we got through an impromptu sales pitch by a guy in the rental car office, and Jeff had sprained his ankle getting the grocery cart back (he said he was messing around jumping on and off curbs) and we had driven south to the little village, it was getting dark, and the lady who was supposed to meet us had left two hours earlier.

I had a hard time getting directions to the place to come up on my phone, mainly because I was looking at the wrong email, and we took some wrong turns before getting to the building. It was full on dark when we finally pulled up in front of the locked gate to the staircase up to our floor.
Then we couldn't get in. I should say here that our phones were not working like they were supposed to in Mexico. But here is where the whole getting to know people thing really kicked in.

We had asked directions from a half dozen people who were all so kind, but had no idea where our building was. The last guy came with us to the complex to make sure we were ok, let us use his phone to call the lady who was supposed to let us in, and hung around with us for the half hour more it took for the gate to finally be opened for us. He and a young teenage boy stayed with us, and tried to help us hunt down the other manager (through the guy's grandmother) told us about the little local zoo which is actually here in the village. He said you can hear the lion roar at night from where we are living. We kind of fell in love with this guy and his quiet wife and tall intelligent looking son and daughter. The dad works six days a week making about thirty dollars a day for them to live on. As we waited outside, looking up at the lights on in the building, we saw fireflies sparkle in the shadows of the balconies. A bat swooped over our head towards the banana trees behind us, and we heard a little coqui frog chirp. A black cat and a striped cat darted over to sit under the hot engine of our little car, even though we were all sweating in the darkness.

Finally one of the other residents took pity on us, and came to unlock the gate. We piled up the stairs carrying all our luggage, though I tried to spare poor limping Jeff.

We sat around the table with forks eating bites of dulce de leche cake and waited for the bedrooms to cool off enough to sleep.

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