I'm on a boat, Part 8: returning to the boat.

Splashes of colour in downtown Puerto Vallarta.

 

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I'm on a boat, Part 7: The jungle.

Our driver and guide, Roberto, drove us south along the coast, and then inland along a dry, winding dirt road into the hills.  Our goal: jungle.  After five days sharing a boat with 4,000 humans, a walk in the jungle would serve as antidote, provided we didn't encounter jaguar, cascabel, or giant tarantulas.

Near the end of the drive, we passed a flowering Primavera tree, a blaring harbinger of spring in these parts.  And then we arrived at the jungle.

Roberto excused himself.  He was hungry, on Jalisco time.  We were still on Cabo time, so our 11AM was his high noon.  He pointed us to a jungle trail, and went to a nearby cantina to buy lunch.  I fearlessly led my family into the jungle.

Here are several examples of jungle:

We heard birds calling, but saw no wildlife, and only briefly became lost.

It appeared that we were not this first to have passed this tree.

A kindly gentleman in surprisingly drab traditional garb directed us back to the road, where Roberto was waiting.

We decided to head back toward town.  We would spend a little time in the flea market buying gifts for coworkers, etc., and then drive back to the boat.

On the way, Roberto asked me if  I like drinking.

"What?  Like beer?"

"Beer, tequila..."

I said, "I like beer."

"Would you like a beer?"

"Quiero una cervesa," I said, reflexively.  (Recall, I have been in Mexico before.)

He slammed on the brakes and we came to a dust-cloud stop at a little roadside store that is to the left of the distant profusion of little flags in this picture:

"You can buy beer in there," he said.

"And drink in the car?"

"Sure.  If you're not driving."

Well okay.

In I went, and I selected a bottle of Pacifica and a couple of Snapples from the cooler.  I walked to the counter.

"Hola," said the young woman.

"Hola," I said.  "Do you accept American money?"

"Si," she said.

I put the bottles down, and she rang them up.

"Trienta pesos," she said.

"Three dollars?" I asked.

"Si," she said.

[Aside:  Imagine buying a bottle of beer and two Snapples for three dollars.  On the boat, a single beer costs SIX dollars.  Why I prefer Mexico to boats.]

I gave her a US five, and she gave me back a blue bank note and four two-tone coins that look like Canadian toonies.

I asked her, "Is there an opener?" I mimed using an opener.

She said, "Fuera de la puerta."

"Thank you," I said.  I walked outside the door and spied one of those old-fashioned bracket-openers screwed to doorframe at the front of the store.  There was a problem though.  A wheeled popcorn cart was leaning against it.  Propped against the popcorn cart was a filthy string-mop, string end up. One handed, holding cervesa y Snapples, I tried to shift the cart, which caused the mop to fall against me.  It was sodden, and instantly soaked through my shirt, and I jerked away in alarm, causing the cart to start to topple over.  Everything so good had turned so bad in the blink of an eye.

But less than an instant later, Roberto was there, steadying the cart, snatching away the mop, and gathering up the Snapples, which were about to fall.  He waited patiently while I took eight or nine swipes at the bottle opener before finally achieving success.

As we walked back to the car, he said, "I thought maybe you were having problems, so I came to help."

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I'm on a boat, Part 6: La mano de Roberto.

During the night we sailed from arid Cabo San Lucas, across the mouth of the Sea of Cortez, to awaken as our vessel arrived at the pier at steamy Puerto Vallarta.  I had looked at Puerto Vallarta on Google Earth prior to our journey.  The cruise ship port lies next to a military base, a multi-lane road, and, ugh, a Walmart parking lot.  It did not seem like a promising place to visit.

We ate a large breakfast, glaring out the windows at two more enemy ships, a Dutch one and a Disney one.

 We were told that there were beige cabs that would take us from the boat into the old town for about twelve dollars.  There was an old town?  We were warned to be back at the boat by 3PM, that it would leave without us if we were late.

We were assigned to a cab with a driver named Roberto.  Our intention was to have him drive us into the old town for twelve dollars.  And then what?  We didn't know.  Walk around aimlessly, nervously watching our watches, ready to flag down another cab to get us back to the boat as quickly as possible?

But then Roberto said, "I can take you on a tour of all of Puerto Vallarta, the beautiful houses, the beach, the town, the seaside, the jungle, the cathedral, anything you want, for twenty-five dollars an hour."  We surprised ourselves by agreeing to this.  For all we knew he would drive us into the jungle and we would be beset by henchmen. Off we went!

Puerto Vallarta runs along the coast, and up a very steep slope.  Roberto took us on curving roller-coaster cobblestone roads.

But first he took us to the waterfront, known for its statues and sand sculptures.

Magnificent Frigate Birds enjoy the statues too.

A 3-pelican back yard.   How cool is that?

We went higher and higher and farther and farther from the boat.

Twenty-five dollars took us all the way here.  Somewhere near those distant hi-rises is our boat.

 La mano de Roberto.

But we were to go farther still.  Thataway. Into the jungle.

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I'm on a boat, Part 5: Madness.

 Madness.

At some point along the Mobius Loop of Food I lost track of time and place.  We stayed in Cabo longer than originally planned because of recent drug cartel-related violence in Mazatlan, which would have been the next port of call.  The unfortunate Mazatlanders no doubt took an economic hit for our absence.

Madness.

The bay at Cabo increasingly became filled with nonsensical acitivity.

Is that a submarine? Madness!

For the last half-day I remained on the boat ship and shook my head at it all.

Extreme madness.

I hate these things.  Do they not epitomize madness?

A source of much of the madness was an enemy ship.

Story time: I have been to Cabo before, but not on a boat, and I never got to the bay.  I got to a hospital.  This was back when I was a young grad-student, and I joined an expedition to sample (i.e., selectively  kill) the unique herpetofauna of the Baja Peninsula.   Our journey began in Ensenada, and over a couple of weeks we worked our way down the sere and rugged landscape of Baja California, collecting in arroyos by day, and along still-warm blacktop at night.  We rarely slept, and had barely enough food to provide the energy necessary to clamber up and down rock faces, which is probably why one day I lost my footing on a sloping rock face and fell a considerable distance down the side of an arroyo.  I bounced on rocks, and fell further.  I ended up on a pile of scree with a bruised femur, a broken elbow and my fingertips all raw and bloody from the fearful slide before the fall.

What was I doing before I lost my footing?

Trying to shoot one of these guys.  A Baja Blue Rock lizard (genus Petrosaurus), a kind of phrynosomatid ( and not at all closely related to the Bermuda Rock Lizard, a type of scincid I later went on to study--and not once attempted to shoot.)

I was broken, the rear sight was knocked off the gun, effectively breaking it, but my trusty Minolta SLR survived unscathed.

Here's a different Baja lizard, an iguanid, genus Ctenosaura.  Note that the man holding it is on an angle.  This was ten minutes after I had broken my elbow.  I was unable to hold the camera properly. 

The hospital I was taken to was small and ill-equipped, but festive.  Neighbourhood children attended the X-raying of the Tourista.  The fracture was at the proximal end of the radius, and a plaster cast probably wouldn't have helped.  So, arm in a sling, off I went, back on the hunt for herps.  Later that night, on a blacktop road in the ink-black shadows cast by the headlights of our Bronco, I collected a large rattlesnake one-handed.  I would not consider doing such a thing now.  It would be madness.

Cabo is a silly place.

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I'm on a boat, Part 4: I'm on a smaller boat!

The life boats were lowered into the water, and from then on were known as "tenders."  So many nautical things to grasp.  We wound our way down into the bowels of the ship and popped out on a little platform just above the water line (see the people above, top of photo).  Then we were tenderized (?) over to a dock at the Cabo San Lucas marina.  80 people ride in a tender, squeezed thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder.   Uncomfortable for a 10-minute ride on flat water.  What would it be like in the open sea, with towering waves? Very tenderizing.

We didn't have a clear plan, only a vague idea of getting to the large beach.  You get there by renting a water taxi.  We almost immediately found ourselves running a gauntlet of  water cabbies, and for reasons I still don't understand it went like this:

Water Cabbie 1: "Amigo, you looking for a taxi?"

Me: "No thank you."

Water Cabbie 2: "Amigo, you looking for a taxi?"

Me: "No thank you."

Water Cabbie 3: "Amigo, you looking for a taxi?"

Me: "No thank you."

Water Cabbie 4: "Amigo, you looking for a taxi?"

Me: "No thank you."

Water Cabbie 5: "Amigo, you looking for a taxi?"

Me: "Yes."  

Water Cabbie 5:   "My name is Guillermo, but you can call me Guapo."

And that is how we hired Handsome to take us to the beach.  But first we bought cheap beer  and iced tea and water.

Brown Pelicans are very cool.  They hang out at the marina and poop on boats.  No one seems to mind.

Our taxi took the scenic route to the beach.  We got up close and personal with the arch, and were introduced to many of the rocks, some of which have names.

More pelicans, and guano.

The taxi rode up onto the beach and we hopped out, arranging for pick-up in an hour.

The geology of the place is fascinating,  seems to be a mixture of igneous and sedimentary formations (lava and sandstone) from what little I know of rocks.

This was my favourite formation, tastefully deposited in a sea of foot-printed sand, surfacing sea mammals.  One even has a vertebral column.  Here is a  Flickr set showing more of the rock formations.

And here is our boat ship.

Here she is from the front. I hadn't realized we sailed the length of the Baja Peninsula in a ship that has a lipsticky smile painted on the front.  I'm not sure I am comfortable with that.  It would not seem to daunt pirates.

Back on board, another towel totem.  A bear emerging from a cave to find a trail of honey pots?

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I'm on a boat. Part 3: Land jo!

I was sitting in the endless buffet-loop cafeteria (Deck 12) nearing midday of Day Three on the boat ship.  I was eating.  Everyone was eating.  Eat eat eat. As I gazed out to sea, I recalled that we were supposed to arrive at our first port of call at noon.  This meant that if I walked to the far side of the endless buffet-loop cafeteria, I should probably be able to see land.

Tierra ho!

I wove through the tables and passengers and serving staff, head-faked the woman who stands just inside the door with a spray bottle meant to ward off the dreaded Cruise Ship Flu, and approached the giant window on the other side. There indeed, on the other side of the giant window, was land.  I went outside to the swimming pool, and climbed up a few levels among the sprawled sun-worshippers.  Gradually over the previous two days the air had warmed, and white people had started turning pink.

Eat Bloat Burn

As we continued on, the land became lumpier and more interesting.  

And then it became famous.  The boat wandered around the tip of the peninsula, past the iconic arch at Cabo San Lucas.

We entered the bay and parked across from the the largest beach. It was time to go downstairs and change into one's borderline imbecilic warm-weather tourist clothes.

Within an hour, we would be on that beach, inexpensive beer in hand, looking back at the boat, whose beer is ridiculously expensive.  If I were to make a single recommendation to Norwegian Cruise Lines, it would be this:  Less food, more ( & much cheaper) beer.

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I'm on a boat. Part 2: At sea.

Onward, southward we went.  California's Channel Islands gave way to open ocean.  I took more pictures through the glass front of the balcony, eleven stories above sea level.

I soon learned that the main purpose of being on a cruise ship is eating.  There are many other advertised activities, but the main one is eating.  You line up to get into one of many restaurants, are seated, are fed scrumptious food, and then you leave without paying.  I was told that the average cruise patron gains a pound a day.  Gross.  After you finish a meal, you decide where to have your next meal.

At the first supper, I eschewed appetizer and dessert.  I don't require those gastronomic  bookends.  The waiter was aghast, and I could tell by the way my lateral cutlery was snatched away that I had committed a faux pas.  I don't like eating for the sake of eating.  I like eating when I'm hungry.  I don't like most desserts.

But you are here to eat.  Eat!  And talk, loudly. Yak yak yak. 

Think how much poop a boat ship with 4000 heavily-fed humans aboard produces.  No, don't.  Gross.

Back in our stateroom, I spied an enemy ship off in the distance.  Princess Line I believe.

Later that night I did discover something about being on a big boat that I really enjoy.  Sleeping!

The gentle rocking in moderate seas is soothing, and the wooden cabinetry creaks in a delightful old-timey sailing ship way.  If you ever invent a way to replicate that kind of sleep on land, you will have created a cash cow that lays golden eggs.

However, one thing.  Before you bunk down for the night, you have to clear the room of towel totems.

 

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