Update #49 – Puerto Vallarta, MEXICO Amy Lee

Aug. 13/13 – We paid $1250 USD/person for an “all inclusive” package for 8 days. This price already included our flight from Vancouver to LA (2.5 hrs) then LA to Puerto Vallarta (3.5 hrs). We stayed in a beautiful 2 bedroom, 1700sf resort called Marival Residence & World Spa. There were 3 choices of sit-down restaurants here. The food was pretty good. We were also able to take a 3-minute golf cart ride to the sister resort to enjoy their 4 restaurants. But most importantly, there was a private beach area for us to enjoy in. Even though the sand was not white, it was very fine and soft. The temperature of 31-37’C made it a bit too hot to walk on with naked feet.

Puerto Vallarta is a popular resort city on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. With climate, scenery, beach and rich cultural history, Mexico’s major economic activity is tourism. The local population is around 255,000 people only.

Other than being beach bums, pool bums, enjoying unlimited drinks and food, we also went snorkeling and shopping downtown. The snorkeling was not very impressive because the water was not very clear and the colors of the fish we saw were not very vivid like those of the fish in Indonesia or the Caribbean. However, the captain and crew of the boat we were on made the tour very entertaining. Shopping downtown was a natural course of the trip given the fact that we knew we were in the heart of the tourism trap area. Lol

Without a doubt, the highlight of this trip was the quality time spent with Anne, Stephen, Justin and Deon. I was especially happy to see how well Justin and Deon got along this year compared with our road trip last year. Now, I am even more motivated to make time for more bonding trips in the future to take advantage of the time that our boys still want to travel on family trips with us… 🙂