January 2004

This was a pretty eventful month, all things considered.

As you will recall from the December update, we had just made it home from Portland, having braved a blizzard in the Siskiyous and having spent an extra day holed up in Yreka, waiting for the freeway to open.  Anaheim was pretty calm after that.

On the 6th, we left LAX for Puerto Vallarta.  Over a year ago, I had won a raffle which gave us a flight to Puerto Vallarta and a week in the contributor's time-share.  Our scheduling was so hectic that we gave back the free flight and delayed the trip a year.  Once we scheduled it, we paid for an extra week so we could get a full experience of a part of Mexico we had heard of ("The Night of the Iguana" etc.) but had never seen.  It was a worthwhile investment of both time and money.

This is the Sunterra time-share in what the cab drivers referred to as Vallart Torre (good thing to know late at night).  The picture directly to the right is our building, as seen from the ocean.   The one below shows what things looked like from our room on the second floor. Not too shabby. The lower-right photo shows the courtyard leading up to the entrance to our building.

Both Sheila and I were very much taken by our experience of Mexico.  We were trying to learn Spanish as fast as possible.  We were delighted by the warmth and hospitality of the people we met and by the beauty of the place.  Here are a few pictures of what we saw.

I am an incurable taker of pictures from the airplane. This is a shot of Baja California on the way down.	Here we are landing in Puerto Vallarta.  I think I was supposed to have stopped by now but we didn't crash.	The end of our street was the dock for cruise ships, and we had one or two every day.
Coming back from a day trip, we came across a pod of seven whales and spent 20-30 minutes with them	Here's a typical street in El Centro, Puerto Vallarta.  The Taylor-Burton house is somewhere up there on the hill.	There are resorts everywhere, and there are gorgeous sunsets many evenings.

Well, okay, so we bought a time-share at the resort next door: Krystal. We will clearly be back in Puerta Vallarta, though we can also trade our "credits" for other resorts around the world.  With my "retirement" looming, we need to travel while we can still get our walkers up the gangway (just kidding).

We got back from Mexico in time for me to complete my preparations for the Spring semester.  That's fun, too.  I start teaching again on February 2nd.