We set out Thursday morning with passports in hand and bags full of 6 days worth of clothes headed to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Jennifer found a really great deal for an a package that included flight, hotel, and food for 6 days and 5 nights. It was in the off season or rather the rainy season. When the weather is nearly 100F and the humidity seems somehow to reach beyond 100%.
This was to be the first airplane flight for her son, Dalton, a very large nearly 13 year old boy. The plan was to fly down and then book 3-4 tour items like dolphins, a show, snorkeling, etc. Neither of us had been to PV before and all that we knew was from Jennifer’s two previous Mexican trips and the internet. The hotel looked workable, though a bit far from the airport on the south side of the bay, where PV is in the center. It was in a little town, Mismaloya on the Mismaloya river right on the beach. Two months ago we had applied for passports when booked the tickets and the whole thing seemed a lot more academic. Now passports in hand, we got ready to leave the country.
The flight was routine down to Houston Intercontinental and to Mexico. As soon as we landed in PV the plane was warm and going through the entrance proceeds was muggy. The air pressure is sea level combined with heat and humidity it was like a persistent pressure on everything; skin, lungs, chest, face,.. Within minutes we were sweating or rather dripping. Everything drips in PV often for no apparent reason. Maybe you can point to condensation as the cause sometimes.
Entry was a bit of a joke. The passport checking official looked bored and sleepy repeatedly writing, scanning, and tearing bits of paper. Once our luggage was restored to use it was X-Rayed again in Mexico for illegal substances. Then, unbeknownst to us we were through. There is a significant lack of signage at the small PV airport, which has a larger terminal than Amarillo, but a much smaller airstrip.
Going through the foreign airport in a throng of people from the 737 we came upon this big room with desk along each side featuring tropical floral pictures and men with standard airport security badges around their neck. A man in the middle of the floor called out hotel names and directed people to various counter, which oddly did not have any names as you might expect of say rental car companies sharing counter space; Avis, National, Hertz.
