Surviving Mexico

I'm more than a week removed, and I have yet to reminisce about my trip to Mexico.

For the first time in my life I traveled south of the border. I never expected to be going to Mexico in 2009, but as luck would have it one Thursday afternoon last June I had a voice mail message from one of the local radio stations, telling me all my entering of contests to win concert tickets and other crap paid off big time. I won a trip for two to Puerto Vallarta from one of those radio stations that plays what it wants, allegedly.

The beneficiary of my good fortune? My brother, whose wife would have preferred that I just give the trip to them. Tough break, sister.

The trip included round trip airfare and four nights at Riu Vallarta, one of three Riu resorts along the beach. Riu operates resorts in many vacation destinations, evidently. Our Puerto Vallarta destination was an all-inclusive property.
We didn't really stay in Puerto Vallarta, we stayed north of the city, in an area that I think is called Riviera, Nayarit. Nayarit is the state, evidently, but I'm not sure that there's actually a city called Riviera. I guess I have some Mexican geography to study.

There are numerous resorts lining the beach in this area, and the access road to them has gated entries on both ends. The area also appears to have its own tourist police force assigned to the highly profitable land of well-to-do Americans.

I was glad my brother was able to go to Mexico with me, but this place is really for couples, primarily. It's not the type of place that draws lots of singles, I could tell. The two young skanks running around the first two days of my trip seemed to have drawn the same conclusion. They seemed like they couldn't get enough male attention, yet were disappointed most of the guys there were already spoken for.

All inclusive means you don't have to pay for food or drinks on the property, but that has its limitations, too. The food was decent, but it wasn't spectacular, and after the dinner hours, there's almost nothing to be had on the property, except for a few lousy offerings in sports bar. There weren't even vending machines to get potato chips or candy bars after hours. I think the gift shop had some of that, but there was no walking down the street to a convenience store at this place.

There will probably be no rhyme or reason to what I write about in the coming days, but I'm going to try to record memories of this trip each night until I've had enough. My trip was less than raucous, and far from scandalous, but I'm going to relive it nonetheless.