Puerta Vallarta

Wednesday August 20th Puerta Vallarta

 


This is the day of the canopy tour with the Fools. I was up every hour on the hour. I did not sleep well at all. I finally got out of bed at 6:30am and went to Topsiders to grab some breakfast. Victoria ate breakfast in the room. We were ready by 8:30am. We met the Fools in the lounge at 9am.

We went outside at 9:30am. You could spot WALMART across the street. There was a WOOLWORTHs as well. After walking around the pier quite a bit, we found gate number 3, after gate 8, just where it should be. The taxi people would not allow us to load bus. We took taxis to the office of Los Veranos. I was surprised no one seemed mad, not the taxi drivers waiting around, nor the tour director who couldn’t get us on the bus sitting in the lot.

After a quick ride to the office, we loaded the air conditioned busses. We took an hour long ride up winding roads and arrived after 11am. We put our stuff in lockers and left the group of us who were ’observers’ at the restaurant. The guys geared us up and did a pep talk. The workers were very energetic and very funny.

We began the climb to the first line where they take your picture. You posed on the first short line. The climb to the lines was steep and there were two spiral staircases up to the platform. It was hot as hell in gloves and helmets. The phrase ‘sexy leg’ was used when you had to hoist your leg up so the pulley could be clipped on to the zipline. Some of the lines were higher than others. It was quite interesting to lift your leg up to be clipped in. Sometimes it was more of a timed hop to do it.
I was unprepared for the climbing. The altitude, the slippery step and carrying around all of the equipment made for a challenging feat. The fact was, I was too damned tired by the time I got to the platform to care about zipping down a damn valley. Give me wind baby I’m hot. At one point a worker cried out, ’watch out there is an iguana.” I was so tired I didn’t care what was in my way. Am I supposed to be afraid of one of those? I was too tired to care.

After a time, they told us it was all downhill. The best lines were in the middle because they were the highest and longest. You could really get a nice view. Every time Victoria was ready to zip, I could hear her asking the workers to push her hard so she’ll go really fast. The kids didn’t always make it across the lines because they were so light. I didn’t have much of a problem, go figure.

The tour ended with side by side, racing, over the river. You finished at the starting point and were offered pictures and a DVD. They did not have a DVD to view, so I didn’t buy one. Other people bought it so I may be able to view it later. The kids enjoyed seeing the tarantula and spider monkeys. We boarded the bus and got back to the ship by 3:30pm. Not surpringly, the taxi area would not allow for a drop off at the same area. The bus pulled in front of the ship which meant a shorter walk anyway. Since it was raining, that was ok with me.

Most of us did not have lunch. Some went to grab a bite to eat, but we headed for the showers. We took showers and prepared for dinner. We had some fruit while in the cabin. Nothing for dinner has been so delicious it’s been worth mentioning but the meals are definitely improving. After dinner the kids wanted to go the pool so we hung out until 11pm at the pool. At 1am the shipped pulled away from Puerta Vallarta.