Trip report from January 11 to 19

[mikey & gaby]

Mikey and Gabby,
As promised our trip report from our maiden voyage to PV January 11th to January 19th, 2002
Well, started off on a sour note leaving Edmonton, Air Transat was almost 2 hours late departing, that’s 2 hours less in beautiful sunny PV. We decided at the airport to upgrade to first class, it was well worth the extra $240.00, plus free drinks all the way down. Arrived at PV at 6:00am Saturday morning, what a shock stepping off the plane into the heat and humidity. Going through customs was a breeze. The first few people did the stop light and were all green lighted. After that the tired looking customs agent waved people through without pushing the lights, well the ones we seen anyway.
Arrived at the Pelicanos by 7:00 and were registered in minutes. We were unable to get our AI bracelets until noon, so we had to pay our own breakfast and coffees, we declined the 50 peso/charge opted for the free coffee only.
Day one was spent checking out the hotel and surrounding area, acclimatizing to the weather and sipping Chichita Bananas. Great drink, just don’t drink them for four hours and try to get out of the pool. My wife has the photos of me trying as evidence.
Day two pretty much the same. Took the shake rattle and roll (bus) downtown for Sunday night on the Malecon Great spot for watching the sunset and the sights.
Day three, again lying on the beach sipping cool ones and trying to swat off the vendors. Man they can be pesky, however; we did get a nice carpet for hanging on the wall for 200 pesos, asking price was 750. Later that night we went on the Rhythm of the Nights cruise. The cruise there and back was great. We all had lots of laughs, the crew really hams it up, especially one fellow named Lucas. They said he was Michael Jordan’s illegidement son. We found the Mexican show not to interesting, although others seemed to enjoy it. The dinner was excellent. We would not go on this again as we thought the $65.00USD price/per was steep, this is just our opinion some of you may like that sort of thing.
Day four was spent shopping, spent the afternoon at the flea market; we found it a blast haggling with the merchants. Got some great deals on tee shirts for the friends’ back home as well as another carpet and paper mache dolls, 4 for 80 pesos. My wife found a great little leather shop next door to the Pelicanos in the little mall. Bought a beautiful leather skirt and jacket for 1400 pesos. Seen similar ones here in Canada for $1200.
Days four five six and seven were all spent at the hotel and beach, after all we did come down for relaxation.
Our thoughts on the Pelicanos, the positives: very clean, great, friendly staff, excellent buffet style food with lots of variety, quiet not to many partiers, except the small group of young folks from Quebec, nice pools to swim in except we found the water to be cooler than in the ocean, well kept grounds and pretty good variety shows at night. Negatives: The bars closed at eleven, a cool beer late in the evening would have been nice sitting by the pool, the travel brochures advertised a disco but it has not been in operation for over a year, no in room safes as advertised but they were located in the lobby, no balconies, and misleading photos in the travel brouchers. The white hotel they show in the pictures is not of the hotel but of the time-share condos. The actual hotel is through the grounds and across the driveway/road, about a 2-minute walk to the beach. We would stay there again and probably will be going down again in November.
How did we rate our trip: probably 9.99 out of 10. Definitely a great city to spend a vacation.

Mike and Gabriela

[minrose]

Thanks for sharing, love hearing about other people's fun times in PV.