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- by Serge & Caroline - sloriaux@hotmail.com Parts:1&2 - 3&4 - 5&6

Part 7: Puerto Vallarta to Playa Azul
325 miles/550 kms

We’ve spent more than three weeks in Puerto Vallarta (also called PV), passing the Christmas holidays at Tacho’s RV Park. It is a great place full of nice people. We have visited the beautiful downtown, Viejo (old) Vallarta and the Malecon, eaten at good restaurants (Angelo’s for Italian food and Sunterra Resort for the New Year’s Eve Party) and watched great fireworks throughout the Bahia of Banderas at midnight for the change to 2002.

We have been able to communicate on a regular basis with family members and friends thanks to internet cafes around our park at a cost of only 15 pesos per hour. We’ve also been to nice beaches at Distilladerias in Nuevo Vallarta and Bucerias near Punta Mita (a bit to the north). And we visited Mismaloya, a beautiful area that was once home to Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Night of the Iguana, and more recently, where The Predator was filmed.

             

I had to spend two weeks “on the job” with Candido and Teo, two happy Mexicans sandblasting and painting all of my storage compartments, the front cap and rear stripes (a seven-colour job) while Caroline was on the beach. Not fair! But paying $700 for a job worth $5000, well, I guess I should be willing to sacrifice the beach for that time, right?

Definitely our out-of-luck week. Our (false) departure ended with us returning to the trailer park because of a broken accelerator cable on the Mismaloya southbound uphill road. Then there was an electric step motor failure and a big rock between our rear dual tires, but we’re back on our wheels thanks to our Mexican mechanic friends! These guys are not only friendly but cheez! not expensive at all: $36 for the five-hour job on the cable, $8 for the (surgeon-like) work on the stairs motor and . . . nothing for the rock! Great for a budget.

But now it’s time to get back on the road again, this time towards Acapulco, more than five hundred miles to the southeast, still on the Pacific Coast. Our first stop will be Boca de Iguanas, a large sandy area shaded by palms within Bahia Tenacatita. We will spend a couple of days here since we have to fix a rear broken window and the rear step ladder, both severely damaged because we’ve adventured down a now-abandoned Mexican-tourism-still-advertised road to El Tecuan, a beautiful, deserted beach. But those long untrimmed tree branches over the road took their toll on my new paint job. Lots of scratches. Ah! I guess it’s part of RVing! I’ll have a simonize-compound job for myself later on.

We’re now at the Boca Beach Trailer Park at Boca de Iguanas. Awesome! Great palm trees, fantastic beach . . . a real little paradise! Believe me, it’s fabulous to be here! Several Canadians from Quebec and BC are spending their whole winter camping here with full hook-ups. Who would blame them? The place is so great you would want to stay too! Since we’ve arrived in Mexico, we’ve never seen so many British Columbians, all of them nice and very helpful. They’re traveling all over the western Mexican coast and Baja.

Since tempered glass is available only in very large towns in Mexico, a well-done tailor-made riveted thick piece of clear acrylic will do fine to replace, for the time being, my burst-to-pieces rear window. And what a bargain for $6, labour included! The aluminum step ladder was taken off the rear of the motorhome, and fixed right (if not better than it was) with some pieces of stainless steel, welded and reinstalled by three men, and all that for only 500 pesos. Peanuts! Who’s scared of a breakdown in Mexico with an RV? Not me! In fact, if there is one country in the world to have a mechanical breakdown, pray that it is in Mexico. Those guys are unbelievable at repairing with almost nothing, since they don’t have much money to repair their own vehicles. Here in Mexico are mechanics who will try everything to avoid replacing the whole part if they can repair it.

Our bad luck week has stretched a bit yesterday with the replacement of our two fuel filters that were clogged to the point the engine stopped working without warning. Bad fuel I guess, or maybe because I neglected to change them in 17,000 miles. I am really happy that I always carry spare ones aboard. Two mechanics changed them in less than two hours for $8.

Then after leaving Manzanillo at seven o’clock that morning, something went sour around Armeria when our fuel consumption jumped to about three gallons a minute. I pulled over to check the rear and realized that from under my engine was pouring diesel fuel. I drove in search of an available taller-mecanico — at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning. Stopping at a Pemex station, one showed up in ten minutes, and fixed the faulty filter, tightened too strong the day before in La Huerta. Sixty minutes and $15 later, we’re back on the road . . . finally!

The 220-mile crossing from Manzanillo to Puerto Azul is a mix of spectacular scenery along the coast, reminding us of Big Sur in California in several aspects: a lot of mountains and stressful curves to go through, but great golden sandy beaches all along. Beautiful! Seven hours later in Playa Azul, we’re really happy to settle into the Hotel Playa Azul (rear) trailer park. But no rest yet for me, since I have to give MoMo (our motorhome) and Snoro (our scooter) a well-deserved shower to clean them up from black diesel fuel dust all over. So, if you think it’s always a vacation down here . . .