Our Wedding Night ~ and other Travel Tales. . .

We’d ditched the wedding duds hours earlier --  opting, as they say,  ‘for something ‘more comfortable’. 

The lights were dimmed and we were snuggled up together on that,
. . .our first night as husband and wife. . .


. . .well, as snuggled as one can be sitting side-by-side in the ‘no smoking’ section of a Delta Airlines flight that was whisking us across the continental United States to our Caribbean honeymoon hideaway. 


(Can you believe they had smoking/no smoking sections?!)



As a newspaper reporter, I didn’t have a lot of vacation days; so no time to waste when it came to travel.
This Friday is the 33rd anniversary of that first trip.  Although we no longer have those jobs with limited vacation time, we still believe there is no time to waste when it comes to travel! But sometimes it is good to pause in the planning and enjoy a trip down Memory Lane as well. . .

1980’s: Those wild and crazy early years. . .

Even with only two weeks annually, we managed to cram a lot of travel into those newlywed years.  Hong Kong,Thailand, followed by Singapore and Malaysia and then Japan. We couldn’t get enough of Asian cultures, the food, and history. The now-fading photos (above) were taken in Thailand (circa early 1980’s)– notice those look-alike white pants. And, btw, that elephant had just ‘goosed’ Joel!

The Call of Aloha . . .

When we couldn’t make it to Asia, we’d head to Hawaii; a relatively ‘close’ getaway requiring only a 5+ hour flight from Seattle.

We were captured then by its ‘aloha’ magic  and our recent entry into the timeshare world has made O’ahu  our tropical ‘home away from home’ – for a few weeks each winter.








The 1990’s South of the Border ~ Down Mexico Way
A serendipitous set of events that prevented us from returning to Thailand, took us to Puerto Vallarta in 1993; a trip that was to turn our 8 – 5 work world upside down and change the course of our lives. 

(In this photo we were posing next to our first banana crop.)

Six months after that visit we had purchased Casa de la Playa, pictured below.  A decade later, we had quit those 8 – 5 desk-bound jobs and set out on the course of adventure we continue today.




33 Years ~ What a trip!

We now spend nearly five months, sometimes more, living out of our suitcases. So many places we’ve seen; such wonderful people we’ve met. Land and sea; land or sea – doesn’t matter to us. Traveling independently, we’ve  follow our hearts; returning to favorite places and discovering new destinations.  Going ‘where the winds blow us’ has resulted in some amazing places, for instance:

From top left, clockwise:  Off-the-tourist track towns of Mexico; Bologna, Italy; Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Scottsdale, Arizona.

From top left: Venice, Italy; Loutro, Crete; Kotor, Montenegro,  Lake Chelan, Washington State.

Clockwise from top left: Walla Walla, Washington; Athens, Greece; Paris, France; Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Life isn’t measured by the number of breaths you take;

but by the number of moments that take your breath away.

Thanks for joining us today while we paused to admire the views on Memory Lane. We hope when you take a backward glance at your travels,  you’ll have as many of those breath-taking memories as we do. 
But enough looking back! Time to get started on the next trip. . .


That’s it for Travel Photo Thursday, be sure to stop by Budget Travelers Sandbox for more armchair travels. And for those wanting to know about my rendezvous with Nancie McKinnon, check back this weekend!!

In Pursuit of Passion: Those Who Dare

Travel, for us, is pursuing a passion.  It is about risk-taking; leaving our routines and comforts to experience  new cities, countries and customs. 



“You are so brave!”

So often that is the response when we talk of some destination or our plans for reaching and discovering it. (That's us high above Dubrovnik, Croatia in the photo above.)

No, not brave.

Just passionate about seeing the world while we are ‘young’ enough to do so.

Along the way we’ve met others who haven't let age or health deter pursuit of their passions. As the year draws to a close, we've been remembering some of those folks who’ve inspired us along the way:

~~~Ravenna, Italy~~~

The two ladies in the photo above finally paused long enough for me to snap a photo of them while on a stop in Ravenna, Italy. They were fellow cruisers who had been a continual source of inspiration from the moment we first noticed them aboard the ship.

Their white-hair and frail-frames masked the spirits of a couple of independent travelers who were constantly on the go;  never missing a port of call – nor an afternoon of reading at poolside when on the ship.

~~~Poros, Greece ~~~~

Two years ago, on the Greek island of Poros we visited one afternoon with self-taught artist Vasilas Poriotis as he sat in his sidewalk gallery.

As our visit ended we told him that we hoped to return one day and find him there.  He said he would be  "if I am not dead." Then with a sweeping gesture over his work, he added,  "I am not focused on the end - I am not afraid of it when it comes. . .it is what you leave behind that matters. And I have left something behind. . .It is important to leave something behind."

~~~Adriatic Sea~~~

John Koruga, who splits his time between Seattle and Mexico, has pursued his travel passions for decades. But it wasn’t until this fall, at age 86, he tried  the world of cruising. He flew from Seattle to Rome and boarded the Celebrity Silhouette, the cruise on which we also ‘looped Italy’s boot’.

Age and health are not topics John readily discusses (although he had both knees replaced a few years ago); he’d prefer to talk about the next trip he’d like to make and he’s got quite a few on his list. In this photo he was teaching me the art of bocce ball.

~~~Bologna, Italy~~~

It was  Anna Maria Monari, the 72-year-old owner of Trattoria Anna Maria that inspired during our visit to Bologna, Italy. She founded her restaurant 24 years ago in a smaller location a few blocks from its present site. Back then, Anna Maria was both waitress and chef, serving menu items created from her mother’s recipes.

She’s not entertaining thoughts of retirement either, as she told us,  “I am here every day.  Where else do I have to go? This is the party.  . .Mama Mia!”

~~~Mascota, Mexico~~~

It was on our stop last spring at  El Pedregal Museo, The Stone Museum in Mascota, Mexico the town high in the Sierra Madres near Puerto Vallarta where we met the owner, curator, and artist  Don Francisco Rodriguez.

“Pero, por que piedra? (But, why stone?), Joel asked of the 76-year-old artist as he explained how he goes to the river and searches for rocks, loads them into a wheelbarrow and hauls them.

“Porque es mi pasion, (Because it is my passion),” he answered simply with a shrug and a grin.

~~~Kastri, Crete~~~

“The colors of the sea”  is what I told him when he said he wanted to make me a gift. But  the real gift was the time I spent with  Georgios Chalkoutsakis on that warm spring afternoon on Crete’s southern shore. Georgios is a glass bead artist whom some might label as 'handicapped', but I would call him talented! 

He is wheelchair bound as a result of a premature birth.  His hand movement is a bit limited but that hasn't kept him from perfecting his art of glass bead making. My colors of the sea are pictured on the left.

Yes, we believe it all comes down to daring to pursue a passion.  Will 2013 be the year that you begin pursuing a long-put-off passion?  Or will you simply step up the pursuit of an existing one?

Stop by Budget Travelers Sandbox today if you need a bit more travel inspiration.  And if you want to receive TravelnWrite posts in your inbox, sign up in the box on the corner,become a friend by signing up below that box (where our other friend’s photos appear) or follow us on Facebook. We'll get back to the Winter Western Road Trip this weekend.

Bucerias, Mexico: Back to our Future

There was a time when Bucerias, Mexico, a small fishing village north of Puerto Vallarta on Mexico’s west coast was our future. Now, it's a sizeable segment of our past. Earlier this month we revisited that past.

Seven years ago we sold our last property there, The Dolce Vitas, and filed Mexico away in our history book.

(Unlike our Casa de la Playa below, the DV’s still stand – next to them these days is a restaurant offering live music and dancing.) 

Back to our Future


In 1991 the laid-back fishing village we selected as the site of our second home --our heads filled with all the giddy future plans that go with such investments – there were maybe six restaurants.  Accommodations included a couple of Mexican-owned and operated low-end  hotels, a condo building or two, and a few privately-owned homes, such as ours, that served as vacation rentals.

The town’s landmark were the stalls of oyster vendors that lined the two-lane Highway 200 that bisected it.

From our U.S. home we brought supplies – sheets, towels, kitchen supplies –to the south-of-the-border house (in oversized suitcases; thankfully, before baggage fees came to be).

Today:  Tourism and Touts; Big Boxes and Banks

 Bucerias  is now a part of the tourist-zoned, Riviera Nayarit.  And tourism has come to town! (Along with the multitudes of over-zealous trinket touts and timeshare sales people that seem to come with Mexican tourism.) 

The gauntlet of trinket touts lines every street leading into town from the old footbridge over the dry, dusty arroyo. The constant calls:  “Hey Lady, come look!” “Hey, how long you here?” “Good prices, almost free!”  made us want to shout: “Enough already!”



Oyster vendors? We saw one  lone table  stacked with oysters to the side of  a ‘lateral’.

The laterals, those local access roads to the side of the highway, have been enlarged to two lanes each direction as has the highway itself, making the road through town an eight-lane super structure with a palm-tree lined median strip.









Accommodations abound. This hotel sits across from the fish restaurants that still line the beach in the town’s el centro.
High rise condo buildings with unit price tags starting at $300,000US, are sprouting like beach grass all over town. The rental site, Vacation Rental By Owner, lists 129 accommodations – unlike the half dozen listed when we owned there.

Household supplies are readily available from Costco, Walmart, Sam’s Club, Home Depot, in Puerto Vallarta, and the Mexican chain, Mega in Bucerias.  Each store is stocked with ATM’s.  Bucerias  has banks now as well.

Bucerias isn’t the town it once was, but we aren’t the same either. As we all know sometimes change isn’t always bad.  Have you revisited your future lately?  If so, what changes have you found?

TPThursday: Reality Travel–in Mexico

Our favorite trips are those to places that are off the tourist map; places like Mascota, Mexico.   They are places that fascinate just by their very being. Join us on a walk through this town up in the Sierra Madre Occidentals, the mountains that are a backdrop to Puerto Vallarta.



Mascota, is a municipal seat and has regular bus service from Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara. Many of them are old but colorful.  The road from Puerto Vallarta is a paved, two-lane highway.



It’s a town in the heart of agricultural lands, where cowboys ride their horses into town for real. I decided it felt way too touristy to photograph them as they approached so I took the coward's way and waited until they passed.



It was as normal here to see a load of hay stacked high in the back of a pick-up truck, as it was to see the truck’s bed loaded with children and adult family members coming into town from the ranch.




It’s the kind of place that tourists would likely criticize for having ‘nothing to see’ but travelers wouldn’t be able to resist its charms.



These photos are reminders that every town we visit has a story.  I’ll show you some of the treasures we found here next week.


For now w it is Travel Photo Thursday so drop by Nancie’s Budget Travelers Sandbox for photos of other interesting places in this big old world of our.

Where Paul Theroux Goes. . .so do we!

Paul Theroux, the prolific writer of travelogues and novels, is a favorite of ours. Through his books, we’ve followed him around the Mediterranean, India, England and Africa  . . . as he has travled on trains, ferries, and even on foot.

He inspires us to stretch ourselves until our comfort zones tingle . . .

It was after she strapped the mask over her mouth and eased on a pair of rubber gloves, that I started to feel nervous; about the time the reclining chair began elevating my feet higher than my head. 

“Paul Theroux did it, so can I,” I told myself.  But when she had me open my mouth and the instrument she held  began whirring, I thought, “Do I really need to do what Paul Theroux does?”

Our first stop in  Bucerias, Mexico was to have our teeth cleaned thanks to an article of his published in many U.S. newspapers that told of his walking into Nogales, Mexico. While its focus was on border crossings, among his experiences was returning with cleaner, whiter teeth.

Each of our cleanings took about an hour and included an exam by the dentist.  The total cost for both was $91US.  When compared to the cost of having it done at home, the savings had nearly paid the cost of one of our airline tickets.

We are not advocating an exodus to Mexico for dental work. We tried it and were so comfortable with our experience that a future cleaning might prompt our next visit south of the border.

While the article sparked the idea, we went to this dentist because he came recommended by gringo friends who’ve gone to him for years.  His web site explains his qualifications, has photos of his office that we reviewed prior to our trip.  (The waiting room was never empty and every patient was an American on the afternoon of our visit.)

There are hundreds of web sites citing both pros and cons of having dental work done in Mexico.  We didn’t research any of them prior to our trip simply because if Paul Theroux could do it, so could we.

What travel experiences have made your comfort zone stretch until it tingled?

TPThursday: Getting Stoned in Mascota, Mexico

Our trip down Mexico’s Memory Lane took us last Saturday to the small town of Mascota, Mexico, nestled high in the Sierra Madre’s behind Puerto Vallarta.

We were delighted to see that little had changed since our last visit nearly a decade ago. The pasteleria (bakery), the iglesia (church), the zocalo (town square), the archeological museum; all were as we remembered them. 

As we toured our favorites, Joel recalled ‘that house made of stone' and we set off to stand on the sidewalk and admire its construction as we’d done on previous visits.



What made it so amazing was that the stones used in the border on this two-story home’s façade were so small they could  easily fit in one’s hand. It obviously had been meticulous, painstakingly detailed work.



However, we were no longer  forced to admire the home from the sidewalk because seven years ago it had become a museum; El Pedregal Museo, The Stone Museum. Paying the 10 peso per person admission fee (less than $1US) gave us entry to one of those quirky, unexpected experiences that make this life of travel so wonderful.

We were greeted by the owner, curator, artist and our personal guide, all rolled into one Don Francisco Rodriguez, who told me I could photograph anything in the place with the exception of the dozens of historic photos that line the walls (each in a stone frame, of course).



Perhaps because we were the only visitors at the time or because we were genuinely interested in his work, we toured the upstairs living area as well as the downstairs gallery. (Note the coffee table and the television surfaces as well as the walls are stone.)



The dark diamond shape designs around the bed’s headboard and base are created by hundreds of black stones set into hundreds of gray stones that make up the background. “This is Fred Flintstone’s bed,” Don Rodriguez joked, as he provided a running commentary in Spanish.


Everything and every surface in the gallery was covered with stone, including the guitars, and vases displayed at a stone planter.

Tables and chairs, whimsical and practical, you couldn’t help but be ‘stoned’ by the displays.

 

Even the public restrooms in the gallery were stone, from the toilet to the sink and waste basket (yes, this really is the ladies room).

“Pero, por que piedra? (But, why stone?), Joel asked of our 76-year-old artist as he explained how he goes to the river and searches for rocks, loads them into a wheelbarrow and hauls them back to his work table in the museum.

“Porque es mi pasion, (Because it is my passion),” he answered simply with a shrug and a grin. 

We spent far more time in the little museum than we had planned; his photos and the stories he told about them provided a fascinating history of this town in which he has lived his life.

I told him I planned to write about him and his museum for this blog. It was only then that he told me he was also a writer,  he’s authored four books on various historical aspects of the town and its culture.  (We later saw them displayed all over town). 

Writing is another of his passions and to that one I could relate!

Note:  If you find yourself in Mascota, (a 2.5 hour drive from Puerto Vallarta) the Stone Museum is two blocks beyond the town square and church. It is open ‘all the time’ according to Don Rodriguez (and if it isn’t, it would be worth going back to when it was). 

Today is Travel Photo Thursday so rock on over to Budget Travelers Sandbox to take a photo tour of other great places in the world.

Adios Riviera Nayarit ~ Hola Sierra Madres

We are spending our last day in Riviera Nayarit at this week’s ‘home away from home’ - our beach front, Villa del Palmar Flamingos.

Our deluxe studio (the smaller lock-off side of this timeshare resort two-bedroom unit) has provided us a huge ‘home’ and a beautiful view out over the grounds and to the Bahia de Banderas (Banderas Bay).  It’s North America’s second largest bay.


We nabbed this ‘home’ on an Interval World Getaway package that brought the cost to $60US a night (regular rate is $200US).  Again, we are reminded of why we are loving the timeshare world. We are sold on our membership benefits in this exchange company and recommend it to all of you who also have fractional ownership properties.





We are back in the zona turistica, the tourist zone, between Puerto Vallarta and Bucerias, so there’s been a lot more resort-like feel to this location than our digs further out towards Punta Mita last week.  We would be hard pressed to choose between them, so we have decided a good solution would be a two-week stay again, split between them.


We are an easy walk back into our old stomping grounds of Bucerias, and less than a 10 minute drive from it.  So although we’ve eaten at home a couple evenings, our social life with old friends has picked up and prompted a number of dinners out.  I’ll tell you about our old haunts in a future post.

For the golf enthusiasts out there, we are surrounded by three golf courses. 


But all good things come to an end, so tomorrow we are leaving the beach area and heading up into the Sierra Madres for a step back in time and a bit more Mexican adventure.  We found some small town treasures up yonder in those hills a few years back. . .we want to see if they still exist.  We’ll let you know next week.
Happy Cinco De Mayo!

TPThursday: Mexico Magic ~ Un Fiesta Grande

Travel Photo Thursday finds us continuing our travels in Mexico ~ land of song and dance ~ living la vida buena  (the good life).  And nothing says good life  better than a fiesta. . .so let the party begin!



We’d been talked into buying tickets, about $40US each, to this fiesta by one of our waiters at the place we are staying this week, Villa del Palmar Flamingos.  Would it be too touristy, we wondered, after our purchase.  Would it be worth what we had paid?

Toes begin tapping in the audience – made up of both Mexican and foreign visitors - with the first notes of the rousing songs performed by Mariachis, those iconic singing, strumming minstrels of Mexico. . .



And then they added some most-talented dancers in colorful dress. . .



And while we watched  these talented folks we danced our way between tables laden with ensaladas (salads), sopas (soups) and tortillas con salsa and tamales, and chicken en mole salsa, and frijoles (beans) and thankfully didn’t have room for the postres (deserts). . .but then what’s a  fiesta without food and drink!?

 
One of my favorite dances is the Dance of the Viejos (the old ones) which brings dance steps and slapstick comedy to the show.

Masked young men, tapping those canes, do a riveting job of jumping, falling and bringing on rounds of laughter during this routine.












Somehow the early evening twilight had become nighttime darkness.  Those thoughts of ‘touristy’ were long gone; they were lost to the Mexico Magic of their songs and dances. 

 
That’s a view of Mexico for this week’s contribution to Travel Photo Thursday.  To see what else is happening in the world, dance on over to Budget Travelers Sandbox.