"Oh-oh Mexico....

….sounds so sweet I just had to go.”  (James Taylor)

 

Well, here we are back in Puerto Vallarta.

 

Our Alaska Air flight from Seattle was uneventful except for Kay’s being strip-searched because she forgot she had a tiny tub of lip gloss with a metal lid in her jeans pocket.  OK, they didn’t actually strip her, but let’s just say that Steve was glad it was a woman doing the searching.

 

For those of you who haven’t been to Mexico, whenever you come down here by air or by road (boats get off easy) and you go through customs you pass through a special traffic light. If you get a green light you pass through without an inspection. If you get a red light…. 

 

Kay pushed the button (so it’s her fault) and got a red light for the first time in three or four border crossings.  The inspection is usually pretty cursory.  They didn’t check any of Kay’s bags, just Steve’s.  In his biggest bag, he had a brand new marine VHF radio that he had not declared on one side, and about one-fifth of Kay’s shell collection on the other side.  The customs agents found the shells first and spent a lot of time looking at them; first because they are very beautiful and second because they were a little concerned that we might be intending to sell them in Mexico. After assuring them that they were for our personal enjoyment they closed up the bag and let us go.  They never looked at the other side of the bag.

 

The temperature and humidity were about 90-90 when we caught a cab.  Our favorite security guard, Alejandro, was at the gate at Las Palmas II to welcome us back.

 

We found our condo unit all ready for us.  The sheets were all off the furniture, the bed was made and everything was shiny clean.  All we had to do was turn on the electricity and light the pilot light in the gas hot water heater.  In just a little while the air conditioning had the temperature down to a comfortable 77 degrees.

 

Just after midnight we were treated to a slam-bam thunderstorm.  The weather is about what we expected.  We intentionally came down early this year so that we could experience the end of the summer wet season, and so that we could get a head start on making the condo more our own.  In addition to Kay’s shells, we brought down a few other items with that in mind.  We are also on the look out for a plant or two and possibly a bookshelf.