Nice – Antibes – Juan les Pains – Cannes

Posted on May 20, 2012 by

It was high time for a holiday again! Actually, the quasi-plan for this one was hatched back in the fall when a song came on iTunes and I looked at Kirk and said “I want to go to France! I want to go to France in May! I want to sit at a cafe in France, sip cappuccinos and nibble on criossants!”

Kirk said – “Sounds great!”

The next questions was where in France. I’d been to Paris and didn’t really feel like going to a big city. So, we settled on Provence. Now…where in Provence? I was missing the Mediterranean, so we started to look at the Cote D’Azur. A woman in my office was in the South of France for a month in the fall, so I asked here where a nice place, not too crazy busy, not too terribly touristy, but on the Mediterranean might be. She thought for a moment, and said, “Antibes”.

So, on that one suggestions, Antibes it was!

Kirk worked with a travel agent and found a hotel and booked flights and we were set. It was all very last minute, and things have been crazy and hectic for the past few weeks with Kirk’s accident and a family death. So neither one of us really had any time to do any research on the place, it was a bit of a ‘wing-it’ holiday.

We hopped on the plane Friday night, and more or less lost Saturday because of the time difference. Our flight was delayed out of Vancouver, so when we arrived in Heathrow it was a bit of a scramble to get to the next flight. When we went through security I went first and fully expected Kirk to set off the metal detector now that he has a good number of screws and a metal plate in his shoulder. It didn’t go off in Vancouver, but I thought it might in Heathrow, I had assumed more sensitive equipment. But it stayed silent. We were both surprised!

We arrived in Nice, my luggage didn’t, at least not right away. Apparently it stayed behind in Heathrow for some reason, but it was on the last flight to Nice at midnight and I was told it would arrive the next morning and be delivered to the hotel.

A taxi driver wanted $85 Euros to take us to the hotel in Juan les Pains, seemed a bit outrageous, so we decided to explore other options and found ourselves on a very nice bus without any really clear idea of where we were going, where to get off, or how to get to the hotel once we did get off. But it all worked out. When we got off we just started walking towards the water with the knowledge that our hotel was a block off the beach, and just off the train tracks. Couldn’t be that hard to find it! And it wasn’t hard at all.

So we have a week here on the French Riviera, with absolutely no plans whatsoever, and a pleasant surprise that the Cannes Film Festival is on. We probably won’t get tickets for anything, but who knows, we might stumble onto some star sightings when we head there in a day or two!

I couldn’t decide where to blog this trip – here or on The Philosophical Fish. Since I have my third 365 project underway, it seems onerous to blog in two places for one trip, so subsequent postings will be over there instead of here. So if you are interested in what we discover about this little corner of the world, you can follow the rest of the trip over there at The Philosophical Fish, starting here →

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Home again, home again

Posted on June 11, 2011 by

We didn’t fly out until 5:30pm so we got up when we woke up, had breakfast and took a taxi into town to look for some ceramics and a gift for our critter sitter to bring home. We picked up the critter sitter a beaded turtle from a local artist shop that I’d been into several times. He carves out a figure in wood, then coats the entire surface in beeswax by hand. Then teensy tiny coloured beads are painstakingly pressed into the wax in elaborate and traditional patterns. they are amazing.

With the gift out of the way, we wandered up and down the streets looking for a ceramic store I’d seen earlier in the trip. Didn’t find it, but found a different one that was adequate, and purchased a couple of small hand painted plates.

That out of the way, we caught a taxi back to the mall to buy a small bag to carry the ceramics on the plane, and then walked back along the marina shops to the hotel where we enjoyed a last drink by the pool before heading to the airport. It was hot and humid and the thought of the cooler and drier (??) air of Vancouver is almost haunting. The plane ride was uneventful, other than several children racing up and down the aisle.

We thought we were so smart getting our Nexus passes. Oh yes, we would whiz past any lines and get through customs quick-like.

Not so.

We scanned our irises, took our passes, and headed through the customs, where we were directed to take an alternate door, and wait, and wait. Eventually a fellow came by and asked us to follow him. Our luggage was passed through an x-ray and we were questioned for a few minutes. Finally he said we could go. We asked if we’d done something wrong and he said no, just quality check, checking that we were adhering to the Nexus guidelines.

Canada Line to downtown, taxis to home. Thought it was all over until Kirk realized his credit card had vanished somewhere between the taxi and the front door. We thought it had been left in the cab until we saw three huge charges from three different gas stations come thorugh. Called it in, cancelled the cards, what a pain.

But we are home. Mexico was fun, but hot, and humid, and I wilt in those conditions. But I’d still go again.

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Into the Mountains

Posted on June 10, 2011 by

Yesterday was exhausting, but today eight of us managed to drag our tired butts out of bed and meet up before 8am to head out for more adventure. We grouped, walked over to the Vallarta Adventures office and met up with our guide for the day – Mary-Lou. She turned out to be an absolute delight. She ushered us into a truck that was built in the 1960′s and which looked to be the likes of something one would expect to see loaded with fully armed soldiers in Afghanistan, albeit painted a different colour than our transport.

From the hotel area we headed out through Old Town and up into the mountains. If we thought taxis had been exhilarating, they didn’t hold a candle to this ride! Along the way Mary-Lou filled our heads with information on Mexico; its people, its tumultuous history, its flora and fauna – terrestrial and aquatic, its climate, its economy, its food & drink….and everything else you could think of. I imagine that with anyone else we would have been staring out at the passing scenes more, but she was simply riveting and so full of information that she captured almost all of our attention. We learned that the number one input to the economy is not tourism or agriculture, but migrant workers in the US and Canada sending money home. The minimum wage in Mexico is 59 pesos a day, A DAY! That amounts to about $4.80 a day for working a 12 hour day. Consider the minimum wage in BC at $10 for an 8 hour day. That’s a fortune compared to what they could make back home, and their skills in agriculture make them valuable workers in the orchards and fields. They collect their wages and send them back home via Western Union, therefore any tiny little town in Mexico sports a Western Union.

After about an hour on the road we pulled onto a side road and stopped for about an hour at the Puerto Vallarta Botanical Gardens.

We wound our way into the hills and stopped at a barbed wire fence, which one of the fellows in the cab hopped out and moved out of the way. We then did a bit of bouncing along a rough dirt road and stopped at a giant rock under a palm leaf shelter. It was covered in petroglyphs that are dated to about 1200 years ago.

From there we bounced back up to the main road and continued on to a racilla distillery. Racilla is basically the moonshine version of tequila, as if tequila isn’t bad enough. Racilla is made from wild Agave, unlike Tequila, which is made from domesticated Agave. For a product to be certified as Racilla, it must also be made completely by hand, no machinery is used to harvest, cook, process, or distill it. The end product has a distinctly different taste from tequila, I would say that it is worse ;-) We had a lovely lunch at the distillery and then headed off for more adventure.

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We are exhausted!

Posted on June 10, 2011 by

Exhausted, that’s about the only word I have available to me right now. While the first part of the week was all work for Kirk and relatively relaxing for me, the last two days have been over the top busy

Yesterday we were up early and out with the entire group onto a 60 foot powercat. We headed off to the South and say a couple of manta rays swimming in the bay. We stopped for an hour or so of snorkeling and saw puffers, eels, an octopus, and many colourful fish that I can’t identify without a book to help me. Back on the boat, we carried on until we reached Yelapa where we stopped for a few hours and had lunch and a few drinks after taking a walking tour of the town. After that we were back on the boat and stopped at a beach owned by the adventure tour company. There were tables set up along the beach, in terraces along the cliffs, and we ate dinner with the sea lapping at our feet. It was gorgeous, and the food was fabulous. After the sun set they ushered us up into the forest and into an outdoor theatre. If I thought I’d been hot here before this, I was wrong. it was almost unbearable, but then the entertainment started. It was a Mexican version of Cirque du Soleil called Rhythms of the Night and it was wonderful. After the show we were back on the boat and headed back to Puerto Vallarta. Along the way the staff entertained us with a hysterical dance show they had put together. It was wonderful and we were back at the dock at about midnight. We were out for about 12 hours.

Today we were up early again and eight of us met to go on a day long tour into the south Sierra Madre’s. We were out for about 9 hours with a fabulous tour guide – Mary Lou – who took us to a botanical garden that was full of fabulous orchids, the the town of El Tuito, built in the 16th century, to a cheese maker where we sampled fresh cheeses, to see some 1200 year old petroglyphs, to a racilla distillery where we learned how the agave plant is grown and harvested, and cooked to make racilla, to a tequila distillery where we learned about the blue agave plant which is used for the making of tequila and sampled the different wares of both distilleries. Our guide was so pumped up about everything and had so much information, she was a delight.

We tried to watch the game in it’s entirety tonight. We went down the road to a sports bar, but the two of us were the only ones of today’s group that even made it there, and we only survived to the end of the second period before stumbling back to the hotel where the best we could do was listen to the end of the game on 1040AM online. But who cares, we won! And we saw the winning goal on CNN a few minutes later when they showed the highlights.

So I’ll sort through the hundreds of photos from the past two days later, for now all I have to say is GO CANUCKS! and Goodnight.

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Catching up on the trip – Majahuitas, Yelapa, and Rhythms of the Night

Posted on June 9, 2011 by

Today was a busy day. The entire group (save one or two who were injured or ill) boarded a 60 foot powercat and headed South on Banderas Bay toward Yelapa. On the way we stopped by these small islands (or large rocks, take your pick) and saw the blue footed booby birds nesting in the crevices. We saw manta rays in the waters and watched the frigates and brown pelicans soaring overhead. We then moved on towards the peaceful and isolated cove of Majahuitas. Situated on the southern coast of the bay the Majahuitas is accessible only by boat. We snorkled for an hour or so (and burned our backs of course). We saw pufferfish, snowflake eels, an octopus, and many colourful reef fishes.

Back on board, we headed off towards Yelapa, another location accessible only from the water, where we disembarked and toured the village before ending up on the beach for drinks and lunch. Sadly, we couldn’t go in the water as there were numerous man-of-war jellies littering the edge of the water. It was hot enough that some people braved it anyway, but after getting a few jelly stings at Majahuitas, and being really nailed in the chest by something that caused me some serious pain for a couple of hours, I opted to enjoy a chair on the beach, listen to the waves wash up on the beach, and wave off the beach vendors trying to sell us beads and pareos.

Towards dinner time we reboarded and cruised back along the edge of Banderas Bay to the cove of Las Caletas where we disembarked again and were guided to tables set for us on the beach at the edge of the ocean. As the sun sank we were invited to move into the jungle to an outdoor theatre. The heat and humidity were stifling, but the entertainment was wonderful. It was a Mexican version of Cirque – Rhythms of the Night – that included humour and history all wrapped together with wonderful music.

After the show we were back on the boat and headed back to Puerto Vallarta. Along the way the crew entertained us with dancing and humour.

We were out for a twelve hour day, and as exhausting as it was, it was absolutely fabulous!

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Bullfights & Flying Whales

Posted on June 8, 2011 by

Kirk was busy again the past two days, so Monday I wandered off the hotel strip and walked along the edge of the cruise ship berthing area and over to a shopping centre where I drank in the air conditioning after the heat of the the walk. The humidity is high and it’s hot and muggy. I had some entertaining moments debating how to cross 8 lanes of traffic and finally managed the courage to jaywalk, or jay”dart” might be more appropriate. There are two centre roads that are the speed zones and left hand turns are not permitted from these. Cars wanting to turn left have to exit these roads and move to the outer roads running parallel on the right hand side. From there, when the light allows them to, they make a left hand turn across up to 6 lanes of traffic. So jaywalking takes a bit of survival skill.

Yesterday I joined a group of women heading back into Old Town and wandered through the town, along the beach and by the river again. Last night was the big dinner party and Dave hired the best Mariachi band in Puerto Vallarta, and they were amazing!

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No, Gracias

Posted on June 6, 2011 by

“No, Gracias.” I have become very good at uttering that phrase.

I have discovered a few things in Puerto Vallarta.

According to the shopkeepers in Old Town, it appears that many shops stock products that are “Almost Free!

Taxis are everywhere, and they really, really, want your business. But they accept the turn down politely.

Busses come in every shape and size.

Jaywalking, actually even crossing the road, across 8 lanes (four divided roads going in two directions) is a life threatening prospect (that I am happy to say I survived).

If you are walking, keep one eye on the sidewalk at all times. It can be quite the potential hazard, changing width, height, it can disappear completely, it can contain holes that will at best swallow your foot, at worst swallow you whole.

Cockroaches here are about as big as the ones in Hawaii!

Don’t be surprised if an iguana (or two) runs across a branch just above your head as you walk under a tree. That’s pretty cool!

Pelicans fly around in flocks almost like seagulls. That one is pretty cool too!

Tequila and I are still not friends after all those years apart. We should not have tried to get reacquainted. Mojito’s are much friendlier.

Marble floors are the best! When you come in from outside and it’s horribly hot and humid, just kick off your shoes and stand on the floor for a few moments. You know how dogs stand in puddles? That’s because they have a counter current heat exchanger built into their physiology. The blood flows through the extremities and standing in the water cools the blood as it flows back to the core, dropping core body temperature. Works for me too.

Sweat running down your back can eventually feel normal.

Good night.

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Puerto Vallarta June 5

Posted on June 6, 2011 by

Most of the guests arrived Saturday evening and there was a meet and greet cocktail and dinner party on the terrace at the edge of the beach. A wedding was taking place a few hundred yards away on the beach, the sea breeze making a beautiful spectacle of billowing white fabric. When the sun set what I am assuming to be tree frogs started up their nightly symphony. We hung out for awhile, then went and changed into our swimsuits and slipped into the pool for a late night swim. Who closes a pool at 7pm? The staff don’t really seem to care much if you are in after hours though. I gather that unlike North America, if you do something stupid and cause yourself injury, the fault and blame lie solely with you and you can’t stupidly turn around and sue someone for failing to protect you from your own idiocy. Now if only we could learn that in Canada and the USA. Later we grabbed a bottle of wine and settled in to watch a movie. – Agora – highly recommend it!

Yesterday (Sunday) we had a quick breakfast (the fruit here is amazing! It is actually truly ripe and full of flavour!) and met in the lobby to register for some activities. Most people are doing things like zip-lines, dolphin swims, etc. We can zip-line at home, and I’m against holding aquatic animals captive so humans can get in the water with them and consider them entertainment. If they were free to interact but able to leave if they chose, then I’m a little more “ok” with it. But not when they are restricted from their natural behaviours and habitat.  Kirk and I wanted to do a tour into the Sierra Madre’s but the planner said he couldn’t set that up unless he had at least 11 people. So Kirk went into sell mode, and managed to find enough to make it happen. So that is Friday’s activity. Apparently we will head towards the South end of the Banderas Bay region and visit a working town (El Tuito), which was founded in the 1500′s. We will visit a number of small villages, stop at a working tequila and racilla distillery, a cheese factory, see 1200 year old petroglyphs, and visit the botanical gardens. I’d rather learn something about the people, and the country and its history, than exploit nature. Dave has a full day out on a catamaran planned for Thursday and I think we are heading down somewhere towards Yelapa that day. So we’ll get our snorkeling fix in then.

Yesterday I went into town with Brenda and another couple and we stopped at her friend’s jewellery store. It’s not the usual stuff one finds with the tourist vendors, and I picked up a couple of pieces. We wandered around Old Town again and just generally enjoyed the day before heading back to the hotel where I read a book by the pool and tried (unsuccessfully) to even out my burn. When I thought I was out of the sun I burned, when I actively tried to generate a mild burn to even things out, I failed. Go figure!

So this morning Kirk is off to work at 8am, and I am mulling over what to do. I thought maybe I’d take a bus into Old Town again, a friend gave me the name of a jeweller to visit and I thought I’d see if I could find it. I pulled out the slip of paper she wrote it on before we left Vancouver, and started to laugh. It is the same jeweller’s I’ve already been to twice, and where I bought something yesterday. Cassandra Shaw. OK then, I’ll go on a walking tour around this area instead and see where I end up. I’m working on building the little Spanish I have, and am discovering that it’s not the hardest language to work out. There is a lot of crossover between English, French, and Spanish. Some stuff is easy to catch the drift of. I made it about three exchanges with a fellow yesterday and then he started to really talk and I was lost. I apparently got that glazed expression that I remember seeing when I got going with the Japanese visitors to our lab. He stopped. “No comprende?” Nope, lost me.

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Frying in Mexico!

Posted on June 4, 2011 by

OK, so I’m an idiot. The day before yesterday I again spent the day on the balcony at Dave’s penthouse condo, out of the sun, marking and finishing up some website work. At least I believed I was out of the sun. I still think I was, since I remember the sun arriving on my feet and thinking, “better get those out of there, don’t want a burn” and moved inside onto the chair. All I can think of is that the reflection from the marble decking nailed me. I gave myself a fabulous burn over the my left leg, left arm, left shoulder and the left side of my neck. Seriously, I hadn’t put sunscreen on because i wasn’t in the sun! That sun is sneaky in Mexico, let me tell you! Oh well, now I need to burn the white skin to match the rest.

The three of us walked down into Old Town and down to the beach where we had a drink. We stopped in a bar on the beach with live music. The fellow was singing Heart of Gold, the next some sounded similar, except it was September by Green Day. In fact everything he sang sounded exactly like Heart of Gold. I couldn’t imagine Green Day sounding like Neil Young until today. The Malacon has been ripped up so, sadly, it’s closed off, all but a small section anyway. Along the beach, a vendor was selling various things, and among them was a small terra cotta bowl painted a deep blue on the inside…along with the words “Vancouver Canucks” and the Canucks logo. Dave HAD to have it and haggled for it. Spent way too much money but he saw it as an “omen” of fortune for the team. Let’s hope he’s right. It’s a hot, steep hike back up to Dave’s place, so we stopped for another beer before the worst of the climb, and then it was straight into a cold shower on arrival.

Yesterday we went down to the hotel we move into this afternoon, and met with a few early arrivals, including Dave’s girlfriend who also has a condo here in Puerto Vallarta. About an hour after arrival she disappeared and when she was finally located, she was suffering a terrible case of what we assume to be food poisoning, likely from something she ate before arrival. It came on fast and hit her hard. Off to medical with her and the doctor fixed her up but she’ll have to take it easy for a few days.

Finally, back to Dave’s place for dinner and a drink on the rooftop deck under the stars. I almost hate to leave this place for the resort. This condo is so peaceful up above the city. Well, peaceful in some ways, quite the symphony in other ways. The sounds are interesting. The birds begin singing when the sky begins to brighten and cicadas simply “start” at around 10am. At night the crickets fill the air, as does a donkey down in the valley behind the condo, and the dogs bark to each other up and down the hills. The produce truck comes up the road blaring his items over a loudspeaker, and the gas seller drives up with bottles of propane with a strange music coming over his speaker. We hear the odd siren, and sadly, a resident Canadian living across the road was stabbed to death the day we arrived, he apparently kept a lot of cash at his home and speculation is that he knew the killer(s) as there was no sign of forced entry.

This afternoon/early evening Kirk has to get to work and I start to explore alone. I have been trying to learn a bit of Spanish, I have picked up a few words and phrases. Some of it came quickly, many words are similar to Portuguese phrases I picked in in Brazil a few years back. Other bits are surprisingly easy and fall out of French and English, or are close enough that one can discern them. I’m looking forward to being down lower where I can wander a bit more and don’t have to face climbing Mount Everest in 33C heat to get back to home base.

So far this is an interesting place, and although I would take Greece over Mexico as a travel destination, I have to admit that its proximity to home is a bonus.

Now, if I can just avoid any further damage to my skin….

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Chilling in Mexico

Posted on June 2, 2011 by

Kirk works for a wholesale company and every year they put on a trip/conference for its top dealers. Last year they were in Whistler, this year they opted for Puerto Vallarta. Kirk has to work, but there was no way he was going without me, so I am along as a +1. I had to bring some work with me, but there are worse things than sitting on the balcony of your husband’s employer’s penthouse suite in Mexico and mark some papers and do some website work. Kirk and I came down early as Dave is building a new house and wanted Kirk to go through the wiring plans to make sure everything has been done properly according to his design. Meanwhile, I get to hang out here and do what I like for a couple of days, which has mostly been just enjoy the view, listen to the cicadas buzz, and watch the world go by. We move to the hotel tomorrow, and I hope to have all my work done by then so I can just wander the city, the beach, or just sit by the water and read the books I’ve brought along.

The first night we arrived we went out for a fabulous dinner at No Way Jose’s – fresh mahi mahi, fabulous. Then I was reminded of why I stopped drinking tequila many years ago…we just really don’t play nice together. So one could say that day 2 was relatively low key for all three of us. Although there was a lot of excitement when the Canucks won in those last few moments of the game.

One down, three to go!

It hasn’t rained here in about four months apparently, it’s pretty dry. Dave’s place is perched high on a hill overlooking Puerto Vallarta and the wind comes up to ease the heat in the afternoon, but the many of the trees and bushes are pretty bare of leaves. I thought I’d have all my website work done quickly, but it turns out I forgot some files at home on my desktop computer. Through the wonders of Mac I am able to access everything on my home computer remotely, I can even use the desktop back home, although it goes at a snail’s pace. Still, slow doesn’t really matter when you are looking out over the city and the sea, and enjoying the afternoon breeze on a sunny deck.

 

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