on the edge

Dinner in the clouds

A brief 15 minute ride from downtown Puerto Vallarta will take you several thousand feet up into the hills to an eagles perch in the clouds over looking the bay and the old town. The name of the place is Las Carmelitas and it is a palapa (palm thatched roof) restaurant with no electricity (only generators here) and a killer view. The road up is straight up, well not exactly straight, but it's a tough climb in any car. At the entrance at the bottom of the hill were you turn off the main road, they hit you up for 50 pesos a head and give you a receipt which you can apply to your bill at the end of the night. This keeps people from coming up who just want to go for the view and skip the restaurant. A two wheel drive car will make it up, but more than a few loose their nerve on the numerous high climb angle switch-backs. Some sections of the road are paved in concrete because of the problems with erosion in the rainy season. But perseverance is rewarded.

A Short Trip to D.F. (Mexico City)

Here in Mexico, Mexico City is not referred to as such by the local Mexicans. They refer to the city as D.F. (pronounced: Day Effay). It stands for Distrito Federal the same way our capital is referred to as D.C. So my wife, my son and I headed off from the Puerto Vallarta area to D.F. for some business, but for me mostly an opportunity to see the capital city which I had never been to and do the usual touristy things. Before leaving I had had my proper measure of frightful stories about people being abducted by cabs and being robbed or held for ransom. I had been particularly warned about the dreaded green and white taxis, usually VW bugs. I did follow the warnings and stayed with the unmarked hotel summoned taxis and the ones marked "Sitio" which congregate at marked taxi stands and are usually yellow and white, that is when I was not strap hanging with the locals on the Metro subway system.

Little Camarino's 5th Birthday

My friend Camarino who runs a building crew in the local area building houses, invited my wife, my son and I to attend his youngest son's fifth birthday party. His name is Camarino just like his dad so we all call him little Camarino. The age five is not a special year so it's just the normal five year old kid party. Some years are special like the 3rd year, a year of much celebration. The 15th year for girls is also very important.

A visit to Chacala

Chacala is a little beach town about an hour and a half north of Puerto Vallarta. Four years ago it took a half an hour to get from the main highway to Chacala because there was only a dirt road that was all but impassable to anything but a 4 x 4. Now with a new paved road Chacala is 5 minutes from the highway.

Wedding in the mountains

In Mexico it is traditional for everyone to pitch in when there is a wedding in the family. Once a few years back my brother-in-law got married and we had a "pot luck" wedding. It was one of the greatest weddings we've been to. Here it's the norm. So when my friend Camarino asked me to come up into the hills to photograph a wedding of some family friends, I immediately accepted. I didn't know what I was getting into but that was the fun of it.

The wedding was in a town named Las LLanitos (pronounced Las Yanitos) which was an hour+ into the hills east of Puerto Vallarta. Camarino headed up on Friday because as a part of his contribution to the festivities, he would procure a steer and butcher it to feed all of the wedding guests. I headed up on Saturday a few hours before the wedding. The road into the mountains becomes a dirt road before it leaves Puerto Vallarta. It starts out following the Rio Cuale (the Cuale River) which runs through Puerto Vallarta. After 10 minutes or so the road leaves the Rio Cuale and heads straight up into the mountains. It's a steady climb all the way. About 5 minutes into the climb I noticed that my oil light was coming on. I stopped and checked my oil only to discover that I didn't have very much. I said my prayers and headed back down to Puerto Vallarta and got an oil fill but was unable to discover why the oil was so low. I bought an extra 4 liters of oil as insurance and headed back up because I didn't want to miss the wedding.

How to Make a Real Margarita

If you live in Mexico, sooner or later you are going to have to learn how to make a real Margarita. Forget  Jose Cuervo Margarita Mix. All those Mexican restaurants manage to make Margaritas without it. Very seriously, it is not possible to make a great Margarita with Margarita mix. So put that mix away and follow the simple instructions. Our first experience with real Margaritas happened on a visit to Puerto Vallarta a number of years ago when we wound up in a little palapa restaurant on the beach in Mismaloya. We both had one of those very large goblets. We each had one and then we split another one. In the process my wife went into the kitchen area where they were making these things and got the recipe. They were killer, literally. As we were walking back to our hotel for dinner, my wife said to me, "Those things were hallucinogenic!". We don't remember much about the rest of the evening, it's all sort of a blur.