Day 3, Puerto Vallarta

We weren't sure what we were going to do in Puerto Vallarta at first. The night before we were discussing what we wanted to do. There was a cool excursion that went into the rain forest where you could swim in a waterfall. I guess Predator was filmed there. They also had this beautiful area over the waterfall where you could eat lunch. It sounded like fun, but really, probably more fun for mike and I then for the kids.

I think they would have had fun, but then we found out about this waterpark that a few other families were going to. Once we mentioned 'water park' there was no turning back to a boring old waterfall. ;) Not only was this a waterpark with slides and pools, but they had dolphin shows and seals.

The kids had SO much fun. This park had probably 15 different slides, a lazy river to tube in, and one incredible slide that we called the flusher. Mike and I have actually seen it on the travel channel before as a 'must do waterslide' on the best waterparks in the world. It was 6 stories high, and you go down a long curved part (the colon, haha!) until you get spit out into this enormous toilet bowl looking thing (the size of a house) with swirling water. You swirl around a few times until you finally get dropped about 4 feet into another pool. Now I know from experience what some unfortunate goldfish feel like when they are being 'returned to the ocean.'

We spent all day there. I have a ton of pictures from that day, but really how many more slide pictures can you stand? I promise we did many other things in the other cities that we stopped at. I'll post those pictures soon.

I don't know if you can see it well, but that is Matthew popping out of one of the slides into one of the several pools they had. The best thing was each slide ended in a pool that was only about 4 feet deep, so my two non swimming boys were able to run up and down to their heart's content without mom having to panic about them drowning. Plus there were probably about 50 people at this park all day. Apparently this is their off season. It worked out amazingly well for us since we could see the kids wherever they were.
















After several hours at the waterpark, and all of us tired from the sun, water and climbing up to the tops of the towers, we went back to the ship.

We were leaving at 10:00 that night, so we had a long day in Puerto Vallarta. We dropped the boys off at camp carnival and took Megan back out to have lunch. We ate at a nice place not too far from the ship, on the third story of an open air restaurant. The breeze was nice, and we just sat staring at the ocean. I had the best guacamole and chips, and bottled mexican coke. Trust me, coke aficionados, in Mexico it is made with cane sugar, so it tastes SO much better than coke here. It's always a treat when we are there.

Back to the ship, a nice shower and long nap, dinner and then watching us leave later that night from the balcony. Our room was several decks above where the harbor pilot climbs down and jumps from our ship onto the small boat waiting for him once we got out to sea. This was fun to watch as we left each port, but the pilot in PV was the best. He jumped off and had a to go plate full of cruise food! Then he stood on the front of the small boat and waved while everybody cheered. I think this guy must love his job and the attention that he gets. He was funny.

more soon!