Sunday, April 10, 2016

The Pool

Our little pool may not be suitable for extended laps, but for cooling off after a day of wandering around or shopping, it can't be beat. It's chilly, but not unpleasantly so.
My only problem with it is that the tiles have been laid in a fairly haphazard fashion so that, in some spots it's more like very, very coarse sandpaper, where the edges of the individual tiles are raised slightly from the plane.What this means is that, if you're not careful and inadvertently rake, say, your toes across the side or bottom, they end up looking like this.
Truth be told, I can't hold the pool entirely responsible for the condition of said toes. My standard entry method involves rolling in from the end and kicking up, refreshed if not slightly stunned. As mentioned, it's chilly.
This method causes no difficulties thanks to the unadorned
wall of the deep end, but the side of the pool features a somewhat meaningless semi-ledge a few feet down and it is against this that I scraped my poor toes. Of course, my beloved wife tried to warn me against rolling into the pool from the side for just this reason, but I didn't hear because I was in the process of rolling into the pool from the side. Story of my life.
Here's a picture of Josie sedately enjoying the pool.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Zoning laws? We don't need no steenking zoning laws.

We were somewhat trepidatious about coming down here right now for several reasons, not the least of which was that the owners had informed us that there was some construction going on across from our condo. To their credit, they discounted the price of our stay by fifty percent or so, but being as how our plan was to get out of Dodge and get some major relaxing done, this gave us pause. Ah, well. Mexico has never been what you could possibly consider a quiet getaway and, besides, we needed to get away and get away now.
A look at Google Earth confirmed that the view from our suite would have been spectacular but by the time we got here, in the place of the vacant hillside was a rather attractive four-storey, twelve suite condo, the top floor of which obscures, quite effectively, our view of the ocean. Now, granted, should you lean over the edge of the balcony and  strain your neck just right, you can get glimpse of a trapezoid of Baia Banderas, but it's not what you'd call a glorious vista. That being said,  it does beat the hell out of the view from the balconies opposite. This is what you see if you look over the wall on the other side of the pool. Four levels straight down, with barely a meter between the railing and a blank wall. Granted, this is the rear end of the individual suites, but geez.
The noise during the initial stages of construction must have been spectacular, and it is still irritating during the day. Today, since they stopped work at noon, is truly blissful. Tomorrow will be nothing short of heavenly.
I can only imagine what has happened to the value of this condo  unit since construction, since it is really the only one so affected. Apparently the one above, while its view is somewhat truncated still has some view of the bay, and the ones above that are relatively unaffected. Apparently, this sort of development happens all the time around here and the individual owners, should they be one of the many absentee owners, can be taken by surprise.
Anyway, here's what it looks like from our balcony now.

PV Up and down

The trip to Puerto Vallarta was, aside from the necessity of arising at four AM, uneventful. All the usual hurry-up and wait, a quick but terrifying cab-ride from the airport, and boom, we're here.
The first trip to procure supplies, however, gave us some idea of what the rest of the trip was going to look like. It was going to look like a lot of stairs, is what it was going to look like.
The first “flight” to the street turned out to be about eighty steps but, thanks to the rugged landscape and the vagaries of the Mexican construction industry, no two steps are exactly the same, so who's to say? The next flight, down to the beach, was another eighty or so, plus a long raggedy inclined sidewalk sort of thing. So let's round it off to a hundred and sixty.
Now, using my back-of-an-envelope cipherin' skills, and assuming about eight inches a step, this works out to just over a hundred feet, or eight to ten storeys.
Try that hot and tired. Or drunk.  In the dark.
Down to the beach

Up to the condo