We spent the afternoon at the beach in Cabo San Lucas, at the Playa El Medano.
Cabo San Lucas doesn't have a large port for cruise ships, so we had to take little passenger boats from the ferry to the dock.
Lucy specifically asked to have her picture taken with this mermaid when we arrived at the dock for Cabo San Lucas. She kept saying, "She is beautiful!"
Our second stop was in Mazatlan. We signed up for an excursion tour to visit Las Labradas in Sinaloa, some ancient petroglyphs located a over an hour away from the Mazatlan port. Apparently this tour isn't popular with cruise-goers, however, because we were the only ones who signed up! In truth, though, the petroglyphs and the site weren't as interesting as I had hoped. Our guide was unequipped to explain the history of the area to an English-speaking audience, and the guide book was set up in a way so that it was hard to follow the map and hunt for the petroglyphs on the beach.
After the Labradas site, our driver took us back to Mazatlan for lunch at the El Capitano Restaurant along the beach. Our driver was very kind and said that he had the whole day reserved with us, so he waited at the restaurant while we visited the beach.
Sam is lucky that Mexican food includes quesadillas! He also liked trying Mexican orange soda.
This was probably my favorite beach day. The sand was quite fine and the water wasn't too cold. We stayed at the beach for a few hours.
Our last excursion day was in Puerto Vallarta. We got off of the boat and the kids were greeted by a parrot!
Despite the fun parrot, this day got off to a rough start. We had disembarked from the boat and were en route to the center of town in a taxi van, when J realized that he had left his wallet inside our stateroom. I purposely hadn't brought money with me, because J assured me that he had his wallet (which was incorrect, as we discovered!). Some other people in the van were kind enough to loan us some money to pay the driver, but then we had no money to buy anything in the city. We wandered around, penniless, for a while, before J left us at a beach and went to go back to the ship.
We really loved walking in the shady area of the Isla Cuale, where a small craft market is located. In fact, we came here twice in the same day - once without a wallet, and the second time with a wallet!
The N. S. de Guadalupe church has a neat crown that tops the bell tower, but that was pretty much the only interesting decorative feature of the church. I did love the little cloth dollies that vendors were selling outside this church, though, and once J got some money I made everyone wander around the city until I found a similar dolly for Lucy.
The plaza outside the church Parroquia de Nuestra Señora del Refugio
After wandering around without money for an hour or so, J went back to the cruise ship and left us at a beach.
The beach excursion wt started off well, but ended up being one of the most stressful parts of the trip for me. This was a beach with a lot of large rocks and stones embedded in the sand, and the photo above was taken shortly before the surf kicked up a rock and pelted Sam in the shin. I tried to help clean the wound, but he was really emotional and hurt, and he got even more upset whenever sand got into the gash. It ended up being very hard trying to keep an eye on Lucy (and prevent her from kicking up sand) and keeping Sam calm. Sam cried and moaned and whined for most of the hour that J was gone. Sam finally perked up just as J came back, and even had enough humor to name the beach "Hyperspace Beach" (because the rocks get pulled into the surf really quickly, just like how the stars zoom past in Star Wars during hyperspace flying).
We recovered from all of the drama of the day with a fantastic meal at the Cerveceria Union along the beach. It was so calm and relaxing, the food was great, and we even got to relax a bit because Lucy fell fast asleep during the meal!
The rest of the afternoon was so lovely. We walked along the waterfront, visited shops and markets (including going back to the Isla Cuale), and happened to enter the waterfront right as the sun was going down. After such a hectic beginning, the day ended perfectly and we had a lovely ending to our cruise ship excursions.
This is one of my favorite pictures of the whole trip
A few weeks after we came home, Sam asked, "Mom, when can we go on a cruise again?" I don't know if we'll be going on another cruise for several years, but I'm glad that he had such a great time! We all did, really.
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