Twas a sweet afternoon on the beach in the rustic little village of Platanitos. We walked the rough narrow road that winds 1 km through the jungle that leads from Villa Estrella to Platanitos. We always go to Ruiz’s restaurant, basically some wooden poles with palm thatch roof, and plastic chairs that have Corona written on them.
No day trip to Bucerias is complete without…you guessed it….shopping….naturally, and in no time at all, in a back street of Bucerias where I could hardly squeeze in with my lumbering Suburban, we found a store with stuff we just HAD to have; these fine hand woven tapestries from Oaxaca, hand woven by the family that ran the store.
On the fourth day of our visit to Villa Estrella, Ismael organized a wonderful excursion to the El Cora Waterfall. The driver arrived at the arranged time and was very courteous. The drive to the waterfall was a beautiful trip through the Mexican jungle, every so often spotting the ocean from a cliff-top advantage courtesy of the Sierra Madre foothills before turning inland at El Llano toward Tepic and the waterfall.
We love the beautiful historic area of Tlaquepaque, which is almost an independent town within Guadalajara. It is rich with colonial buildings, historic atmosphere and absolutely full of wonderful life. If you hang around the main square area on any evening it’s always abuzz with wonderful people, vendors, music, food and fun.
Not long after the first whale encounter, we saw another whale on the horizon. By the time we caught up, we realized that this was an enormous whale. The guide, in all his wisdom, was amazed as he had never seen anything like it. You see, normally, the humpbacks would breach for a while and then dive deep for a long time, but this whale gave us a 2 hour show.
As we made our way down to the beach taking in the flourishing flowers around us, we were taken across the estuary by boat, only to see our beautiful horses awaiting us. We were greeted by our friendly guide who helped us with the horses. I was impressed with how healthy and well looked after all the horses were.
On occasion we will travel to Guadalajara to do some shopping. The trip takes only a short amount of time and it gives us and opportunity to explore other areas in the Jalisco province of Mexico. One of our favorite places we have discovered is a city called Tlaquepaque, which is just east of Guadalajara. Instead of making the drive home the same day we will often spend the night in this charming town to take in the authentic Mexican atmosphere.
One of our favorite things to do on Saturday night when staying at Villa Estrella is to drive to Casa Manana at Playa Los Cocos for pizza night. It’s about a 25 minute drive and we like to get there about a half hour before sunset so that we can all be in position, with our margaritas in hand, when the fireball is ready to be swallowed by the sea.
Head out from the parking lot and turn left toward San Blas, and….right away, on your right, screech to a halt….there’s an industrial warehouse, with a gate and guardhouse. Don’t be shy, go in there, tell them you want to buy some dried mangoes. A kilo bag of dried mango fruit is one of the most delicious snacks you can find anywhere. Buy a few bags. Maybe John is there, tell him that Jackie from Villa Estrella sent you. The stuff is just delicious and so good for you.
