Peurto Vallarta, Mexico

It's been a year of traveling, but we were really looking forward to this trip. Laura and Ryan were to be married on May 19, 2007. The Ruhwedel's used to travel here on Spring Breaks from school, and Sarah's been here since with friends. But as always, it was fantastic to be on vacation together.

We stayed at Playa Los Arcos, which is in the "romanitca" part of PV. It was a perfect place to be because everything was in walking distance. The pool and the ocean were wet, the sun hot, and the beer cold.

Brian and I had the mornings to ourselves. We enjoyed the local coffee shop and spending time with our books in the morning. We would venture out for breakfast/lunch depending on when we actually got moving. You know, vacation.

What was different this time, was every time we turned around, there was family...Mom, Beth, Aunt Barbara, Uncle Mike. You had to love it! Seriously, it was fun.

We took a morning and went scuba diving. As it is with scuba diving boats, everyone was pleasent and talkative. It is always interesting to hear where people have been diving - now Bonaire has moved up on our list. =) Then we spotted grey whales (or we think they were grey whales). One breached and then did it's lazy swim and blow and ended up 20 yards from the boat. It was so cool! For all the whales I have seen, I swear this is the closest that I have ever been. THEN there were areas of the surrounding water that was populated by smaller, black dorsel fins...Mantas! Now for all the diving that I have done, I still haven't seen a Manta ray. Over the next 15 minutes, we saw 4-5 of these guys, jump out of the water. CRAZY! I didn't know they did that. They were airborne, and I swear some came down on their "stomachs" and some on their backs. Mantas are definitely light on the underside, and we saw that side of them pointing up at the sun. It was amazing...and no, no pictures. We couldn't be distracted with a camera =)

The diving...definitely not our favorite location, the visability was poor, the water temperature was warm then cold, and our gear was...definitely rental gear. BUT we saw numerous moray eels, rays and even a guitar fish. Guess I will have to continue on my treck to see a Manta while scuba diving.