Fergus to Mascota via Puerto Vallarto

Well, today is the day that we set out on our 15th grand winter adventure. All the flights have been booked, the accommodations reserved, the car rental and ferry crossings in New Zealand made and now we are ready to go.

We arranged to have a Red Car cab take us to the Hamilton airport at 4:15 a.m. and the driver was right on time. He said that he had to pick up one other couple in Guelph who were going to Florida. We arrived at the airport at 5:45 a.m.

We had booked really inexpensive one way flight tickets with SWOOP, who we had heard poor comments about, but we have no complaints. All went smoothly and we had an empty seat between us to use. You do not get any extras, including water, without paying, but we knew that going in. We took sandwiches and had a coffee in the airport lounge.

Btw, we love the little Hamilton airport. It was a breeze to do what we had to do and at 7:30 a.m, we were in the air.

By 11:30 a.m., we arrived in steamy Puerto Vallarta (28C). It was -20C when we left Canada. We did get a dreaded red light to check our bags but there were no problems and it was done quickly.

Outside of the airport, there is an OXXO where we got our Mexican phone chips charged up.

Taxis in airports are usually more expensive so we went outside and took the pedestrian bridge over the Hwy to catch a taxi there. On the other side, there is a wonderful burrito restaurant called Tacon de Marlin. The food is amazing! We shared a shrimp burrito and had 2 Modelo beers before catching a yellow taxi to the ATM bus terminal in town. It cost us 130 pesos, about $10 and much cheaper.

Timing was pretty good. There are only 4 buses a day and one was leaving at 2:40 pm. It cost us 165 pesos (around $11) each for the 3 hour trip Into to the mountains. We arrived in Mascota at 5:30 p.m. there is still lots of sunlight at that time.

Mascota is a small town of around 8,000+ so it is not very big but in a lovely valley surrounded by mountains. We used Google maps to find our apartment which was only a 5 minute walk away.

The lady, Silvia, who will clean our place and tend to our needs was there to give us our key and show us things worked. We contacted our landlady to ask her a few questions (re water, garbage, recycling, cleaning days, etc.) and then headed to the square for our first authentic tacos in 2 years.

We feel that we picked the perfect little Mexican town for our first three weeks.

We got back at 9:10 pm Ontario time) and were fast asleep in minutes.Read more