January 29, 2011

Our daughter-in-law, Shannon, captured some beautiful photos of our beach area here in Lo De Marcos when they were here the first week of January so we've included her pictures in this post.

View looking north.

View from the southern point, where we boogie-board.

Looking out from the point, with morning shadows.

Below is a photo of the view of the harbor in Puerto Vallarta from a restaurant we dined at on the evening of January 10th before Warren, Shannon and Maxine boarded the plane to return to Toronto.

Pirate ship cruise.

Bev went on a shopping excursion to Tonala from Jan 19th to Jan 21st.  Tonala is an eastern suburb of Guadalajara which is the second largest city in Mexico.  The population of Guadalajara and it's seven surrounding municipalities is approximately 5 million.  The trip to Tonala took 5 hours (1 hour just to cross from the west side of Guadalajara to the east).  A coach bus was chartered for the 42 women on the excursion.  Total cost was $1100 pesos (about $92 Canadian) for the chartered bus, 2 nights hotel accommodation plus associated tips.  Food was cheap (less than $1 to $3 for a lunch, $9 to $11 for dinner and a drink).  A great time was had by all and new friendships formed as Bev only knew 1 other person on the bus when she boarded it!  The following photos are of some historic buildings, statue and fountain surrounding the town square in Tonala.  The first two photos include our friend Mavis who was travelling with Bev.

We have seen a few new species of birds this year in our campground.  The most beautiful being the Painted Bunting, as seen under our car, looking for seeds.

Internet sourced.

Another bird is the Yellow Winged Cicaque.  We had noticed their nests hanging from trees over the highway on the way to Puerto Vallarta and thought they were Oriole nests. Here is the link to view a photo of this bird and it's nest.
http://www.vivanatura.org/Cacicus%20melanicterus%20ExtraPhotos.html

The morning of Thursday, January 27th we came across the tracks of a large sea turtle who had come to shore to lay it's eggs on the beach.  Unfortunately, we did not have the camera with us but the turtle must have been quite big as the tracks were 4 feet across from one flipper imprint to the other.  Since then, we have seen additional tracks of other turtles, one about 5 feet across.  The beach is a protected area in regards to sea turtle eggs.

Thursday afternoon we attended a music session by talented gringos and Mexicans who get together once a week to perform for the enjoyment of family and friends.


We seldom have much in the way of cloud cover so sunsets are generally not something to write home about. Friday night (Jan 28th) was an exception.