Puerto Vallarta Los Arcos
I’ve been in Puerto Vallarta the last 3 days having a bit of a vacation with Michelle. Michelle started selling Wildtree products (highly recommend) about 18 months ago and she earned herself a trip for two to Puerto Vallarta. I was tickled pink that she asked me and after racing Wildflower last weekend, I was excited to head to Mexico for some R&R! We have been having a great time. It’s my first visit to an all-inclusive resort which isn’t usually my style but I assumed we would just sit in lawn chairs and drink margaritas for 4 days. Yea, that lasted about 1 afternoon. We are just go go girls, even on vacation! Yesterday we took a culinary tour that started with a tequila tasting, which means we were drunk for the rest of the tour. It was fun. We peppered the tour guide with all these questions along the way and at some point on the trip (post tequila) we passed these huge rocks out in the ocean.
We were like “What are those rocks” and he told us that was “Los Arcos" and there was good snorkeling there. He told us we could take a bus there, or rather two busses. In our drunken state we decided that was exactly what we should do the following day. “Lets swim around them”
Oh dear!
So today we woke up, did our thing on the treadmills to rehab Michelles knee (she walks and runs a little, and I just run next to her and sweat), then had a good healthy breakfast (plus some bacon). We found Jenna who was drunk with us the day before on free tequila and agreed to come along on our adventure (who would watch our stuff on the beach…JENNA!!!).
We changed some money over to pesos and we were off. Once on the main road we found the bus, got on it, paid, asked the bus driver “Los Arcos??” He nodded and we sat down. There was a guy playing guitar on the bus, so we rocked out on that as the bus bumped and jerked along down the road.
Once in “El Centro” the bus driver waved us off the bus and pointed to an orange bus a block away, so I said “Narangho? Los Arcos?” and he nodded. We made our way to that bus and boarded. Wha-Lah! We were on our way! A short trip later we stood up when we saw the big rocks and the bus let us off. We forgot to bring snacks so we bought some and headed down a dicey little trail to the beach.
Wow! We made it! We were here…Los Arcos! I was NERVOUS!! We suited up, got the goggles on, told Jenna our route, and we waded into the water. The locals on the beach looked a little concerned, but we knew what we were doing…sorta. We swam out to the huge arch in one of the rocks and all was good. We could feel the currents, we knew which way they were and they weren’t too strong. We decided to swim though the arch…when in Rome (or…Los Arcos) and it was a little scary. It was dark in there, but we just picked up the pace a little and swam strong.
Now we headed clockwise around the big island. It was awesome. I swam on Michelles feet and she went a really good pace. I just stayed on her bubbles and tried to enjoy the fact that I had stepped WAY out of my swimming comfort zone. We swam and swam and made our way around the island, popping out on the North side where there was another arch. This one had a bit of a swell in it and we looked at each other with wide eyes, and then just went for it.
I felt the rush of adrenaline and we made it through nice and safe, a 20 second endeavor all in all. We swam across a beautiful reef with some amazing beautiful “fish tank” looking fish and found our way back tot he original arch. We went trough it again, from the other direction this time, feeling the same nervous feelings when we were in the dark, but popped out on the other side feeling like a million bucks. Back to shore we swam.
I stood on the beach and I was so calm, I had done a scary (for me) thing. I always come back to the fact that when Michelle and I are together we always hatch up these things that neither of us would do alone. We would be too scared. But together, we have so many years experience doing crazy stuff that we go for it. It was one of those experiences that we didn’t know what we would face, but we were going to go for it and see how it went. It was really rewarding. Of course having Jenna on the beach was a helpful safety measure as well.
The experience of swimming around this beautiful location, seeing the amazing fish, and the birds, and looking along the coast from one tip to another of Banderas bay was something I will cherish for a long time. It’s easy for me to do crazy stuff running, but this was a whole new can or worms for me, and I can’t wait to do more stuff like this. What a great day!
Video from the day:
http://youtu.be/NI9h2A6rsz4