Puerto Vallarta

I've been in Puerto Vallarta for a couple of days now. it's super, super touristy here, and the crazy thing is that it's not even tourist season. people tell me that the tourists don't even start arriving until november because it's too hot right now. it was weird riding into town. all these crazy american hotels, the shereton, holiday inn, burger king, costco, pizza hut. it was late in the day, and it started to pour down on us. plus, the roads are these crazy coblestoned insanities, and it was really hard to bike up them. the mexican drivers were super awesome though and kept honking and waving at us and flashing us the peace sign and thumbs up. i really think mexicans are so much nicer to cyclists than canadians and americans.
This is a picture of this hotel room we stayed at in las varas. that's peter looking through the bars of our glassless window. the place was super ghetto, and we ended up pushing these two beds together and all three of us slept on them. the "bathroom" was literally a cement hole in the wall with a spigot coming out of the wall and a 5 gallon bucket underneath. i think that was the sink, and then there was a shower head, and a toilet. once you took a shower, everything was wet, and then you needed to fill up the bucket of water and dump it into the tiolet to get it to flush.
this is a picture of this yogurt we ate that morning. it's called "lala", which is cool because that's what we used to call my sister Laura when she was little.
We were really into the hotel we got in Puerto Vallarta. here's a picture of me in the bathroom after biking throught the downpour. you can see that the shower has it's own divider so water doesn't get all over the rest of the room. sweet right? then we turned around and saw this sign on the door.
basically it says child prostitution is a crime.
We've been riding past some really pretty beaches.

I think the trip is falling apart a little bit though, so i am in low moral. i think after three months of traveling like this, there is a certain type of exhaustion that settles into your body and doesn't leave. i remember feeling like this on the appalachian trail. big pete packed up and went home to wisconsin (i think i spelled that wrong). Dale decided to rent an appartment for a month here in puerto vallarta. here's a picture of the view from his window.
and here's a picture from inside the place.
pretty nice, huh? probably this is a little bit crazy of me, but i just started feeling like i couldn't deal with anyone, so i told erik and young peter to go ahead with out me, and i'm just hanging out here with dale for a little bit. this morning dale and i were sitting in his new place drinking big pete's instant coffee that he'd left behind and talking about life. what a crazyness, huh? probably none of us will even stay friends when this is over, but for right now we're each other's best friends. i wonder how it will be traveling alone. i guess if i don't like it i can always catch up with the guys. it just started seeming exhausting to be around them. i wonder if we are all losing it. Dale thinks we wont finish. i hope i finish. i bet young peter will. he seems indefatigable. i think erik wishes he wasn't still on the trip. but he doesn't like the idea of giving up. he's really homesick though. i don't feel homesick, and i still want to do this, i guess i just feel tired of a lot of stuff. we'll see how the future plays out.
-jessie