a playa-ful weekend

there are three sure-fire ways to bring a smile to my face. the first (put me in a room full of people) and third (birthday surprises) are not relevant to this story so i will skip directly to number two: drop me on a beach near a large body of water.

which is why i rode buses for 19 hours this weekend to spend another 36 on mexico's pacific coast (please don't spend too much time going over the math). on the way, i met fernando, a law student from guadalajara who was en route to meet family for la navidad. he made a few suggestions for finding fresh seafood and quiet beaches in vallarta. unfortunately, in my enthusiasm to touch the salty west coast, i neglected to write down fernando's recommendations or any information about my hostel or how to get there from the bus station. which is why the weekend got off to a rocky start. but don't you fret, dear reader, that is the lowest part of this story.

first thing on saturday, i learned the bus route to sayulita and made my way to hippie heaven. think pacific northwest meets mexico. as in: over half the people i met were from the pacific northwest and vacationing in mexico. i played fat dog on the beach most of the day, occasionally diving into surf-worthy waves to cool off. when i came to the painful realization that i had not seen real sun in over 12 months, i threw on a dress and headed into town. after chatting up some trabajadores who were sharing a table with me at the fish taco shop, i wandered through the hills to find signs of human dwelling.

per the usual, i returned to the beach for sunset. then caught a bus back to vallerta and made it to the hostel in time to catch a late dinner with south carolina dillon - who is midway through a seattle-to-southern-mexico bike ride - and uk grace - a graduate student doing research on the volcano in calima for the next several months. feeling satisfied with my lack of physical or intellectual ambition, i fell into a deep sleep. 

on sunday, grace and i headed south to boca beach. the 8-peso bus ride paid for itself in vistas alone. but we didn't stop there. we took a boat ride around some islands (whose names i have forgotten)

where we were met by whales and waterfalls and all things water-fabulous.

and so i concluded my perfectly beachy weekend, boarding the guadalaja-bound primera plus mere minutes before departure.