We had a great week with Grandpa Roy, Aunt Jean and Uncle Leo in Puerto Vallarta. The boys had been so excited to see them - Marcus seemed to spend most of the week on Grandpa's lap!! We mostly hung out at the pool and talked and enjoyed several meals together. We took a few trips out including to La Crux, Bucerias, and into the town of Puerto Vallarta. We tried to take them to the turtle release but unfortunately none had hatched then so there was no release that evening...

We had hoped to take them out on the boat but unfortunately we've had our first big mechanical issue... The transmission needs to be replaced! We first had problems with it coming into the Paradise Village Marina. It would not go into forward gear from the neutral position. That made docking pretty stressful!! We tried it again a few days later and the same thing happened. We then consulted with a mechanic and he confirmed we needed a new clutch for it...when we looked at the cost of the parts, the labour, the shipping costs,and the age of the old transmission, it seemed to make better sense to order a new one

It should arrive today and the mechanic is scheduled to install it on Monday. We are thankful this happened here where we could make arrangements to get a new one and that there are amenities near by...it would have been a much bigger issue if this would have happened in an anchorage in a remote place!!

On Tuesday we will need to boot over to Mazatlan as Conni and Gunnar are flying in on April 6th. We are very excited to see them!!

The other downside of the transmission has been that we were not able to race Journey in the Banderas Bay regatta. However, Craig was able to crew on Moontide, a 46 foot catamaran for the three races, and I got to race on Meschach a 48 foot trimaran for one day. We both really enjoyed the experience AND Moontide won second place in its division and Meschach won first in its division so that was pretty cool!

Yesterday, the boys and I went out on a bit of an adventure. We decided to check out the zoo in Mismaloya, a town past Puerto Vallarta. We had read about it on someone else's blog and decided it was a must see...So we hopped on a taxi for what turned out to be a very long taxi ride...about 45 minutes! It was a very scenic drive, through PV and along the shore to the other side of Banderas Bay. It was fun gawking at the beautiful condo's that line the ocean and go on for miles!! We passed the famous Los Arcos - protruding rocks with a tunnel that are a great scuba and snorkling spot. When we finally arrived in Mismaloya we began the steep climb through the uneven cobble stone streets. Out of no where a cow ran down the street and headed right for the cab. Our cab driver, Leondardo had to swerve to miss it. Once we arrived at the zoo, I was surprised to see only a few cars in the parking lot and no cabs in sight. I asked Leonardo if he thought we would be able to get a cab home and he cheerfully said, he would wait for us. So we invited him to join us for the walk through the zoo and he taught us the spanish names for the animals we saw. This stuff only happens in Mexico!!

Anyway, the zoo was great. You can pay an additional 50 pesos to buy food and feed many of the animals that you see. We fed camels, giraffes, goats, rabbits, a hippo (although he was sleeping and wasn't interested in a carrot), and flamingos. The zoo had tons of interesting animals from all over...lots of big cats, primates and other neat animals from Central and South America. The coolest part was the end where there was a 1 month old black panther and a 3 month old tiger that you could pet. The three month old tiger was about the size of a border collie and was too big for my liking but the one month old panther still nice and small. The three of us knelt down and had it sit on our laps to pet it. We could distinctly see the black spots on its black fur. It was very very cool!!