We spent two weeks anchored out at La Cruz, then brought the boat into the marina so that we could visit our friend Lynn for a few days. Lynn is a friend of Eric's mom, and moved in January from Marin to a condo on the beach south of Puerto Vallarta. She invited us to stay with her, and we were excited to agree: This would be our first time sleeping on land since September!

It turned out that apartment living is actually pretty good, especially when one lives where Lynn does. For one thing, the view of Banderas Bay from her seventh-floor portholes is far superior to ours from three feet above sea level (though she doesn't have a radar, so she can't see at night). And Lynn's galley is a bunch larger than ours, and her icebox is taller and icier and not next to the engine. She has two heads and you don't have to use a hand pump to get the water out. How she fills her water tanks is beyond us--we have to carry it in 44-pound jugs from the store to the boat, but we never saw her. And the bed isn't right up in the bow, so there's hardly and noise from the slapping of the water on the hull.

One night, though, did remind us of home on the boat. The handyman came in to repair a water leak in the master bathroom while Lynn wasn't home. He diligently turned the water off (the valve is in the guest bathroom), did the necessary work, turned the water back on, and was gone. A few minutes after he closed the front door, Eric and I noticed water creeping into the living room from the guest bathroom. We placed a bucket under the valve and resumed our laziness, but in a few minutes there was more water coming out while the bucket remained empty. Water was seeping from the valve into the wall, then running down to the floor. Naturally, this was Friday night, and by the time Lynn returned home it was too late to call anyone. As there was no way to capture the water before it spilled, we set up night watches to mop it up at 90-minute intervals. We had been under the mistaken impression that night watches were only to be had at sea!

We used her condo as a base of operations for four days. During that time we got to explore the quainter parts of Puerto Vallarta, went shopping for sundry supplies and foodstuffs for great meals that we cooked in Lynn's huge galley. She calls it a kitchen, but in any case it contains every possible tool and yet she thinks she cannot cook. She did admit to occasionally making a chocolate pudding for lunch, and her morning cappuccinos are outstanding, so she may be selling herself short. In any case, she was as excited to make the facility available to us as we were eager to take her up on it. We had some delicious meals together, and it was great fun touring around Puerto Vallarta looking for ingredients.

Lynn not only hosted us, she also brought from the USA new and better slides for our troubled main sail (Thanks, mom, for getting them for us, and Lynn, for carrying them past customs!).

Thanks to this personal connection (and others to be described separately) we found that we enjoyed Puerto Vallarta quite a bit more than we'd expected. Perhaps we're just accustomed to tourists from living in San Francisco, but we found it far more charming than we'd expected, especially in the winding back streets and up the hillsides. And if Lynn is any measure, the hospitality is first-rate.