Carnimax

Everybody and their little brother is blogging now. Including me and mine. Carnimax.blogspot.com is awesome.

It's not a beer belly, it's a fuel tank for a sex machine.

Which is what I saw on a t-shirt at the Marina, where I rode awesome awesome Segways all day. And then later, I saw the man for whom the t-shirt was made. I'll get to him.

Mom, this is the entry you shouldn't read unless you promise not to get worried about me. I did nothing that's illegal in Mexico.

Yesterday, we decided to go to Mismaloya, because there's a river there where the water is cool. Mismaloya Beach is where they filmed Night of the Iguana, the film and accompanying papparzzi watching of Taylor and Burton turned Puerto Vallarta from sleepy fishing town to hot tourist spot. But we were going up to the mountains and the Mismaloya river, which is where they filmed Predator, the set which also became a tourist attraction. Aaron's business partner came over with his pick-up and his wife and baby and 13-year old son Chris. Me and Aaron and Jamie and Chris rode in the bed of the pick-up in folding chairs, which is a typically Mexican way of getting around the town. It's a lot cooler than being inside the truck. To get to the Predator set restaurant, you drive up a dirt rode through the jungle, past little horse farms and liquor stores and lots of trees. The restaurant, which is called Chico's paradies, or the Eden Canopy, or the Predator Set Restaurant, depending on which sign you look at, is a big palapa (straw-thatched hut) where a bunch of soldiers lounged around in the film, or so they tell me. I never saw the movie. The waiters were restaurant t-shirts and camoflauge pants and army boots. THere's a rusty old helicopter the movie company left, and the river goes by and there's a rock slide, but we couldn't use it, because the place was closing just as we got there. So we decided to go back down to the beach.

The ride down was bumpy, as was the ride up, and it started to rain. But not very hard, and not at the bottom of the hill. Not at first. Mismaloya Beach is pretty small, and it was high tide, and there is a newish hotel that's about 10 feet from the ocean. We decided to sit in front of the hotel because there were less people there.

Then the rain caught up with us. We sat sort of underneath the hotel's restaurant, which stuck out for about a foot and sat on the foundation about 4 feet above the sand. There was also an overhang above the restaurant, which meant we had about 3 feet of dry sand. But we also went swimming in the rain, because it was still hot, and we didn't do all the riding around for nothing. Everyone does it. There were probably about fifty people in the water. The water looked really cool, with the waves rolling in and the water droplets splashing. It was a wierd moving porcupine carpet effect.

There was a guy there who was wearing a speedo, which some people have said they don't like, especially when they are worn by famous poets. I have seen quite a few Olympic swimmers wearing speedos and never minded it, but this guy was no Olympic swimmer. He had a farmer's tan. And bad bacne. And weird body hair. And I think he was about 9 months pregnant. He had a wife, but he didn't mind blatantly checking out Jamie in her string bikini and even me in my far more modest 1920's looking swimsuit. Yucky man. Yucky yucky yuck.

(There were also 3 dogs on the beach, running around wild like all Mexican dogs and behaving amazingly well.

Mexican dogs don't bite each other, and they don't bite people and they hardly ever even bark. They don't even beg much or aggressively. I know a few estadounidense dogs that could learn a thing or two from the Mexican dogs.)

When the thunder started, I got out of the water because I didn't want to be electrocuted, and sat under the restaurant. My foot was sticking out in the rain, and the rainwater poured from the hotel roof onto my ankle. Just as we were about to leave, there was a big crack and a flash in the corner of my eye and I felt something in my ankle. I had been electrocuted! No kidding. The damn lightning traveled from the hotel roof down with the rainwater to my damn ankle. It didn't hurt very much, but it was certainly a shock. Literally and figuratively.

After that we drove home in the pouring rain in the back of the truck. We wrapped our towels around our heads because rain hurts when you're driving at any speed through it. Especially the big drops that come off the trees.

And after we got home, there was the most intense and long-lasting thunder storm I've ever seen. I liked Puerto Vallarta more than ever yesterday. It was fun at last.