Mexican Riviera Cruise - Puerto Vallarta

Our first stop on the cruise was Puerto Vallarta. Fortunately, we were there before the civil unrest broke out there a few weeks later. It's a good thing, too, because our excursion there was the highlight of the cruise for our family. Danny and I had done this excursion about 9 years ago when we did this cruise with the Miner family adults. We thought it was one of the coolest things either of us had ever done in our lives and we wanted our kids to experience it, too. It is called an outdoor adventure. The day started with a 30-minute catamaran ride to this bay full of pelicans.

Shortly after we started the boat ride, we stopped to see some whales in the area. It was a momma and baby whale. I didn't quite get the picture of the whales before they went under again.

Here is the bay. The boat on the left side of the picture is full of pelicans.

After the boat ride, we got onto these big jeeplike vehicles for a rough ride up the mountain.

When we got to the base camp, we had the chance to use the restrooms and changing rooms before getting our gear on. At this point, we also had to leave behind all of our belongings, including our cameras. But they did let us take a quick picture with the gear before we stowed everything away.

The next thing we did was get on the back of a mule for a climb up the mountain. It was funny to see some of the mules compete for the front. Any time one would start running, all of the others around it would run, too. 

After the mule ride, we started the ziplines. The first 2 were pretty average, with the second one being a bit longer. From there, every zipline changed. We rappelled down a waterfall, ziplined down into water, hung upside down, stood on a surfboard, rode a roller coaster zipline with a plunge under the water at the end, dropped straight down off of a platform, and rode some waterslides. It was so much fun! The kids loved it. Camden was just sad because he came off of his pad on the last waterslide and it was really slow for him. All of the kids thought that the rappel down the waterfall was the scariest one. 

After we finished, they showed us our pictures that the camera guy had taken for us along the way. They looked really cool, but we all decided that we could store the memories in our heads, rather than paying the $200 they were asking for them. We got chips and salsa and guac after that and had some time to hang out a bit.

While we were eating, we saw this HUGE spider in the tree.

After the whole excursion group got done on the ziplines, we got back on the jeep things and rode down the mountain again. Then we got back on the catamaran for the boat ride back. We stopped at these arches and cool rocks on the way back.

After we got off the catamaran's we walked back to cruise ship. We passed through the little tourist booths to pick out some souvenirs when we got close to the ship. We got each of the kids a t-shirt and then got back on the ship. The military guys wouldn't let us get a picture with them, so we just got our own picture with the ship before heading on.

There was a family that ended up on the same jeep as us and were just in front of us on the ziplines that we talked a bit with that day. They also had 4 kids (2 boys and 2 girls) and were from Idaho. We found out after talking with them that their oldest son was graduating this year and heading out on a mission. After the tour, we started seeing them all over the ship for the rest of the week.