Yelapa

On Tuesday, we drove south of Puerto Vallarta to Bocas de Tomitlan, a little beach town right before the road leaves the beach. We went there to take a water taxi to Yelapa. Yelapa is a town with no roads going to it, has been a well known end of the world spot for many years, if you really want to get away from it all.

We had a beer while we were waiting for the water taxi, and then got on for the 30 minute ride to Yelapa. We spoke to a gringa on the taxi who retired to Yelapa from the US forest service, she loves it there, told us to get off at the village, not the beach. We started walking up towards the famous waterfall, stopping for beer and bathroom stop at Mimi`s cafe.

The water fall is pretty nice, with perhaps a 40 foot drop into a large pool, where some people were swimming. There we met a couple of ladies from New Orleans who had been taking photos of butterflies and flowers. They were there for ten days, seemed like a long time for a small place. We saw a very large all white butterfly, nothing any of us had seen before. They toured us around a bit, and then we headed back to Mimi`s to wait for the water taxi. We got chatting with Mimi, who told us her life story, with her parents divorcing when she was very young, living a few years in California, then returning to Mexico. She had been in Yelapa for 22 years, has four kids, youngest 15 years old.

We headed for the dock, where Richard panicked because he could not find the taxi ticket. He headed back to Mimi`s, but she was already walking down with the ticket, which had fallen out of his pocket. We rode back on the taxi with a nice couple from Denver, Ian and Clarisa?. We gave them a ride back to town. We headed back to our condo, where a Mexican fiesta was in progress, including a good Mariachi band.

We drove over to Los Arbolitos restaurant, up to the third floor overlooking the Cuale River. The service and ambience was good, but the food was forgettable.

We were all pretty tired by the time we got back to the condo, and agreed to defer a decision about our trip to Talpa for the morning, to see how we felt.