The last three stops (over the course of four days) had us in Mexico. Specifically, we visited Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas, and Ensenada. We’ve been to Mexico many times – including Puerto Vallarta and Cabo – so we didn’t do much while in port. Instead, we just roamed around a little and relaxed in preparation for our next segment on the cruise.

In Puerto Vallarta, Matthew got a haircut at a local barbershop. We aren’t even close to fluent in Spanish, so Matthew was in some ways quite brave to cut his hair without us truly being able to say what he wanted. But he had a great attitude about it in that hair grows back and it would be his first haircut outside of the United States. We think it turned out great!

After his haircut, we went to a little hole-in-the-wall bar to get some wifi and download music and movies for the next segment. The bartender, Diana, was great. She would play some music and sing along, and after the song was 60-70% over she’d switch to another song. It was her own style of ADHD (according to her). She got Matthew some fresh coconut water (straight from the coconut) and then added some rum to it (after getting our permission and his approval) because she said it just tasted better that way. Matthew was delighted to try it. 🙂

He didn’t really care for the drink though, so he didn’t finish it. Diana then gave him a crayon so he could write his name on the wall to make his mark in Mexico. Here’s an image of him defacing the property (with permission, of course).

That was the extent of our time in Puerto Vallarta. Ryan chose to stay on the ship since we weren’t doing much beyond the haircut and wifi stop. Our next location was Cabo San Lucas, where only John and I got off the ship. The boys chose to say onboard and work on school and watch some movies (Matthew apparently had a Barbenheimer day – watched both Barbie AND Oppenheimer!). We didn’t do much here either. We walked around town a little and went to Cabo Wabo (Sammy Hagar’s cantina) where we played some Yahtzee while enjoying some margaritas.

Oh, we did see a “catch” that the ship got – a swordfish that would be served at mealtime. The freshness of the food is a topic for another post – amazing.

Finally, we visited Ensenada. It was pretty chilly (for Mexico) so it was again a pretty brief day in terms of exploration. The boys stayed behind again while John and I moseyed about a bit. Nothing special – just walking along and exploring the area immediately off the ship.