Acupulco

So I got pictures from Acupulco as well as Day of the Dead, so I edited my Dia de Los Muertos post if you care to see pictures of the things I tried and failed to describe. So anyway, Acupulco...

We traveled through the night with two kids in our laps. I spent the night in the bathroom puking into toilets that Mexicans don't flush (it was putrid and miserable!) We got there around 7am and went to the hotel that we had chosen out of our travel book, Lonely Planet (which by the way I highly recommend when traveling!) We paid and went to our room only to discover LICE in the bed!! THANKFULLY Chad scrutenized the sheets before plopping down, so no one got infested. We promptly went down stairs and got our money back. Then we wandered around for SEVERAL hours hunting for a hotel that would fit all of us for a decent price. Finally, we took a bus to the neighboring town, Pie de la Cuesta - the foot of the coast. The bus was all metal rusted through. It was a very dusty hour. We were exhausted, nasty, and hungry. Then we had to walk about a mile with our luggage and kids and stayed at the first hotel we saw which was CHEAP and nice from the outside. Inside was not even as nice as Rock Eagle 4H camp cabins. It was hole. And the whole experience was totally something out of a missionary story, except that there happened to not be any chickens on the bus that day.

So we promptly hit the beach and pool.  It felt SO good!  Then the kids napped with Chad while the rest of us wandered around looking for a better hotel and some stuff to do.  The town barely qualifies as a wide spot in the road!  There's NOTHING there.  I happened to find some Dramamine for the trip home.  So I was excited about that.  Here are some other things we found in town.

This is so typical of Mexico.  Paradise, but dumpy, trashy (note the piles of trash in the sand), and in disrepair.  It's really quite sad!!

Everyone has pet birds!

These are two places we ate.  The top two pictures are of the restaurant attached to our hotel.  All of the businesses in town were attached to people's houses - in their back yard.

So, Sunday was a good day.  We took a tour of the island that we found in the Lonely Planet.  The guy that does the tours was SO NICE!  On one side of the street is the ocean and on the other side is the Lagoon, and that's the entire city.  The tour we went on took us on a boat out into the Lagoon, to some islands in there.  It was crazy cool.  There were birds ALL over this one island we went past.  Note all of the white on the top of the rocks in the background, that's bird poop!

Then we got off the boat and went on to a sort of tropical safari.  We saw banyan trees, which if you've ever seen are really cool.  They grow tentacles that turn into additional tree trunks.  We went along this crazy bridge through the trees.  This picture doesn't do that bridge justice.  It was crazy!  Parts of it were like going up stairs, and it felt very... thrown together.  There were huge termite mounds on the trees and tons of ants along the bridge.  That morning Chad bought some flip flops because he forgot to pack his.  Well, they lasted about an hour or so.  On the bridge, he stepped in some ants.  Since he was carrying Chloe, he tried to kick the ants off, and his shoe went over the side of the bridge.  So he was stuck walking the rest of the day through rocks and stuff with only one shoe!  Poor guy! 

On the other side of the probably 1/4 to 1/2 mile bridge was a little wildlife preserve. We saw an iguana and a boa constrictor.

Just before this picture, the snake was hissing.  Then it tried to strike his face.  It tried struck at Chad's face!  He was done holding it after that.  So we moved on to the alligator pit.  There's a piece of chicken sticking out of this guy's mouth.  

After that, we got back on the boat and went to another little island with a nice restaurant and a pool and stuff.  We spent the rest of the day there.  They also had some pet monkeys.  This girl was creepy.  She moved so much like a human and was CRABBY!  She tried to attack Chloe.  The keeper grabbed her out of the way and she was traumatized.  I think she was mostly upset though because the guy grabbed her.  I wanted to kick the monkey.  Though I also felt bad for her being roped up like that. 

After that, we relaxed at the pool and had lunch/dinner.  Service here is typically slow.  But here, it was SO slow that we ordered a late lunch and didn't get it until early after noon when it was almost time to leave - about 2, 2.5 hours.  It was a nice and relaxing time though.  They also had this ball to play in.  It was SO MUCH FUN but also a lot of work!  

We were all exhausted on the ride home.  Everett slept through a diaper change!  And even Chloe dozed off I think.  It was a lot of fun. 

The next day, we hit the bus for home and it took ALL day. But you've already read about that.  The one thing of further note is that on the subway, there was a nicely dressed girl (that's odd enough.  On the whole, it seems like men dress better than women here.)  with a pet iguana on her shoulder.  That thing had little vest with a leash attached.  It was crazy!