Livin' la vida alta

Greetings from Paradise.

Vallarta is fantastic. It's sunny, hot and humid, yet not so much so that it's uncomfortable. We're down in Conchas Chinas, a residential community just south of the main town. It's just far enough out to get away from the crowds, noise and itinerant vendors of the city (which we have yet to explore).

We're staying at Casa Tres Vidas, in the top villa, Vida Alta. The place has exceeded our every expectation; the diminutive pictures on the site do not do it justice. The villa is palatial and the staff extremely pleasant and accommodating. The place is three bedrooms and five baths, with a private rooftop deck with a petite waist-deep pool. An adjacent stairway takes you down to a secluded cove accessible by only a few buildings locally.

The bedrooms are the only rooms where there's air conditioning. Everything else is open-air, with the main living and dining area fronted by a colonnade fringed by lush vines with large yellow and pink blossoms. These attract butterflies of every stripe (and dot and squiggle) as well as colossal bumble bees bigger than thumbs. In the evening come tremendous moths that we mistook initially for hummingbirds. Roving gangs of pelicans and shearwaters frigate birds cruise past our balconies patrolling for dinner. Sunsets last forever. By night it's nothing but the call of birds, chirping frogs and barking geckos as lightning flickers across the horizon. We've even had a visiting iguana.

The water in the bay, in the pool and that occasionally falls from the sky is roughly the same temperature: bathwater. I just finished spending roughly an hour languishing atop a pool float. Had I not had to go to the bathroom I might have stayed another hour, and I am surely heading back up soon.

That's about it. The most strenuous thing we've done so far is lift bottles to our mouths, and the most stressful decisions involved figuring out what we want to consume for the next 24 hours. Since I'll be starting a new contract gig on Monday, I am grateful for the opportunity to plumb the very depths of relaxation before re-entering the real world.