Los Tules is Fabulous! (As Usual!)

We are really enjoying the beautiful 3 BD, 3 BA unit and the views around the property.  Ron's brother Merlyn and wife Mary are here with us.

Kitchen has gas stove with oven

Master bath has lots of tilework

Large patio also has two chaises

 

Beautiful arches throughout property

Another view from the balcony
 

Invasion of Privacy? at Villa del Palmar

Unbelievable.  We had a day overlap between our stay at Villa del Palmar and Los Tules.  We moved most of our stuff over in a taxi with Merlyn’s suitcases too in order to make the move easy, but left some items at VDP, including dirty dishes which we always wash up before leaving.  Ron returned tonight to take a shower and pick up more things, and found the room EMPTY and TOTALLY CLEANED for a new occupant – except for a few bags of his things left on the perfectly made-up bed.  The entire kitchen was returned to its original state and the extra table and chairs which we had been able to get since there had only been two chairs (the unit not having been finished with the remodeling). Our papers and personal things were all missing, including the receipt from returning the pool towels which had been on the table,– a charge which we would be held responsible for --  and other assorted papers, not really important, but, after all, they were ours.  Joan said that we needed to go back right away and tell about the pool towel receipt or we could be charged for them during Sunday morning at check out. 
    We returned to VDP and went to the unit: our keys still worked.  Fortunately, the SAFE HAD NOT BEEN TOUCHED; otherwise we would have had NOTHING!   The gal at the front desk agreed that we were NOT checked out and she quickly wrote a towel receipt for us….but no explanation why someone had cleaned the unit, when
a.  we still had personal things there, 
b.  we were not checked out, and
c.  the Do Not Disturb tag was on the door. 
d.  And….the total insistence that that building was a Sunday check-in and check-out building (despite our contract that says Saturday and the UVC policy that Fixed weeks are Saturday-Saturday.
      So why was it cleaned on Saturday for new occupancy?

Los Tules: Pure Relaxation Is Possible Now!

We just moved into a 3 BD unit here at Los Tules (from RCI), sharing it with Ron’s brother Merlyn and his wife Mary.  They had rented three days at VDP in a studio to extend their visit to more than a week, and then we would move to Los Tules with a day overlap to make the move more easily.  The unit is very large, with 3 BD and 3 BA, and an oceanfront view, overlooking one of the eight pools on the property.  There is a large balcony with doors both from the master bedroom and living room where we can hear the ocean waves constantly.

View from balcony and master bedroom

Grounds view from second  bedroom

Ron Lost His Wallet

We’d gone to Wal-Mart and gotten groceries with Mary and Merlyn, we were at the bus stop and Ron got his wallet out to get the fare – he had his out as usual, but got it out to get Merlyn’s and Mary’s --  and thought he slid it back into his cargo pants pocket but apparently not, because when we got back to the room, it was not there.  So it either did not get into the pocket and therefore slipped to the ground or else in the crowded bus…which was so jam packed we were totally smothered standing, he was pickpocketed.  Which every way, it was gone!  He rushed back to the bus stop (quite a long ways actually) but of course, by then it was gone completely. A policeman who happened to be there just shrugged and said, “Cancel your credit cards.”  The resort here was nice enough to make the calls for us so Ron was able to talk to them right away.
     But, we got the card canceled but the real thing of value lost was his driver’s license (we won’t even consider the cash in the wallet significant, compared to that – 500 pesos, a little less than $50).  We looked on the Web how to get a replacement:  no problem in Ohio, it said, just come into a licensing office and…..Oh, we’re not going to Ohio, we’re‘ going to Seattle!
       Fortunately his passport and military ID was in the room’s safe, so we only have to figure out how to get a replacement license; and meanwhile Joan will drive in Seattle when we get back.

TUGGER Gathering at the Marina

We had a nice group at the Marina area, [Donna and Tim, Emmy and Peter, Merlyn and Mary, Steve and Kay, and us] and had chosen a new and (previously?) favorite small restaurant, the Mariachiles, where we had lunch last week.  The food was good, but so slow: poor Ron, the one who probably needed to eat the soonest, was served last, almost 2 hours after we got there; Joan had finally given him some of hers when she saw that he had nothing for so long, and he said that  he began to feel better (he needs to eat every 3-4 hours with his diabetes).
    We hadn’t noticed the time at first since we were busy talking (three people were completely done eating before some of the others got served.)  But we were not in a hurry, so it was a relaxing and enjoyable evening.  (But, probably not such a good place for a large group; we were there about three hours. But they are new, so working out the details.)  Took the bus home and got back in time to see the Olympics Ladies Free Skate.

Great Days in Puerto Vallarta

What a blessing to be able to be here in warm weather while the rest of the country is pretty well buried in snow (Seattle in rain.)  Everyone down here has “escaped!”  (True “Snowbirds.”)
   Joan can swim everyday, Ron is playing shuffleboard twice a week with a group of men, we are meeting new friends and seeing older ones (oh, previously known ones, not OLD! haha), and Ron’s brother Merlyn comes in today for a week with us.

        We’ve been out to eat 3 times, more than usual of course, but meeting with friends, and will tonight and tomorrow night  too – then Saturday we move to Los Tules for the next 2 weeks   – in a 3 BD while Merlyn and Mary are here ) (from RCI) and then will move to a 1 BD in the same resort for the final week (from Platinum Interchange).

     The local grocery store (Soriano) is right across the street (but…, it’s an 8-lane fast traveling city street, with islands between each 2 lanes, so we quickly walk from island to island trying to “beat the light”) but we go there about every other day.  Costco is a 20 minute walk and we went the second day we were here and loaded up – then took a taxi back.  We may need to go there again…. Prices are about the same as stateside – no real food bargains -- just some different things available in the local store.  Costco inventory is about the same as in the US.
  We own fixed weeks here at Villa del Palmar - bought them on eBay maybe 5 years ago?– weeks 6 and 7 in a 1 BD in this resort– the most popular time to travel down here.  Those contracts will end in 2016 and we aren’t coming next year – Natalie has a big concert Valentine’s Day with the Auburn Symphony.  We’ve already found a renter here for those weeks.   So we’ll just be one more year with our ownership. 

Arrival in VDP

We arrived after midnight last night to Villa del Palmar.  One great thing about the trip:  since we had changed planes and gone through customs at AeroMéxico’s layover in Mexico City, we did not have to go through customs in Puerto Vallarta so it was so easy to just to pick up our bags and leave.  Also, there were fewer timeshare people in the gauntlet line on the way out!      
     However as we checked in, since we were so late, our request to stay in another unit could not be honored  (Okay…) but they said they were absolutely full!  Seemed to be a question about any unit available!  (Hey!  What happened to our fixed week unit we own?)  Another gal came over to help our clerk and then finally noticed that we were owners!  And of a remodeled unit!  she said happily to us.   Our owned unit had been remodeled but when we got inside, we saw why it had not been assigned yet!  It was not finished….furniture was missing, curtains were missing….What??? 
     We called the next morning and got another little table and 2 more chairs… so at least we could put our “stuff” down easily…and seat 4 to eat for when Ron’s brother comes.
     Joan “fixed up” the room with our placemats and pictures, we got flowers at Costco, and then we were “Home.” 

MCO-PVR: How did we get here?

After a month in St Augustine, we headed for Puerto Vallarta.  Usually we had Week 5 empty between our fixed FL and PV stays, and we would go to Seattle to check on Joan’s mother.  It was also cheaper to fly to PV from Seattle.  However, since Joan’s mother passed away last April, that visit was not needed and airfare is suddenly so much higher, even from Seattle, so we decided to just stay south and fly from there.
    We had received Delta Dollars when we had to cancel some Seattle flights after Joan’s mother’s death last April, but that Delta $$ would expire in mid-February, 2014.  As well, we had an Alaska Companion Ticket to use before June 2014 and had no upcoming trips to use it on.
   Therefore, we decided to book two one-way tickets, since we wanted to be in Seattle in March-April anyway:  Orlando to Puerto Vallarta on Feb 9, then PV to SEA on March 7.  Yes, it was a “waste” to use the Companion Ticket on a one-way, but it worked out so well into the schedule this time; usually we had round-trips and had to get a second ticket to Seattle.

   Then…..where to leave the van?

We could leave it at our St Augustine timeshare until May, so we decided to go to Orlando with our friends, Nancy and Stu, spend a week at a timeshare there, then take our van back to St Augustine and park it.  Flying out of Orlando was the best price we could find in Florida, so we only needed to figure out how to get the van parked:  we rented a Fox rental car for $17 total for 24 hours, left the Magic Tree timeshare on Saturday the 8^th, drove to St Augustine, parked, and then drove to Daytona and stayed one night at Wyndham Ocean Walk.  That made easier driving days than a round trip back to Orlando.  We drove to Orlando on Sunday, returned the rental car and caught our flight.
    Even though it was a well-executed plan, we were pretty tired when we arrived in Puerto Vallarta!

Where Do We Park the Car(s)?

Some have asked about what we do with our vehicles when we fly back and forth from the East Coast to the West Coast.

1.     We have two vehicles:  an Excursion van on the East coast (2000) and a 2002 van (soon to be a sedan) on the West Coast.  We used to just rent a car for the few days we would be in Seattle visiting Joan’s mother, but when our son offered to sell his Oasis to us when he was getting a new one some years ago, we bought it and it was much less expensive than renting, even with maintenance and taxi fares (from the airport to the condo where we would park it).

2.     It’s funny: people think we’re “so rich” because we have a car in the West, when we’re in Seattle, and another one in the East when we drive to timeshares and visiting family/friends.  But we are simply, a “regular two-car family.”  The vehicles just happen to be in two different places. 

3.    We had wondered about what to do about parking for extended times and asked our friends, Judy and George, who live in Florida in the summer and have an apartment in Steamboat Springs in the winter: they park a vehicle in a garage in CO.

4.    However, since we move about, at least in the East, we would need various places to park.  When we would be in Seattle for just a few days, checking on Joan’s mother, it was easy and not too expensive to just leave the vehicle in the airport parking lot wherever we flew from.  No big deal.  But when we were going to be gone for month or more, that was a different problem.

5.    What we’ve done:  Our great friend Quinn, in Ohio, let us leave our car at his place: he had plenty of room, and we were going back often, at first, to see doctors and friends; our friend, Buzz in Daytona, whom we bought the first St Augustine unit from (on eBay) insisted that we leave our car at his house;  Ron’s Army buddy friend of fifty years lives in Douglasville, GA, close to Atlanta (and very close to Villa Rica where Wyndham’s Plantation is) has room to keep our car for months; Ron’s brother in Jackson, MS and Knoxville, TN, has room; our son Keenan lives in Springfield IL, and the  Bloomington airport, one hour away where Delta flies into, has FREE PARKING!!!!! so we’ve left it there; Marv and Myrna near Chicago have offered to keep it, and so forth……  Our schedule then, is to fly in and out of airports where it is convenient to leave the car.  Unfortunately, both Quinn and Buzz have passed since we have started this Journey, but we seldom go to Ohio anymore and the timeshare in St Augustine (TAS) will let us  park our car there during the wintertime (not the busy summer, which we understand); therefore, this year in May, we will return to St Augustine from Seattle, flying into Jacksonville this time – our return trip to Seattle will be in October, with several flying trips “nested” inside those dates: to Europe in May, back and forth to Seattle in June and CO in August.

6.    Leaving the car in Seattle, we parked it in one of our son’s condo parking lots (he has two rental condos); this was easy since they are just 15 minutes form SEA-TAC and we could easily take a taxi (cheaper than Super Shuttle for two people) rather than bother the family to pick us up:  we often came in late and they live much further away.

7.    Occasionally, our timing is such, especially in the Midwest, where we need to spend a night close to an airport before flying out.  Then we use www.stay123.com  to find a good Fly and Park hotel rate, where we can leave the car at the motel and take their shuttle.  Many of them have 7 or even 14 days free parking with just a one night stay.  We often use the Days Inn, Bloomington, MN to fly in and out of when we are visiting Ron’s Aunt Velva in Rochester.   We have often also stayed near SEA-TAC or ATL to catch an early flight or to make it more convenient for a friend to pick us up.

8.    To leave the cars further away from the parking spot (e.g. when we park in St Augustine) we will rent a car for one day and then drive the van to park it and return the rental (comparing one-way rental or return prices).  We learned this from a TUG posting: it can be cheaper to rent one day than taking the airport shuttles.  For example, we flew into Orlando last April, and rented a car from FOX at the airport for a total of $12 for the 24 hours.  We drove to St Augustine, picked up our van and drove back to Orlando to return the rental. This month, we flew out of Orlando and it was $17 for the 24-hour FOX rental car to park our van in St Augustine.  In 2009, when our other van broke down on I-75 and we had a AAA tow to Valdosta GA (exactly 100 miles from where we were stopped, for the AAA Plus towing mileage) on the way to the Daytona airport, we left the van at the motel in Valdosta, got a one-way rental and drove it to Daytona in time to catch our plane.

      Thus, the question is always:  What and where is the cheapest flight rate near a place we can leave the vehicle?  And a schedule which would be convenient for that friend to pick us up?
     BTW, some of you will ask, But is it safe to leave your car for months, or even in an airport parking lot?

1.     Because of the electronics in vehicles nowadays which are ALWAYS on (the anti-theft blinker, the clock, etc), Ron always unhooks the battery when we leave it for extended times (he forgot once….oops!)

2.    Surprisingly, we have had only three instances of vandalism over all our years, and they all were while we were parked where we were actually staying:  once at Vacation Village in Weston, FL, once at the condo in Renton, WA, and this last summer at a motel in IA.  Each time, the vandals were looking for very specific things and did not bother anything else but these items, in this order:  cash, a radio, electronics.

3.    Ron puts up dark curtains along all the windows to make it harder for people to see what is inside (taking our cue from Ray Harper’s notes which said they put black cloth along the back seat.)

4.    We had to decide that we can’t worry about “things”—the items we carry with us (and obviously our van is absolutely loaded with items to “live” with) are of little value and replaceable. 

     Except……we almost left our laptops in the van this June at the Comfort Inn in Coralville, IA since we had come in so late and were so tired, we knew we would not use them.  That was the very night a gang of thieves broke out the windows of vehicles in several motels…but took only the electronics they could find.  They opened Ron’s CPAC bag, maybe thinking it was a camera but left it, and Joan’s violin was right there too – but no laptops!  We had taken them inside!   Lesson learned:  Leave no electronics!  (Should have taken in the violin though, too, for safety…we usually do not have it with us, but we were going to Ohio where she would play.)  Lesson learned!!

Another Day Trip to Daytona

Our friends from Wisconsin were down for a week’s vacation in Daytona, staying at the Seven Seas, an older motel conversion, but quite comfortable and their room 102 was oceanfront.  We drove over from Orlando to spend the day and had a good time walking down the beach (despite a short rainstorm) and then ate at Joe’s Crab Shack, right on the pier.  Cari’s husband, Don, had not had a vacation for ten years and wanted to eat seafood!  And also buy a Marilyn Monroe T-shirt.  It was hard to find one of those without tattoos covering her (??) but we found one shop that had a nice picture. We got a T-short, also, for Clayton – one with a saying about “Grandma and Grandpa” – more for younger children, but he will have fun wearing it at home.

Cari and Joan

   Such a fun day and we’ll see them again when we go to Telemark in September.

Go Seahawks!

We had a wonderful time watching the Super Bowl this year!  especially since we were with good friends Nancy and Stu in Orlando.
    We were prepared!! with the shirts Joan's brother Dave and Linda gave us for Christmas.  Of course, we had to bring them to Florida to
                 BE PREPARED!

St Augustine to Orlando

We checked out of our St Augustine unit today, where we have been for five weeks!  It’s always difficult packing up after having such a good time here, but we were in no hurry as we only had to drive to Orlando to check into the Magic Tree Resort (a 2 BD bonus week from Platinum Interchange) with Nancy and Stu, meeting them there as they drove from Daytona.  Checking with GasBuddy, we saw that gas was so much cheaper in Orlando and Costco was the best in Alamonte Springs.  Rob was sure we would make it:  Joan was not so sure.  The gas mileage countdown gauge registered differently than reality as we watched it and calculated, because for the last month, just driving around the St Augustine area, we had not been loaded; and now, so heavy, we were using a lot more gas – a third more, we were carefully calculating, (also as it’s best not use the cruise control with a heavy load.)   Meanwhile, Stu and Nancy were also hoping to make it to Costco to get gas:  of course, Ron and Stu were sure we would all make it in time, Joan and Nancy hate running on the last gas gasps. 

 Well, we both made it: our indicator showed 2 miles left in the tank.  Yikes!

     We drove on to Magic Tree, and enjoyed it as we had before (see April 2014).  We stopped at Golden Corral for a late lunch (it is “Linner”?) so we would not have to cook our first day there. 
     The weather was warm most of the week and the pool was perfect.