Celebrating the Holidays…Isla style

No snow trips over the hills and through the woods to Grandma’s house this year.  Spending the holidays on a warm, usually sunny beach in a foreign country was quite a change from the frigid, snowy holidays most of my relatives spent in Chicago and Colorado!

The first celebration occurred a week before Christmas.  My next door neighbors here at Tres Amigos, Rolf and Jackie from Alberta, hosted a big Full Moon beach bonfire get-together for all the residents of “RV1” (Tres Amigos is divided into 2 separate parks with a hotel and restaurant in between).


The next RV1 event was Movie Night on the Saturday night before Christmas.  Two of the RVs here are parked awning to awning, so they offered their large covered space as our “theater” while one of the other RVers brought over his large LCD TV and sound bar for our screening.  What better movie for a group of RVers in Mexico to watch than “We’re the Millers”, Jennifer Aniston’s raunchy but funny comedy about a low-level drug dealer who rents an RV to smuggle marijuana back to the U.S. from Mexico and pulls together a very unlikely bunch who pretend to be a “typical RVing family” on a vacation.  It was hilarious!

Christmas day was celebrated with an afternoon potluck dinner just before sunset.  Everyone in RV1 went all out to make their very best dishes so the food was across-the-board delicious.



Christmas night’s sunset wasn’t too shabby either!



The T1Nnie Winnie may not have been covered in snow, but it still felt festive to come home to…



For New Year’s Eve, RV1 decided to do a bonfire and hors d'oeuvres on the beach right after sunset.  What a spectacular sunset it was!!!  A rainstorm was approaching, so the skies were getting moody just as a big cruise ship was pulling out of the harbor headed to Puerto Vallarta.  Since it was darker than usual, the ship already had it’s lights on and the combination of brilliant skies and dotted lights on the ship were just breathtaking!

Not 5 minutes after taking these photos, the skies opened up and soaked us (and the firewood) for a good 10 minutes or so.  Fortunately, our men of RV1 are quite resourceful and found that using toilet paper as extra kindling and dousing the whole pile of wood with citronella oil got the soggy wood burning in no time!



Once the fire got going, it was time to fill up our plates (by flashlight!) with all sorts of yummy finger food--



Unfortunately, our bonfire celebration was short-lived.  More rain came through about an hour later to quickly disband our festivities, but it was sure fun while it lasted!


I
n between Christmas and New Year’s, my fellow View-owner friend (and full-time RVer), Suzanne of TakeToTheHighway came to visit for a few days between her 2 mini vacations of the Copper Canyon train ride and celebrating the New Year in Oaxaca with her brother.  We managed to get her a great deal at the Maria Coral hotel next door to the RV park, and the view from her 3rd floor room was quite something!



The hotel even had a nice view of the “RV2” side of Tres Amigos.



We enjoyed sampling a variety of Isla restaurants, from the fancier beach-side seafood restaurant, to a couple of the in-town “mom and pop” cucinas. One provided a great birds-eye view of the main intersection in town on a hoppin’ Friday night…



Contessa hosted a happy hour and dinner at her place on Saturday for all 6 bloggers on the Isla and called it our first International Bloggers Conference (click the link for Colin & Contessa’s great pics and links to each of the blogs)



Suzanne was thrilled to finally see the Isla and meet Contessa!



On our final morning, Suzanne and I rented kayaks and headed to the “bird island” for some exploration. 




We both have rather goofy personalities and have often joked that we are a bit like “Lucy & Ethel” when ever we happen to meet up.  I took my GoPro camera along just in case our kayaking adventure happened to include a capsize or shark attack, but thankfully Lucy & Ethel encountered no such calamities this time around and only shared goofy fun and lots of laughs.

Here’s a little video of our trip!


On to 2014!