Merry Christmas! (is it time to shave?)

Current Locations: Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
Distance cycled to date: 6343 km
Photos taken to date: 4332
Days since we left home: 112

It's been 11 days since our last entry, and it seems like in those 11 days we haven't really done anything. We know that can't be true though, so we thought we'd write something here anyway.

Jeff's birthday turned out to be quite a success – we stayed at a campground for two nights full of Canadian RVs, and they turned out to be a very welcoming, generous crowd. We were treated to free drinks, coffee and fresh squeezed orange juice to start our days, taken out for lunch, and to finish off the day Jeff was presented with a birthday cake, a card, two small gifts and everybody singing Happy Birthday. We also met a German couple who invited us along on a jungle river cruise, so we spent part of our day touring some really cool mangrove swamps and spotted lots of birds that we had never heard of before (and still couldn't tell you what they are), turtles, iguanas, and even a few crocodiles. Considering the circumstances, I don't think he could have asked for a better birthday. Thanks to everybody who sent in an email as well – he was very surprised when we finally got to check our email and our inbox was full of so many well-wishes from so many people. Thank you.

From our campground we made our way slowly to Puerto Vallarta, taking some short days cycling up and down the steep hills, in a hot and humid jungle that was so different from anything we saw on the Baja. We've started to see lots of squished lizards, snakes (some a whole lot bigger than we'd like to see), and iguanas on the road. The closer we got to Puerto Vallarta the crazier traffic became, and on our last day coming into the city while very slowly making our way up a steep hill with constant traffic beside us on the shoulderless road, a mini-van decided to pass the truck and boat that was passing me. While there was oncoming traffic coming down the hill. The boat was pretty much touching me as I tried not to fall down the steep ditch, the oncoming traffic was partly in their ditch, and the van scraped along between both the vehicles. Literally. Four of us, side by side, all touching, on that skinny 2 lane road. There was lots of shouting out of windows, but nobody seemed to think it was that big of a deal, and eventually traffic got moving again. We stopped for a break in the ditch to let our heart-rate slow down a little.

Before leaving Canada, our family had decided to meet us for Christmas in Mexico. We had no idea where we'd be, so they finally decided on Puerto Vallarta, because we could be close to there, and it's a fairly cheap place to get to from Canada. With the good time that we made going down the Baja we thought that we would be long past Puerto Vallarta and have to catch a bus back, but when a family friend heard this he decided to go ahead and book us in a very nice hotel here for the 13th-20^th. And so, we graciously accepted and slowed down to make it here for the 13^th. We got here that day, and spent the week taking full advantage of having a room, indoors. We showered daily, often twice a day, and cooked our meals in our kitchenette, and stored food in a fridge. We sat around and watched tv, and enjoyed an air-conditioned room. All in all, it was a great week. Our string of amazing people from Oregon continued, and a retired couple that was vacationing here took us out for a delicious steak dinner, and then brought us a Pizza Hut pizza the next evening. We've been pretty spoiled.

Our family isn't arriving for a couple more days, so we have 3 days of our old style living – camping for free on the beach and eating our meals on the curb outside the grocery store. It's good to have this break from luxury, in order to appreciate it again on the 23^rd. We're very, very excited about spending Christmas with our family and getting a chance to show them all our pictures, tell them all those stories that we forget to email, and of course, show off our nice beards for them. There have been many complaints about them throughout the trip, and we are fairly certain that our mom is going to force us to become clean-shaven again. We're not sure what the public opinion is on this, so we're going to put up a poll asking what you think. We know it's only 4 days until Christmas and probably you have something better to do than vote whether we should keep our beards or not. But if you have a few minutes to spare visit our blog site and vote. (Just one vote, everybody. Especially you, mom). We want to know what you think. And who knows? Maybe you can even convince our mom to let us keep them. Or maybe we'll find out overwhelmingly that everybody wants us to shave. We thought we'd include a picture of ourselves taken fairly recently, with our beards, camping in an informal Mexican dump. (A great place to camp, by the way)

With 30 degree Celsius heat, palm trees everywhere and bright sunshine it hardly seems like Christmas here – but it's not really something we can complain about, because I'm sure there are a few of you out there who would trade us your snow for this. We want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. Hopefully wherever in the world you find yourself you're able to have a great holiday season.

Now just let us know about these beards – canadatoargentina.blogspot.com.