Our dear friends Bob and Pallas Quist, and their three children Freya, Carlos and Leo, had been living in Costa Rica until last summer when they moved to Puerta Vallarta, Mexico. We last saw them, B.L. (before Leo) and B.T. (before Trinity) when they were driving down to C.R. to set up their new home and business. That was apparently 6 years ago already. We were pretty excited when we heard they'd be so close to us now, although over the last 6 years we had always intended to visit them in Costa Rica. I'm sorry we won't be taking that trip, at least not to visit the Quists in C.R., but then I got a bit excited about visiting PV. That's basically like civilization compared to the town of Zihuatantejo. We wrote each-other off and on via e-mail over the 6 months after they moved to PV, but never managed to set a time to hook up.
Pallas called me on New Year's Day to say that they were leaving PV. Their new plan was to move to Singapore again. Yikes! Singapore! It'll be YEARS before we can afford a visit there! She asked if we'd be up for a joint family visit, perhaps meeting in the middle between Zihua and PV. She suggested we meet the next day. Given we didn't even have a town chosen, we decided to make it two days later, Thursday January 3. I was beside myself with unexpected excitement, but I was also beside myself with tons of stuff to suddenly do. Our cleaning lady Denise (of course) had not come in that day, and didn't come in on Wednesday, so it was up to me to do all the laundry, packing, shopping for travel snacks and find a town and hotel.
We agreed upon Manzanillo, because it was only about 5 hours from PV, and about 7 hours from Zihuatanejo. We've done 7 hour drives with Trinity before, several times in fact, so we knew this would be do-able for us. The Quists were coming with Grandpa Carlos and niece Isabelle in addition to the kids, so it seemed only fair to keep their trip down to as few hours as possible. An added benefit to Manzanillo was the opportunity to visit with our friends Bonnie and Hugh, who helped us retrieve our container from shipping storage hell oh-so-many years ago. This would be our first trip back to Manzanillo since early 2002 when we went to visit Bonnie and Hugh.
Mal and Jenny dropped by on Wednesday the 2nd while I was busily preparing for the trip. They were so surprised that we were leaving on the spur of the moment for a little vacation that Mal actually asked if I needed to have my head examined. Andy and I are not known for spontaneity, mainly because we generally have to plan things pretty far in advance if we want to go anywhere.
Our trip up was fairly uneventful. The road to Manzanillo was twisty-turny, much like the Pacific Coast Highway in California, except without all the slow RV's and trucks. We arrived at the lovely pink Hotel Posada Manzanillo in time to go out to dinner with the Quist gang. They had arrived not long before us.
Certain friendships require lots of work - attention and time to keep the ties connected. Other friendships can pick up after several years of not seeing each-other, and feel as if no time at all has passed. That is what it's like hooking up with Bob and Pallas. Of course, we'd prefer to see them much more frequently than once every six years, but it's just amazing that once we're together again, it's all totally familiar, comfortable, and we're all just full of excited conversation and catching up. As if it's only been a few weeks. Since it was six years, and we'd both had children since the last time we saw each-other, there was lots and lots of chatting and catching up to do.
The kids got along immediately. Our first morning there, in spite of Trinity's midnight high-fever and vomiting incidents, all the kids were happily playing together in the hotel pool and having loads of fun. After Trinity's afternoon nap, we celebrated Isabelle's, Pallas' and Grandpa Carlos' birthdays and ate cupcakes that I had made and brought with us. The party included a piñata of course, because we were in Mexico, after all. Then we went out for a yummy dinner at a steak house, and started it all over again the next day.
Had I had more time to plan, I would have realized that Manzanillo was a fair bit cooler than Zihuatanejo, and I might have packed some slightly warmer clothes. As it was, we managed to survive the temperatures and enjoy ourselves tremendously. The entire weekend was full of fun conversation, relaxation, swimming, laughter, beer, friends and family. There was no pressure to do things we didn't want to do, no weddings to attend and no business meetings (which is what our trips are usually filled with). I must say, for our first spontaneous trip, this was a really good one, and I'd like to plan on having a few more.
