San Blas is a great little town about 60 miles North of Puerto Vallarta, It is surrounded by mangroves that house a large variety of birds, crocodiles and bugs in all shapes and sizes. The smallest ones are called jejenes or no-see-ums, they are barely visible flying bugs that have a nasty bite. These little bugs are probably the main reason why the place doesn’t have mass tourism with chain restaurants and large hotels like Puerto Vallarta to the South and Mazatlan to the North and that’s also why everyone around here loves the little pests. One local restaurant “El Jejenero” tries to use it to their advantage with cartoon like images.
We entered into the river that leads to the town a couple of days ago and the folks here were nice enough to have a parade and fiesta in our honor, we later found out it wasn’t really for us but instead to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the revolution of 1810
The beauty queens were all riding on the roofs of pick up trucks:
There is a small navy base in town and it looked like all the soldiers were in the parade as well as these two here staging a knife fight:
There are a couple of cool ex-pat bars in town, The San Blas Social Club run by Augustine and his girlfriend Laura. They are from Brooklyn and also have a little restaurant above the bar with killer steaks. Their bartender Pompeo creates the best margarita in town.
And then there is Billy Bobs, a pretty cool place. Their 8′ pet crocodile “fluffy” lives behind the bar
All photo’s by Kathy Wheatley
Hi Arjan, is this what retirement is like?
I think its pretty close, the advantage of being retired is not to have to go back home to work, most of the full time cruisers will travel a LOT slower then we do taking months to fully enjoy every new location.