A winter vacation? Heck yes! I’ve always wanted to go somewhere warm during the winter. Growing up in Minnesota is a whole other type of experience from November to March. The ground is frozen and covered with layers of ice, you scrape ice from your car window, get dry skin and need a pair of gloves.
Update: More details about where I’m staying and my plans during the trip below!
I’m happy to share that I’m schedule to head to Mexico on Virgin America the first week of January to Puerto Vallarta Mexico! I’ll be spending five days pretty much laying on the beach, sipping drinks and thinking about my goals for 2012.
I’m staying as a guest of Velas Vellarta, an all inclusive resort located in Puerto Vallarta. The trip is sponsored by them and I will be capturing my experience via photos, video and a blog post. Normally I blog about technology but after all the hard work us technology geeks put in, we all need a vacation, right? My opinions of the resort will be my own but I want to include this disclaimer to make things clear.
Besides blogging, my personal goals during the trip are:
- Getting a tan
- Sleeping
- Sipping on tropical drinks
- Snacking
- Going out to do one local activity (horseback riding most likely)
Last year I wanted to go somewhere nice for my birthday which is in February but didn’t have my passport. I reached out to Adventure Girl who I’d met at Blogworld. She travels all over the world discovering amazing vacation spots, exploring the local scene and shares her discoveries via social media and her blog. She’s also fun in person! She suggested I visit Puerto Rico since it’s part of the United States (sort of). Anyway I chickened out but decided it was time to finally get my first passport.
The last time I stayed in an all inclusive was in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands when I was working on the TSA project (yes, I helped get all those screeners hired!)
Location
Puerto Vallarta is on the Western side of Mexico about halfway down. The flight is about 3 hours from San Francisco and I’m flying on Virgin America.
Weather
I pulled a forecast this morning and it looks to be about 80 degrees and sunny the entire trip! I’ll arrive Wednesday afternoon, get checked in and may do a bit of exploring that evening to get my bearings. On Friday or Saturday, I’m going to go horseback riding at a local ranch but mainly plan to be pool side soaking in the rays. While there are a lot of water activities available including snorkeling, scuba diving, whale watching and sailing, I will not be in the water unless it’s very warm when I dip in my toe!
The Resort
Velas Vallarta is an all inclusive resort. This means you can enjoy meals, drinks, nightly entertainment and a list of daily activities to choose from all included as a part of your experience at no extra cost. There are several restaurants on-site that I’m looking forward to trying including the Andrea Restaurant. They have over 300 rooms and suites with up to three bedrooms. While you can enjoy your time at the resort and all the stuff to do, many people take advantage of being in an exotic location and leave to explore an experience their destination. The resort also offers additional services like spa treatments.
For entertainment, they have different themes each night including Mexican Fiesta night, Casino night, Veracruz Dance night and Saturday is the International show full of music from Mexico, Hawaii and South America.
This resort is focused on being family friendly and has a lot of activities during the day including beach volleyball, water aerobics, yoga and game tournaments including bingo, ping pong and blackjack.
Looking forward to checking out the pool and the hotel in general and will have a followup blog post with more details.
T-Mobile Cell Phone Service In Mexico
Unfortunately, T-mobile doesn’t have great data roaming in Mexico so I will be putting my phone into airplane mode so as not to incur outrageous charges. International GPRS data roaming is $15 per megabyte so with a few checks of my email, some tweets and apps running in the background, I could easily rack up a few hundred dollars in data charges.
I’m not planning to talk on the phone much while on vacation but it looks like for $15 I can add on T-mobile’s International talk and text to my existing plan and since I have unlimited minutes, those would apply in Mexico as well. If you don’t opt-in for this plan while traveling, you’re looking at $1.79 per minute for phone calls.
Bon Voyage!
Wow! I’m really, really looking forward to this trip!
Will I do things like snorkeling while I’m in Mexico? Maybe.
I more than likely will unplug from technology and social media, aside from my camera and just enjoy the peace and quiet.
More soon and happy holidays!
