Waffling!

I promise I'll stop talking about booking Yelapa after today, but I thought I'd give the update. We've decided not to book the Bob Dylan suite. After taking a second glance at its upriver location (my knees would never make it up there, much less to Bob's perch everyday) and the completely open palapa minus any doors (housekeeping wouldn't be knocking and neither would the critters) backing into the jungle, I got real and decided to stay down in the village area.

I found a cute little casa in the village on the water that has vacancy -- and a door! Casa Joanie. All the windows are open and I can deal with that, especially since it's right on the water. It has kind of a rustic elegance to it with a lot of amenities, like lots of places to sit down and hang out. And a big safe, CD player, and beach down below. In addition, the roof is not actually a palapa. I like that because palapa roofs can be a huge nest for practically everything.

In the process of looking at lodging reviews on Trip Advisor, here's a funny one I found. It's the classic encounter of A.I. couple meets tropical berg. It reminds me a LOT of some of the funny reviews I've seen on Trip Advisor about Isla over the years. This woman's still hopping mad enough after two years to post what she thinks is a scathing review.

My husband and I went here to celebrate our anniversary 2 years ago.
We chose Yelapa because we wanted to do something:
1.a bit rustic/adventurous
2.charming
3.romantic (as I mentioned celebrating our anniversary)
4.non-touristyThis is what we got:

1.We rented a home called Casa No Name for 4 days We took a boat from PV to Yelapa and we were lead by the local children through the village to our rental house. We arrive at the base of a hill & the kids point up the hill to our house. I look up and notice that effectively 3 out of 4 walls are missing – open air style but no screens! When researching potential places to spend our “week of romance” I questioned Yelpa’s no-screens-on-the-window tendency, but I was assured by multiple people especially the owner of Casa No Name, that Yelapa is virtually bug and critter-free. We open the door and rose petals were sprinkled in a trail leading up to our bedroom. My husband puts down our bags and uses the bathroom as I follow the floor petal trail to our bedroom. “Ahh, how romantic it all looks and the mosquito net above the bed gives such a romantic feel.” I swear to God, as I look up to admire the “rustic charm” of it all, I see a huge black claw coming through the open space where the wall and ceiling meet!! I calmly get my husband who gets the neighbor kids. They took sticks and rocks and where able to get the 4 foot long black iguana to reveal itself in full and scurry off! Welcome to Yelapa! The bugs, insects, and critters had omnipresence from the first moment of our trip to the last.

Okay, enough fun with the woman! But I love the iguana scene with the kids trying to get it out of there with a stick!

Here's another video of Yelapa I found on YouTube. There's an even better one on the Casa Joanie website if you follow the links. Have a great weekend and I promise to return to normal programming (whatever that is) next week.