The past few days have been a whirlwind! Much to tell…so, hmmm, how to tell it?

First, there was the really cool discovery of the benefit of Google Alerts! In my last post I said we were going to El Tuito…the trip postponed from Tuesday would now be on Friday. I wrote that on Wednesday, and put “El Tuito” in the labels for the post.

On Thursday morning I sat down with my coffee to check the status of my online life, and had an email that my spam filter wanted to know what to do with. Since the subject said, “El Tuito on Friday” I clicked allow and opened it. It was from a couple from Kentucky…living part time in El Tuito. His Google Alerts had picked my El Tuito label and sent him to my blog, where he found we were here in Puerto Vallarta and planning a day trip to El Tuito. He wrote, “come see us and we’ll have some cold ice tea waiting!” Intrigued, I replied, then he replied, then I …..you know the drill. Anyway, off we went to El Tuito. 20 Pesos gets you there in a quite reasonable bus. It took about an hour. Then we wandered around looking for their street. We quickly found that this pretty, traditional small town, doesn’t have street signs. We walked into a friendly looking doorway to ask directions, and a smiling man greeted us “Hello! My name is Louis, welcome to my home! How can I help you?” (yes, in English, just like that). I asked where the street was. He smiled broadly and said, “in the back”. I said, “in the back of what?” “My house”, he grinned. He looked at my paper, “Oh, Hank and Vicki…do you want me to call them?”

Gotta love Mexican Hospitality. And, indeed, Kentucky hospitality too! The iced tea was indeed cold and refreshing. After a cool break and nice conversation we headed out to see the town, and marveled at how the internet has changed our lives. While some would argue, not positively, a connection like that just would not have happened! We would still have gone to El Tuito, and still have wandered around the town, but way more fun and so much richer to have made connections with people who live there! How fun is that!

Next time, I’ll write about our trip to the Botanical Gardens…and post a short video too! I’ll try and do that tomorrow (in between packing (ugh) and planning for the return (quadruple ugh). I’m SO not ready to go!