21 Days of Paradise/Day 1 - Super Bowl Sunday

This is a test - a test to see if Glenn and I can handle being away from home for 3 weeks!!  Our plan is to go south for a month or two in the winter so this trial will be to see if we enjoy being gone for that long and if we can stand to be away from our kids and grand kids!!  Yes, I know there's email and texts and skype but it still isn't quite the same!

Anyway, we left for Mexico on Super Bowl Sunday - I can't believe I booked our flights way last fall for this particular day BUT I'm not a football fan so didn't even think about it being the Super Bowl that day!  Luckily (I guess............) the Broncos weren't even close to playing in the Super Bowl or I would have been in BIG trouble!!

We had a later flight on Sunday so just drove to Denver that morning and Jaime graciously drove us to the airport!  As usual, we packed WAY too much - 3 carry on's and 2 checked - now that's ridiculous!!!  But Glenn took an awful lot of fishing gear and I had packed some food items that we can never find down here so we seemed extra loaded this time!  I also brought my larger laptop so I could easily blog and download pictures!

For once we didn't get TSA approved - pretty unusual for us!  But DIA wasn't super busy so we made it through security just fine!  After Caribou Coffee and some KFC (I ordered chicken tenders and thought they looked kind of strange - took a bite and there was a BONE in them!!  So took them back and they had given me the wrong thing!!!) we headed to our gate and had a good flight to Cabo!

It's always great to walk off the plane in 80 degree weather!! We were excited we had landed almost 1/2 hour early and since customs was a breeze, we were thinking we were actually going to make it to our destination before 1/2 time -  but that wasn't to be!

I had booked a rental car agency online that actually had cars right at the airport, thinking that would be the fastest - but when we got to their booth, there was no one there.  The Payless guy was nice enough to call the company and told us the guy that was supposed to be there was unavailable - really??????  So we asked him if he would match the price and he said he could get our car even cheaper so we just went with them!  We did have to go outside and ride in a van to get to the rental car place but it was very close and there was a nice couple in the van with us who had never rented a car in Mexico before and needed to know lots of info so I filled them in on all the insurance information!

So we get to the rental car place and the guy starts filling out our info on the computer - and we wait and we wait and we wait - the computer isn't cooperating and the game is on and Glenn is getting frustrated!!  He FINALLY starts writing it out by hand and we can get on our way!

Our destination was Los Barriles - although the casita we had rented was in a small town right before Los Barriles called Buena Vista - we were thrilled it was still daylight out as I'm not sure we would have ever seen the turn off down this dirt road!!

But we found our cute place (which is right in front of a 2 bedroom casa which is being rented for the winter by a couple from Eagle CO and we quickly met them - nice as can be) and unloaded our bags and then headed into Los Barriles to meet Dave and Leslie at the Smoke House where they were watching the Super Bowl!!

We arrived right before 1/2 time - the place was packed with about 10 tv's around this huge bar and patio area and they had a great buffet set up!  It was great to see Dave and Leslie - we ordered our drinks, got some food from the buffet and had a fun time watching that exciting game, even though the outcome wasn't what we expected!

Yes, that's shrimp and guacamole on my plate - and yes, the picture is blurred because Glenn wouldn't hold still - he was just too excited with the game going on!

We headed to the little store next door after the game so we could pick up a few items to get us by in the morning and then it was homeward bound to our little casita which is called 401!

I couldn't wait to wake up and walk in the sand the next morning and see our view - it was all I had hoped for!!