Altarose Rancho

We woke up at 6:00am yesterday and got ready to leave Sayulita. We had a coffee and wrote the blog post for yesterday, and we were on the road by 7:00am. Kind of surprised that there was still a fair bit of traffic at that hour on a Sunday morning, but I’m sure it was quieter then than it would have been later on.

We pulled in to the big Mega grocery store only 22 kms from where we started. This is now just past the town of Bucerias, and close to the outskirts of Puerto Vallarta. The parking lot at this huge grocery store was pretty much empty and we were surprised to find out that store actually opened at 7:00am. We had a quick breakfast and then went in to stock up on a few items.

As soon as we grabbed a cart, we were approached by a “time share” salesman. We have been looking forward to attending a couple of time share presentations, and seeing how much we could get out of them. Making a long story short, when we finished doing our grocery shopping we left Sherman in the parking lot and we were put in a taxi to a resort where we sat down for a delicious Sunday brunch. For free. Then, we sat through a few sales people trying to sell us something we weren’t at all interested in. I kind of enjoyed the banter back and forth, and before we knew it, two hours had passed. Then, they gave us 2,000 pesos ($156) in cash, and paid our taxi ride back to the Mega store. What a good deal. Hopefully we’ll get to do a couple more of these before we leave the area. We hear that Puerto Vallarta is full of time shares. We are very good at saying “no thanks”!

Then, we went back to our turn off inland, 2 kms north of the Mega store. Only 12 kms (7 miles) inland, there is a campground owned by a Canadian couple from Calgary. It is called Altarose Rancho RV Park. As we drove up to it, a pickup truck pulled up beside us and it was Gary, the owner. He was super friendly, and welcomed us to the Ranch. He opened the gate and pointed out the 15 full hookup sites, and said we could park wherever it suited us. One other spot is taken up by a long term guy, but we didn’t wan’t hookup’s…just somewhere to park where our solar panels would get some sun….he said, “park wherever you like!”. It’s actually a beautiful spot, but not many people come here because it’s not on the beach, even though it’s such a short distance from Puerto Vallarta.

Sherman, parked up at Rancho Altarose

We got parked up, and the chairs out and sat out with a cold drink because we had such a hard day at work today, and such a long drive. The two dogs who live here wasted no time in making new friends with us, and then Gary’s wife Jean came over and introduced herself and sat and we had a long chat for the rest of the afternoon. Turns out they don’t really treat the RV park as a business, they just like to have people come and stay and keep them company for a bit. The little bit of income is a bonus for them.

Visiting with Jean and our new friends Reno and Missy.

So far, this seems like another spot we could easily stay for a week or more. We’re running out of time, but we do have some people to visit in Puerto Vallarta and there is a lot of hiking to do in the nearby hills. The next few days are going to be busy and fun!

The view out our side window.