Flowers, Shrimp, and Sarah & Dan!

Mom and I got up bright and early this morning to head to Puerto Vallarta to find flowers for the wedding. I’m more convinced than ever of my lassez-faire approach to weddings, as the only criteria I had for the flowers is that they be pretty.

And all flowers are pretty. So there you go. :)

We wandered around PV for a while, ducking into shops and shopping a bit, and asking all of the shopkeepers where to find flowers. I’m not sure how to translate “wild goose chase” in to Spanish, but we didn’t make a lot of headway until we stopped into a fresh fruit market. The nice guy there directed us to a flower shop up the street, and we were on our way.

The little storefront had a lot of flower arrangements that looked more at home in a funeral parlor instead of on the roof of Casa Milagros, but they also had buckets of Ginger blossoms, and Birds of Paradise, and Tiger Lilies. Those were what I chose…the lilies for my bouquet, and the others for decoration with the palm fronds that Hugo will cut in the morning.

Flowers purchased, we then searched for shrimp. Raw shrimp. Camarones Crudas. We purchased about nine pounds for $40, and we were on our way back to the pier. As we were standing on the pier waiting for Jack’s boat to land, out of the blue came Sarah! and Dan! and hugs! They had spent last night in PV, and were on their way to Yelapa this morning. Sarah showed some badass bravery in overcoming her boat-phobia…of which I knew nothing until we were halfway to Yelapa. We went through Los Arcos, which was a nice photo op for our newcomers, and we dropped off a pirate who had overslept at the Pirate Ship. He looked hungover, and sheepish, to have missed his boat, as it were.

We landed at Yelapa, got Sarah and Dan settled, and then Mom, John, Zoe, Sarah, Dan, and I went to lunch at Mimi’s. Slow, as usual, but the food was to die for.

Back up to the house for hangin’ out in the afternoon, hearing stories from everyone’s day, and then we set about preparing for dinner.

That’s where the shrimp comes in.

Antonia’s sister had made us 80 chicken tamales today, and I went with Antonia to pick them up around 4pm. Seriously, this is about forty pounds of tamales, and the two five-gallon buckets of tamales had such an aroma that I was tempted to eat them all, myself, on the trail.

I didn’t give into temptation, however, and brought ‘em up to casa. I made a couple gallons of pico de gallo, some guacamole, and bought a couple kilos of fresh tortillas at the tortilleria. Mom & Dad deveined the shrimp, Trish sauteed them up, and the forty of us feasted on this wonderful dinner all evening long.

I can’t recall a more relaxed and chilled out gathering of everyone I hold dear. That was a great, stress-free evening, just before the wedding. It’s still going on, actually, out on the porch, even though the shrimp are long gone and they’re all heavily into the tequila.

I love these people, and this place. I doubt it gets better than this.