New sights in Puerto Vallarta...

Its been only a year since we've been back to one of our favorite cities and were amazed at the GROWTH!
There always seemed to be major construction going on the last 4 or 5 years, but it was really staggering to behold this trip...new condominiums in every direction, new restaurents replacing old favorites, new "modern" malls springing up. Fortunately, downtown "Old Town", our favorite area to hang out, remains much the same (thankfully)....so far. These new OXOX convenience stores are everywhere, just like our 7/11's.



In the new Peninsula Mall brand new ultra modern Starbucks and a Chili's Restaurent greeted us.






And the old flea market and ancient park were completely renovated. Very few vendor "stalls" even remain anymore. Behind the older condominiums and shops you can see one of the "monster" condo's under construction. You can't even see the full length of it in this picture, it is HUGE!

And the jungle in Amapas area is fast disappearing...the newest additions this past year, the two monster condos high on the mtn. To get a sense of just how big they are look at the other, what were considered very LARGE only a year ago, condominiums below them.

We face the question whether a still higher "standard of living" is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. ~Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949

Just the ticket, a few days in Puerto Vallarta...








looking down Olas Altas Street while enjoying breakfast at Andales...














crowded los muertos beach...













driving around the city...

LOVED IT!

News headlines:

Stocks Drop Sharply; Banks Lead Decline

Ford Posts Loss of $8.7 Billion

'Wall Street Got Drunk' Was Bush the Bartender?

Jobless claims jump as housing market gets weaker

The slump persist: Home sales tumble across U.S

Bush calls Indian PM to push nuke deal

Mukasey To Congress: Use Endless War to Subvert Constitution

Could You Be On U.S. Terror Watch List?

Africa food crises threatens 14 million

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. ~Albert Einstein

First it was copper pipes from abandoned and even occupied houses that were being stolen, now its the manhole covers off the streets!!!

In these tough economic times where precious metals are escalating in value everything is up for grabs. In the NYTimes today - Francis McConnell is a field supervisor for the Philadelphia Water Department....His mission is to figure out who is stealing the city’s manhole covers and its storm drain and street grates, increasingly valuable commodities on the scrap market. More than 2,500 covers and grates have disappeared in the past year, up from an annual average of about 100. Thieves have so thoroughly stripped some neighborhoods on the city’s north and southwest sides that some blocks look like slalom courses, dotted with orange cones to warn drivers and pedestrians of gaping holes, some nearly 30 feet deep....One thing has helped. A Water Department worker, Fred Feoli, designed a way to lock the manhole covers from the inside. But so far, only 300 of the city’s more than 70,000 manhole and inlet covers have been locked

The beaches of Lompoc. Who knew??? These are two separate beaches, the one with the fence is a park actually and for some reason was "closed". It was on more of an inlet, not the open sea, so the waters were v calm and the entire area devoid of humankind...it seemed to be calling to us to ignore the signs, but curiosity to see the beach just around the corner was also tempting so after a full exploration of this park off we went...the day was young...



And to our delight, a v few miles down the road, we came upon the breathtaking & solitary beauty of the "beach beach". The signs warn against swimming (even no fishing allowed) as the undertow is v strong and the surf quite brisk, but we were simply looking for a spot to park our chairs and picnic basket and while away the day with our books. A few others arrived on and off during the day but mostly it was like our own "private Idaho".



Solitude shows us what should be; society shows us what we are. ~Robert Cecil

On our way over to the coast for the 4th of July long weekend many of the yucca's are still blooming...this particular area about half way from Taft to the coast is teeming with them mid June thru mid July. This one was right by the road, as if by design, it was so perfect, so absolutely gorgeous it wanted everyone to see it! Of course I insisted Rod turn the car around as we whizzed past so I could capture it on film. It stood proudly on a hill, 2 ft from the highway, with an almost dry creekbed far below. You simply must click to enlarge this to grasp the full magnitude of its beauty!






Pluck not the wayside flower; it is the traveler's doer. ~ William Allingham

IMAGINE!

While wandering the beach area of Santa Barbara this past July 4th Weekend we came across this wonderful van that had been utterly transformed! The owner has covered it in a tapestry of painting and memorabilia from his travels around the US spreading he hopes, his message of peace and "one-ness". I stopped and chatted with him a bit and he was (naturally), a child of the 60's/70's. He explained many of the symbols on his "home", what some of the amazing eclectic collection of art and junk meant to him.

Click on the pictures to enlarge and get a better look.

We are in the 6th year of the Iraq War. The cost is unfathonable. According to the giant clock in NYC, we have spent over $495 Billion Dollars as of this fleeting moment, that cost is growing at $341 Million each day. The current predictions are that this war will cost the US $3Trillion dollars yet I don't think the public by and large understands the staggering scale of these expenditures and what it will mean longterm for America. How it will impact their lives, their childrens lives, their grandchildrens lives.


By the end of 2008, the federal government will have spent more than $800 billion on combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (government accounts make it hard to separate the two). On top of that comes a mountain of future costs: caring for war veterans (to date, more than 1.6 million troops have been deployed), replacing the military hardware that is being used and worn out in Iraq and paying interest on the enormous sums of money we've borrowed to finance the war (WashingtonPost)
.
"The cost is going up every month," says Linda Bilmes, an expert at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. She estimates the short-term, "running cost" has reached $12.5 billion a month. That's up from $4.4 billion a month in 2003. Add in long-term factors, such as the care of veterans and interest on federal debt incurred as a result of the war, and the cost piles up to $25 billion a month nowadays."

We were in Santa Barbara for the 4th of July weekend, on the beach is a memorial/protest erected by the Veterans Against the Iraq War in honor of our fallen troops in Iraq. I took these last two pictures there. Space only permitted the placement of just over 3000 crosses, which represent, to date, the 4118 American lives lost to this debacle. Again, if you click and enlarge the pictures you'll "see" much more.