Meet The (not so) Subtle Rock Eater… Puerto Vallarta’s Malecon

January 11, 2019 / Curt Mekemson / 24 Comments

Walking down Puerto Vallarta’s Malecon is always interesting. The Subtle Rock Eater is one of the reasons. I think he might just as well be named The ‘not so’ Subtle Rock Eater or possibly Mr. Eggplant Man.

It’s time to return to Puerto Vallarta’s Malecon. In my last post about the seaside walk, I introduced you to some very strange creatures. There are more of the same today plus some graceful dancers, playful porpoises, a ferocious bandido, a unicorn of sorts, and PV’s iconic seahorse.

And Senor Rock Eater looking just a bit scary.

Love was in the air with this couple as they looked out to sea, or at least down the Malecon.

Another perspective. This one provides a view of the Malecon.

And a front view with the Bay of Banderas forming a backdrop.

Graceful Vallarta dancers under swirling clouds.

The Friendship Fountain reflects the relationship between Puerto Vallarta and its sister city, Santa Barbara, California.

This ‘whale’ included in the Origins and Destination sculpture had a toothy grin. Given its location, I wonder if it is saying “Make Mexico Grate Again.” 🙂

Our toothy friend had an interesting look as he swam forward to grate-ness.

Its companion had a strange look as well. Is our destination to become some kind of combination of animal and machine? If so, I wouldn’t mind flying.

What if you saw your children climbing a ladder and disappearing into the darkness?

The Millenia sculpture is located at the top of the Malecon.

Touching a unicorn is supposed to bring you good luck. But I suspect that you already knew that.

No trip down the Malecon would be complete without a visit to Puerto Vallarta’s iconic Boy on a Seahorse.

Today he is centered in a colorful Puerto Vallarta sign for the many thousands of annual photos taken by tourists.

A final view from the Malecon for this post. My next PV post will feature postcard pretty sunsets from the city as we say goodbye to Puerto Vallarta.

NEXT POST: Continuing down the PCT.

Imagination Plus Peyote… The Huichol of Puerto Vallarta

January 4, 2019January 4, 2019 / Curt Mekemson / 18 Comments

The shaman is a central figure in the Huichol culture. Capable of traveling between worlds with the aid of peyote, he brings important messages back to the members of his tribe.

Since Peggy and I first came to Puerto Vallarta years ago I have been fascinated with Huichol art and the Huichol people. Living in the Sierra Madre Mountains of the Occidental range, they have been able to combine their belief in numerous gods with art that is highly popular among tourists. For example, it’s unlikely that many Huichol have ever seen a moose, but when Peggy and I were going through shops along the Malecon, we came across this beauty featured below.

The moose is for the tourists, the designs found on the moose’s antlers and body reflect the Huichol gods. (This artwork was crammed in among hundreds of pieces so I used Photoshop to white out everything except the piece.)

A moose that Peggy and I found in Alaska.

The design on the right side of the Huichol antler is peyote, which is central to the Huichol religion. Each year, the members of the tribe undertake a 300 mile journey (usually on foot) to their sacred homeland to gather a year’s supply of the potent drug. The gatherer is expected to take a bite of the first plant he or she encounters. Maybe as a result, one of them saw a moose like the one I featured above. (grin)

Another example of an animal unlikely to be encountered by the Huichol. It looks a lot like the fellow I encountered at Busch Gardens.

The Huichol are quite familiar with the iguana…

One of the iguanas we photographed in Puerto Vallarta..

I am just as glad we didn’t encounter a jaguar. They still roam the mountains surrounding Puerto Vallarta.

The horse continues to be an important form of transportation for the Huichol, but with the coming of roads, trucks are becoming more common.

Cattle are raised by the Huichol. Here they have covered a skull with their beadwork.

Not quite sure what this animal is, I thought it was more dog-like than cat-like.

I am thinking a bit of acid-rock here, although peyote would probably work.

String paintings reflecting the gods are also quite popular among the Huichol.

And a blue painting to wrap up today’s post.

NEXT POST: I’ll be back to featuring rock sculptures found on the PCT in Mokelumne Wilderness.

There Be Monsters Out There… Puerto Vallarta’s Malecon

December 17, 2018December 15, 2018 / Curt Mekemson / 21 Comments

No doubt about it, monsters lurk along Puerto Vallarta’s Malecon. But they tend to be fun and weird rather than scary.

A walk down the Malecon is a walk down memory lane for Peggy and me. No trip to Puerto Vallarta would be complete without one, or two, or three. The ocean with its waves, and beach and sealife— like pelicans performing their insane dives— the attractive city backed up against the hills, and the art. Especially the art!

My next three posts will feature the work of the various artists starting today with the Roundabout of the Sea, a creative work by Alejandro Colunga from Guadalajara. It combines weird and fun at the same time. My kind of art. These photos have been taken on different trips at various times of the day.

Take this octopus, for example. It hangs up in the air on a high pedestal and stares down at passing folks.

And finally at night with out iPhone (having lost my camera).

Each of the pieces in the Roundabout is designed as a chair to allow people walking along the Malecon a chance to sit down and rest, or, more likely, have their photos taken.

Picture yourself leaning back here. (grin) Other chairs can be seen in the background. I call this piece Miss Golden Orbs. (Not sure how the artist would relate to the names I have created.)

Here is chair connected to Senior Long Snout. He is also featured at the top of the post.

Bugle Nose’s chair with the Bay of Bandaras in the background.

Couldn’t come up with a name for this fellow…

Finally, leaving the Roundabout wouldn’t be right without noticing the interesting feet these characters have.

NEXT POST: We continue our walk down the Malecon.

HOB-nobbing on the PCT in the Mokelumne Wilderness

December 14, 2018 / Curt Mekemson / 28 Comments

I was looking for the perfect camp location on Forestdale Creek when I noticed another man putting up a tent nearby. I went over to chat, or hobnob, so to speak.

The 65-year-old Hob McConville was on a mission: finish his second trip over the PCT. (His first trip had been back in 1976 when I was hiking on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.) He had already hiked the Appalachian Trail twice, and the Continental Divide Trail once. He and his wife had walked across Europe three times. In other words, hiking long distances is pretty much what Hob does. He didn’t know whether he would do the Continental Divide again. Large bears, i.e. grizzlies, worry him.

“I’ve camped under this beautiful sugar pine,” he informed me, “because it is my tent’s last night and I want to give it a good experience.” Obviously he liked his tent. In fact, it was well-loved, like a child’s teddy bear after five years of hard loving. The tent was literally falling apart at the seams and Hob had been repairing it with Post Office packaging tape. “My wife is meeting me at Echo Summit with a new tent,” he sighed, more sad than excited. Hob deeply believes that anything you purchase should be used until it is beyond use, and then a little longer.

I hated to tell him that his beautiful sugar pine was a white pine. I’m not sure why I did, except older mountain men like the two of us enjoy knowing our trees. He wanted to debate until I pointed out the cones. And the tree was a beauty, regardless of the type of cones it produced. I am sure that his tent felt well-honored. I wondered if Hob would take it home and bury it in his Connecticut backyard, like a favorite pet. Hob’s pack was in similar condition, but apparently it had a lot of miles left.

This gorgeous white pine with limbs askew sheltered Hob’s tent on its last night.

Hob’s backpack looked a bit threadbare, as well. But it hadn’t quite reached the status of being retired.

The next morning, our discussion turned to the PCT and Hob’s philosophy on long-distance hiking. “It shouldn’t be a race,” he proclaimed fervently. His feeling was that it was becoming more and more like one. He could foresee the day when companies like Nike might sponsor races to see who could finish the trail in the shortest amount of time. I agreed. Just completing the trail in a season leaves little time to appreciate the beauty of the region. Jumping from the already long 20-25 mile days to 30 or 40-mile days would make such appreciation much more difficult. I see nothing wrong with the pride through-hikers feel in finishing the trail; it is a pride well earned. And Hob was quite proud of his accomplishments. But the ultimate value of the hiking the PCT— beyond personal satisfaction and growth— is in experiencing nature and developing a commitment to protecting wilderness areas. The PCT is not a race track.

While the conversation had been stimulating, Hob had miles to go to meet up with his new tent (and wife), and I had more nature to go appreciate. We parted company with Hob heading north and me heading south. Here are some of the things I saw along the way.

No more than a quarter of a mile up the trail, I came on a beautiful flower garden that would make an English lord lust over having it on his estate. I promptly took a half hour off to admire it, which is time that few through-hikers could spare.

The garden was filled with a variety of flowers. I think that the daisy like flowers are asters. The yellow flowers are groundsel.

Not much farther along, I came on this small lake that demanded another 15 minutes of my time.

I passed a few more lakes and then the PCT did what the PCT always does.

I met a young woman who was talking on her cell-phone with her brother. “I just saw a bear up the trail,” she told me breathlessly. I didn’t see the bear, but I did see…

Rabbit bush with an iridescent blue butterfly…

A caterpillar chomping down on a leaf. When I tried for a closeup, it saw my shadow, assumed I was something wanting to eat it, and dropped to the ground.

Charteuse green on the rocks. This may not be Facebook, but I am lichen it!

A closeup of the lichen. A pretty rust-colored lichen is also found in the area.

I don’t have a clue what this plant is, but I am pretty sure it was left behind by a UFO-alien. I kept my distance.

Looking way down from the mountain I could see the Blue Lakes. The tiny dot on the road is a car.

The last time I had hiked through this area, we had walked around the lakes. The night before, one of my long time trekkers, Nancy Pape, had choked on pills. My friend Ken Lake had jumped in with the Heimlich Maneuver and saved her life. The time before, we had hiked out from the lakes to the small town of Markleeville, California and happened upon the Clampers holding their sacred initiation rites. Men were walking around with toilet seats over their necks shouting obscenities. They were quite upset that we had women along who witnessed the ceremony. The women were amused.

As I started down from the mountain, I came on this bunch of dead flowers that were reflecting the coming fall. I thought of it as a dried floral arrangement.

I also had a view of this Mokelumne Wilderness landmark that has been known from the days of the early pioneers up to today as the Nipple. Once again, smoke filled the skies.

And a tall, weird, flowering plant that is known as deer’s tongue. Why? I don’t know.

Corn lilies are another plant with greenish flowers. These were backlit by the sun.

I’ll close today’s post with this shot of hemlock trees silhouetted against the sky and forest. You can tell that they are hemlocks by the way their tops are bent.

NEXT POST: A walk down Puerto Vallarta’s Malecon and an exploration of the public art along the way. After that, I will do a post on Huichol art in PV and then another post on the PCT.

The Day of the Dead Ladies of Puerto Vallarta

December 12, 2018December 11, 2018 / Curt Mekemson / 32 Comments

As I went through my photos for today’s post, I noticed that almost all of the human size sculptures were women. I wonder why?

The Day of the Dead, or Día de Muertos, is a seriously fun holiday in Puerto Vallarta and throughout Mexico where the dearly departed are celebrated with hopes that the celebration will help them on their journey. People dress up in dead-people skeleton costumes, altars are established, and special foods are prepared. Gaily decorated skulls and skeletons are everywhere. Peggy and I have yet to be in Mexico when the event takes place (which is at the end of October/beginning of November), but the skulls and skeletons are still around, lots of them.

The skulls seem to represent both sexes equally, although this one seems to have a feminine cast to it. The gold teeth made me think of the dentist’s chair, a place I am all too familiar with. Ouch!

Of the life-size sculptures, I photographed, I could only find one man. This led me to speculate, naturally, as to why. I don’t think there is a reason particular to the holiday. About an equal number of men and women die, right. So is it that the girls dress up prettier, or that their eyes are more beautiful, or is it some other attribute, like the colorful bosom of the top photo.

Obviously, clothing is important, and you can do so much more with hats!

And certainly this woman with her red flowers and curls is well-dressed.

The hat and the boas lit up the lady from an earlier year. But what’s with the dead roses?

And here. Same girl dressed up differently it would seem.

Remember the Red Hat Ladies. How about a long necked Red Hat Lady?

This gal had something to say. But I am not sure you would want to hear it.

Here was my only large guy sculpture. I had to go back in time to find it.

Smaller sculptures are found in the shops, often representing Huichol art.

Another example but probably not Huichol art since it is lacking in Huichol symbolism. (More on this in a later post.)

Peggy and I were walking down one of Puerto Vallarta’s road and came on this lady walking her dog.

And then there was this tile of a man out walking his dog— a dog that has a mission on its mind. Humor is an important part of the Day of the Dead.

And a lady on a dish. Once again, the hat is an important item of clothing.

And are creatively decorated, with clouds, for example.

You could have your kitchen decorated with Day of the Dead tiles. Maybe even peace symbols.

I conclude my Day of the Dead collection with this fellow. Just possibly, he had imbibed a little too much Huichol peyote!

NEXT POST: I am back on the PCT making my way between Carson Pass and Sonora Pass.

The Corsica Galeria de Art, the Galerie des Artistes, and the Cafe des Artistes… Puerto Vallarta

December 10, 2018 / Curt Mekemson / 27 Comments

The Puerto Vallarta Art scene is extensive ranging from public art to private galleries and extensive crafts. I found this delightful sculpture at the Corsica Galeria de Art. This fellow looked like he was commenting on my failure to check on whether the Cafe des Artistes was open for lunch.

Peggy and I were in search of a good place to take her sister Jane and brother-in-law Jim to lunch when they joined us in Puerto Vallarta. Both are quite talented cooks, a fact we have benefited from many times. Since we had fond memories of the Cafe des Artistes, it was at the top of our list. Unfortunately, as we discovered when we arrived, it was closed for lunch. (Whoops.) There was no danger of starving to death, however. Restaurants are rarely farther than a block away in downtown PV. More to the point, we found a couple of top art galleries located right next door: The Corsica Galeria de Art and the Galerie des Artistes. I remembered both from earlier visits. Both galleries welcomed us and told me to take all of the photos I wanted. They were quite open to my blogging about them. Publicity is publicity, right. I’ll start with the art I found at the Corsica Galeria de Art .

These Mexican Chihuahuas caught my attention immediately.

I was reminded of these two cuties we found on Puerto Vallarta’s Isla Cuale a few years ago. It appears that the light brown fellow was getting an earful! Maybe he forgot to take the garbage out. Obviously, he cares. Grin. (Actually, he was about to get his ear bitten. Teach him.)

The gallery featured several other colorful dogs in three dimension. I’m thinking boxer, here.

This one reminded me of a cocker spaniel from my youth.

The obvious companion to the sculpture I opened the post with. The shadow seemed a little sinister to me, like an evil twin sister. And what’s with the sort of scorpion, sort of cat, sort of person on her hand?

This was one of Peggy’s favorites in the way the eyes, mouth, teeth and tongue stood out, becoming almost real in comparison to the rest of the painting.

Peggy also was drawn to this hat with its many feathers. I found it almost surrealistic in its intensity.

Are you a person who finds clowns scary? The little girl with her balloon didn’t. The triple chins suggest a bit too much fast food!

I liked the colorful bull although the eyes suggest it could have been a member of the devil’s herd in “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” (One of my favorite songs when I was growing up.)

Remember Senior Fish Head from my post on the Furniture Mart. This fellow seems to have a similar problem with fish on the brain.

I’ll close my section on the Corsica with this sculpture. I found it quite unique. You can learn more about the gallery and its artists by visiting its website: Corsica Galeria de Art

The Galerie des Artistes was immediately down the hill from the Corsica and had a decidedly different feel to it.

I felt that this fellow could have been found hanging out in the woods of ancient Greece.

One artist used hot air balloons to connect his paintings. Here the balloon is offering cherries to the bear. Knowing what I know about bears, it is about to gobble them down.

This giraffe is either coming out of or morphed into a city, giving a new meaning to the term skyscraper.

Alligator with companions on a unicycle? I’ll bet the artist has some very creative dreams. What would Freud say…

Mixed medium skull. I’m starting to think Day of the Dead. (Next post)

I am not sure whether cat woman is facing forward or backward, but she was colorful. Note the extra pair of arms. I blew this photo up and found bears, owls and rabbits staring back at me. But as you know, I have an active imagination and I am pretty sure that the artist was okay with me seeing whatever I wanted to see.

More eyes staring at me. Is that a come-hither pose? Or is it Blake Shelton saying ‘choose me’ on Voice..

And finally, i was quite taken with this collage of floral images. I couldn’t find a website for Galerie des Artistes but apparently the gallery is on Facebook.

That’s it for the galleries, but it is not the end of the story. Peggy and I weren’t finished with our desire to revisit the Cafe des Artistes. So we made reservations and went there for our 28th Anniversary dinner. The ambience was superb, the waiters great, and the food delicious. Each year, Puerto Vallarta has a celebration featuring world-famous chefs and we ended up with one of the top chefs from Mexico City. It was a close to a perfect evening. We had to rely on our iPhone for photos. I had previously left my camera behind in a taxi and we weren’t able to recover it. The phone didn’t do well with capturing colors in the dim light, however, so I have rendered these photos in black and white.

We were greeted with a free drink. Cheers!

A free hors d’ouvre arrived at our table next. There were also rose petals scattered on the tablecloth. .

I had short ribs in a delicious mole sauce and Peggy had an out of this world duck leg that melted in her mouth.

We couldn’t believe it when our dessert arrived on a large mirror platter complete with Happy Anniversary in chocolate surrounded by small dollops of raspberry sauce. A candle lit things up and a large spun sugar heart provided the backdrop! And no, I wasn’t a two-fisted drinker. We had moved Peggy’s glass of wine for the photo. Needless to say, the waiters were well-tipped!

NEXT POST: It’s time for the Day of the Dead. We missed it by a few days, but there were plenty of sculptures and crafts around to remind us of the event. Get ready for some bone-rattling fun.

The Chalk Art and Murals of Puerto Vallarta 2018

December 6, 2018December 5, 2018 / Curt Mekemson / 20 Comments

Chalk art from the 2018 Madonnari Festival in Puerto Vallarta featuring a shaman and his spirit animal.

Half the fun of travel is coming upon the unexpected. Peggy and I were walking across Puerto Vallarta’s main square when we came across a number of people creating chalk art. We had happened upon the annual Madonnari Art Festival that the town shares with its sister city of Santa Barbara, California. Category competition ranged from children to adults. Here are a few of the highlights.

This was the young woman who was working on the shaman featured above.

Young people were working under colorful umbrellas to finish their work.

A pregnant woman provided quite a contrast.

Not sure you would want this guy around your baby!

I liked the colorful flowers this young woman wore.

A close up. Peggy and I visited the area a few days later to take more photos. Time was beginning to impact the chalk art, reflecting its impermanence.

Another artist worked on his masterpiece. I admired the young boy’s look of surprise or wonder..

And finally, never trust a smiling shark.

Mural art shares a lot with chalk art, both in terms of its limited time frame and spontaneity. Peggy and I revisited a number of the murals we had seen in past visits to Puerto Vallarta plus discovered some new ones.

I decided it would be fun to render the mural in black and white. I liked the results. I believe the symbolism represents Huichol art, which I will be doing a post on.

An interesting decoration for a woman’s restroom. Just how bad do you have to go to face up to a devil fish and devils?

Senior Iguana plays a banjo while an excited frog jumps out of the lake.

We found a couple of black and white murals.

This one reminded me of the popular books where you fill in the colors.

Shaman woman rising out of a lake, possibly working a little magic on you.

I’ll conclude today with this native woman who is holding a fawn.

NEXT POST: I head south on the PCT from Carson Pass, which is named after the explorer Kit Carson, who happened to be caught in a snow storm starving on his first trip across the pass. He reported that dog and dried peas made a tasty treat. I don’t know if I would trust the word of a starving man, however.

A Wonderful, Whacky Pelican… Puerto Vallarta

December 4, 2018December 3, 2018 / Curt Mekemson / 27 Comments

I’ve spent a lot of time watching and photographing pelicans. Their committee-put-together look makes them a favorite of mine. But I have never seen one do this. It delighted me. I think it was trying to scare up a fish. The majority of brown pelicans make their living by diving from the air for dinner. This fellow may have been a bit young and small for the big time.

The Rio Cuale sits in the heart of Puerto Vallarta. It’s a delightful place with a long island in the middle (Isla Cuale) that includes good restaurants, fun shops, and some very interesting art. The island got its start in the 1960s as an airstrip for rich Hollywood types such as Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and John Huston.

My favorite thing about the Rio Cuale, however, is the rich wildlife it supports including a variety of water birds and giant iguanas. Bird life includes pelicans, cormorants, herons, egrets and more. On my recent visit I was particularly taken by the young fellow featured above and a snowy egret.

Here is the young brown pelican behaving more or less like I am used to seeing brown pelicans behave.

I am not sure what the youngster is up to here. Scratching an itch? Spreading oil?

Its action here is clear. It’s preening. The pelican and other water fowl have an oil gland near their tail that they use for oiling their body to make feathers more waterproof.

Here it is again, apparently trying to scare up another fish.

And a final shot of our young friend. We speculated that maybe it was a little young for the normal brown pelican approach to fishing.

A few hundred feet away, brown pelicans were fishing in the more traditional way.

I caught this orgy of Pelican fishing in Puerto Vallarta in 2016. The insane dive on the right is one of the things I love about pelicans.

I must say that this snowy egret on the Rio Cuale provided a great photo-op as well.

Here’s the snowy egret in a more traditional pose.

The River Cafe is a short way up the Isla Cuale from where we found the pelican and the snowy egret. We like it for its tasty, well-presented food. But we also like it because you can almost always find iguanas hanging out in the trees and on the ground next to the river. This year we spotted a very green one…

It was so green, it almost disappeared among the leaves. The large flap of skin hanging down from the iguana’s chin is called a dewlap. No self-respecting Iguana would be without one. (Photo by Peggy Mekemson.)

We’ve had numerous encounters with iguanas over the years in Puerto Vallarta. But none matched the time when one came to visit us in our villa. I did a post on our welcome visitor, but just for fun, I decided to put up a few photos on him again.

It all started out with a stranger staring in our window at us. Naturally we had to see who had come to visit.

Outside, we found this large iguana staring at his reflection in the window. There were two possibilities: One he had found the love of his life. Or, two, he had discovered a large rival impinging on his territory. Iguanas can be quite territorial.

On closer inspection, our visitor appeared to be quite handsome. I imagine he was a heart throb.

His claws appeared a bit on the scary side. I, for one, wouldn’t want to get on his bad side.

I looked him in the eye, wondering what a lady iguana would see in him. I call this photo The Eye of the Iguana after the Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr movie “The Night of the Iguana.” The movie, directed by John Huston, was filmed in Puerto Vallarta giving the then small fishing village a kickstart to becoming a mega-tourist attraction.

Of course we had to invite Senior Iguana in for a visit. His tail is still outside. He was a big fellow.

He wandered around looking for his love/rival and then finally settled down on the floor like a dog. I couldn’t help but think he would make a great burglar deterrent! After a while, he stood up, checked our villa one more time and then wandered back outside. Next post I will feature a chalk art festival and several murals in Puerto Vallarta. After that, it’s hitting the PCT again, hiking south from Carson Pass.

Weird Things— and Unique Furniture… The Furniture Mart Of Puerto Vallarta

November 28, 2018 / Curt Mekemson / 37 Comments

I promised some weird things I found at the Furniture Mart in Puerto Vallarta. I think this guy qualifies. Maybe his weirdness goes along with having fake, orangish hair. (grin)

Peggy and I have now returned from our trip to Puerto Vallarta. It’s always a good source for blog material. Today, I am going to wrap up our visit to the Furniture Mart, which was right across the street from our hotel. Later I will have several more blogs on PV’s burgeoning art scene as well as get back to a couple of my favorite animals: pelicans and iguanas. I was amused by both the weird things and unique furniture at the Mart. Enjoy. (Note: Some of these photos came from an earlier visit in 2015.)

Do you think that the Furniture Mart could have hung more things on its walls? And do you find the bony fish as amusing as I did?

Speaking of fish, I suspect these gave this guy a horrendous headache. I’m pretty sure there is a myth here, but I don’t know it.

Here’s a front view of the fellow I introduced at the top of the post. He’s still scary.

Not so scary, but still not someone you would want to meet on a dark night. Check out the eyes. The teeth remind me of piranha that Peggy and I caught on the Amazon River— and ate.

I found these masks more intriguing than frightening. The blood shot eyes suggest a long night of partying.

I think that this is a Mayan warrior. There were several life-size sculptures like this scattered throughout the store. Is he holding a monkey or a baby?

Senior Metal Head had wild hair and a wiry mustache.

But his eyebrows and beard were no match for Senior Rope Hair.

As one might imagine, you can find a lot of furniture in a Furniture Mart. This 20 foot table cut from a single log is an example. It appears that the two frogs were impressed.

I decided that a large mirror would serve for a selfie. I look appropriately small.

How about carved wild horses for a table and chairs?

This table was made by cutting through roots of a large tree root. It will be covered with a glass top, I assume.

This table featured a colorful, carved ocean scene.

This cabinet, featuring a painted ocean scene, was also quite impressive.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Furniture Mart is a family affair. 85-year-old Grandpa makes these attractive glass lamp-shades.

I’ll conclude with an example of the lamp shades being used in a chandelier. My next post on PV will include pelicans and iguanas, but first it will be back to my hike down the PCT.

NEXT POST: A beautiful lake in Lassen National Park along the Pacific Crest Trail, plus Bone makes some new friends.

The Furniture Mart + The World of Tiles and the World of Crystal… Puerto Vallarta Art

November 26, 2018November 25, 2018 / Curt Mekemson / 32 Comments

Ceramic art and crafts are found throughout Mexico. I found this colorful iguana at the Furniture Mart.

In my last post from Puerto Vallarta, I featured the Furniture Mart that is located across the road from where we are staying at the Krystal Hotel. As I noted, the Mart is full of thousands of items. These included a wide variety ceramics ranging from the inexpensive mass produced items you find in most tourist shops throughout Mexico to finer pieces that border on art.

Almost any tourist shop in Mexico features mass produced figures such as these Day of the Dead skeletons. (I am going to do a separate post on Day of the Dead characters, which tend to be more amusing than scary.)

Stereotypical Mexicans wearing sombreros while taking a siesta are another common tourist shop item. (I’ve yet to see a Mexican peasant wearing a sombrero and taking a nap in all my years of visiting Mexico.)

Finer items, such as this cow, receive much more attention in their production.

Peggy’s sister, Jane, was impressed by the dishes found in the Mart.

Many of the dishes were painted with colorful tropical scenes.

While I found myself amused by this pig.

Jane and I would agree on the value of a beautiful vase.

Today I am also going to include ceramic and glass pieces from the World of Tiles and the World of Crystal located in Puerto Vallarta’s Zona Romantica. I found the World of Tiles particularly interesting because we were able to watch the artisans at work making tiles in the store’s ‘factory.’