Puerto Vallarta Chaos- I Was In The Area On Sunday

I'm sure most of you have seen reports of all that happened in Puerta Vallarta last weekend. I was in the area, as were some old and new friends for what was a harrowing experience.

The first group of photos was taken by a new friend we met who was downtown and much closer to the chaos. He was in a hotel and didn't leave it for at least 2 days.

There was property carnage in the streets as you can see. Burning buildings, cars, and busses, but miraculously no civilions were killed that we knew of.

I show you these photos first before I will tell you my story in photos, so you can tell that the smart decisions made through out that day by our leader and host David Vidmar kept us safe and away from all of this.

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The next group of photos and stories are my story....much less dangerous becuase we made the right decisions at the right times, to keep a safe distance and ultimately to get home safe.

We got up Sunday morning and rode a cab to La Cruz north of Nuevo Vallarta (where we were staying) to attend and the street fair with live music, food, drinks and local vendors in a strip of land adjacent to the marina there. It was a calm easy going Sunday morning.....

This is a photo of the very first explosion. We were a ways up the coast at this street fair and everyone knew right away that it was a big explosion.....the local online news first claimed it was a one house gas leak, but the locals knew something else was up. A few of the venders packed up and left fairly quickly, but we stayed and had lunch and before long the news got out of what was happening. At that time we thought it was only in that area, which was kinda close to where the Villa where I stayed was....

This is the moment we knew it got serious...as I was shooting photos of the band you can see smoke from another fire explosion much closer to us off in the background behind the band. At this point the band stopped and the street fair started shutting down.

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Our leader Dave knew lots of people there as he lives in the area and through a series of conversations, introductions, and people in general just being super helpfull and kind, we ended up in a conferance room with others who were stranded. The roads were way to dangerous so Dave made the call to stay. We enjoyed food , drink that we and everyone else who was stranded with us were providing, and we waited it out to make a decision on how to get home.

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Dave made the call that chartering a boat was the safest route to get ous home and to avoid the extreme danger on land between where we were and "home '..and as you can see we are all elated to be on our way back home to a much safer area...where we stayed until I flew home.

Dwight Arnold

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