Enferma in Puerto Vallarta

A couple of weeks ago, we went to Puerto Vallarta,Mexico.

Why Puerto Vallarta? Well, we all wanted to simply relax and enjoy its beautiful white sand beaches, the warm weather and generally sit by and watch the spectacular sunsets PV is famous for. It used to be a small fishing village and is now a major port where almost all cruises stop.

Once we got there, we couldn’t help but compare it to Konkan coast near Mumbai in India.For those who are familiar with Konkan coast, the main town is bigger like Alibag (albeit a lot bigger, cleaner and modern) with several resorts in and around the main town ( like Kashid, Murud etc).It is nestled on the coast with mountains to one side and the Bay of Banderas on the other.

After a long flight, with a stop in Phoenix, we reached Puerto Vallarta and then took a pre-booked van to our resort, Garza Blanca, 45 minutes to the south of main town. Varun was tired after a long day of travelling and refused to sit in the car seat. Finally we gave in and let him ride in my lap to the hotel.

Online pictures do no justice to this resort. It was simply one of the most luxurious condos we have ever stayed in – which thanks to Jetsetter deal we could afford. I really wish our house was like the condo we stayed in – hint hint Vipul 😉

In pre-baby days, we would have checked in and headed straight to the pool. Now we had to check out the place for safety, move objects out of reach, rearrange some furniture to make ‘crawling space’ – before we could order dinner and drinks and kick back and enjoy the sunset! Cheers to start of a great vacation famous last words.

That very night Varun got fever, which I downplayed attributing to travel fatigue. We gave him Tylenol and then settled in for the night.When his temperature measured 102 the next morning, even after multiple doses of Tylenol, I asked Vipul to find a doctor. Luckily, Vipul had made sure that the resort had medical services available before we went, and the doctor came in 30 mins to check on Varun.

He prescribed 3 medicines – which we later found out were too strong/not suitable for babies. I was alarmed at the dosage and literally pestered Vipul to call our pediatrician to confirm the medicines. Unfortunately, as the medicines were local, they were unable to guide us. I wanted to search on the Internet to look up side effects etc but this being a small town in Mexico, we were subject to same conditions as in India – unreliable Internet connectivity, a 3-day outage due to some telephone work.

In the meantime, Varun’s fever was still at 101/102 and we decided to give him the medicine. BAD CALL.

Varun had the worst diarrhea ever which resulted in a diaper rash and then left him with a burned/peeled skin. My little baby was in such agony, he refused to climb out of my lap. Every diaper changed hurt, sitting on the floor stung him and he was in plain misery. Just thinking about his raw red sashimi like butt brings tears to my eyes.

We called the doctor again – what were we thinking? But I hoped that he may be able to prescribe something to cure this. Well, there is really no way around a chemical burn like diaper rash –  like all sleep regressions, you have to plough through them. Slather on the diaper cream and hope that it will bring some relief. We stopped the medicine as soon as we saw the side effects but it was 3 days before the diarrhea subsided enough to allow the cream to work.

Varun felt better the day before we left and we took him to the pool which he loved to splash about in.

We still had a good time in Puerto Vallarta, taking turns to eating out, cooking simple meals at the condo and generally not rushing around as we do here – away from the daily grind. The weather was perfect and holding a sleeping baby all day while gazing out at the waves, herons, butterflies and hummingbirds is not as tedious as working indoors 😉

Would we visit again? Absolutely! But probably will not use doctors baring life threatening emergency!

P.S – Varun is fully recovered now. I didn’t want to write this post before he was well and jinx it 😉