Mexico - The Beach Scenes
	When we are looking primarily to hanging out on a Mexican beach our order of preferences are (1) Cancun, (2) Puerto Vallarta, and (3) Cabo San Lucas.  Cancun is #1 in the quality of the water, waves, beaches, and nearby sights.  The Mayan ruins in Talum are highly recommended for a day tour from Cancun.    In Puerto Vallarta we recommend....Le Kliff (***).  About 17 km S of centro PV.  A restaurant with fantastic ocean sunset view and good food.  (The food is great but the *** are especially for the view.)  Table are on a large patio overlooking the ocean.  Very ROMANTIC. Recommended:  take a taxi or local bus in late afternoon and try to get out to Le Kliff in time to visit the site of the making of The Night of the Iguana, which is near Le Kliff,  before closing.  Then grab a great patio table at Le Kliff and start an early cocktail hour, lasting to sunset. Then enjoy dinner and dance music.  Best beach:  Punta di Mita,  40 km N of centro PV.  There is a (colorful) local bus running from the town and hotel alley to Punta di Mita.  It's a local, so plan on making this a whole day adventure. Saturday night stroll along the promenade and into the town square.  Eating at the makeshift sidewalk eateries.  You can make a delicious dinner with $2 spread over several sidewalk purchases.   This is what the locals do, but not tourists (other than ourselves).   This is a *** experience. Cruise boat to Yelapa. Evening stroll: on the Puero Vallarta promenade.   The Best Dining In Cancun and most interesting are in the city of Cancun rather than on the hotel strip.   Given the layout of the airport and hotel alley, many visitors never see the real Cancun.  But it's not difficult to get into the city.  Local buses are cheap and run frequently from the hotel strip to downtown Cancun.        In a 1999 visit we discovered the charming Santa Maria Restaurante [$,**].   This immediately became our favorite Cancun haunt.   It faces a small city park, Parque Las Palapas, on a quite street two blocks from the Avenida Tulum (where the buses run from town to beach hotels).    The dining room is open air.  Food is superb.     While our usual policy on this blog site is to mention only those places we have personal experience with, we must make an exception for Cancun.  We have two special friends with authority and experience on Cancun that can not be overlooked   Gina likes La Placita (Hamburgers and Mex BBQ).  She probably means the downtown La Placita, not the one on the beach strip.   And Susan, based on her last visit (2004), provides these options. ........we found a new restaurant in Downtown Cancun called Labna.  It is new, but was not doing a great business on Saturday night.  I hope that it takes off........Labna Margaritas St.  29, 892-3056......We ate there several times.   It has excellent regional fair.  Not very pricey.  Just a few doors down from La Habichuela - also a favorite, but we did not eat there this time........Two other favorites are: 100% Natural  (simple Mexican dinners, breakfast, fish, tacos, etc) Plaza Caracol....  and Savio's  (light Italian)