Puerto Vallarta Vacation

Bernie and I spent a fun-filled week in Puerto Vallarta from February 26 to March 6 with a group of our friends. This will be part travelogue and part random observations from a week in Mexico. I realize that it’s not practical to generalize a whole country based on my experience as a tourist in just one city, but I imagine that some of the things I saw and experienced are fairly common throughout Mexico. For starters, the extreme poverty was evident almost everywhere we went. We didn’t stay at a huge, posh, all-inclusive resort…our guest house was certainly beautiful and very comfortable, but when we stepped outside the front door, we were on a typical street in old Puerto Vallarta. Most of the worn down apartment buildings in our neighborhood had rooftop decks with minimal furnishings, clotheslines heavy with the day’s laundry, no screens on the windows, and exposed power lines hanging close to the buildings, sometimes within several inches of the window or balcony.

The roads in the old part of the city are made of stones, and they don’t get a whole lot of upkeep. Off the few main streets, cars drive very slowly, sidestepping the uneven rocks and potholes. Plus, the city is built into the hills, so some of the streets are very steep and partly washed out from rainstorms. There are very few traffic lights or stop signs in the intersections, but drivers seem to do a good job of staying alert and avoiding fender benders. As a pedestrian, you really need to watch the traffic carefully and keep your eyes on the ground so you don’t twist your ankle on the stones, step off the sidewalk and drop anywhere from 6 inches to 3 feet down to the adjacent street, or step into a random hole where street work is being done….and appears not to be wrapping up for quite a long time.

Building codes seem to be pretty relaxed in Mexico as well. We saw one very large hotel that we were told was damaged in a hurricane years ago and now sits open like a skeleton and will probably remain that way for a while. We saw other buildings that are in grave need of repairs, and they probably aren’t getting improvements anytime soon. In one hotel where we went to have drinks on the rooftop bar, we all got in the elevator, the doors closed, and the elevator didn’t move. The doors didn’t open. We pressed the emergency alarm until the building staff came to let us out of our hotbox/deathtrap about 20 minutes later. OK, I’m exaggerating, it felt like we were in there for a reeeeally long time, but I think it was about 3 or 4 minutes before we were rescued. But it was a very small elevator, and the lights went off a couple minutes into our entrapment. And we heard from some friends a couple days later that the same thing happened to them in that elevator. We happily opted to take the stairwell, but let me tell you, that has its safety flaws as well. It climbs along an outside wall of the building, and in places, there is a “safety” wall that’s only about 3 feet high….no railing, no windows, no cushy lawn to fall on down below. Remember, we took that staircase down from a rooftop bar, so thankfully we all stayed upright and made it back to ground level afterwards. :-)

Now, despite the poor quality of the streets themselves, I was impressed at the wavy stone pattern built into many of the sidewalks. I couldn’t help wondering why they would go to so much trouble to add such a nice, artistic pattern to each sidewalk, when they could simply do old fashioned sidewalk squares. Maybe there’s a story there that I don’t know about.

Many of the people we met were very nice and were grateful to have so many tourists shopping in their stores, eating in their restaurants, and relaxing in their bars. However, due to the tremendous poverty of so many citizens, tourists are met with a barrage of aggressive, relentless vendors. They are relatively polite, but you see shopkeepers standing outside stores and restaurants eagerly encouraging you to come in. There are taxi drivers everywhere, and often they will pull up next to you by the sidewalk and ask if you want a ride somewhere. This can happen 5 or 6 times in the span of a 5 block walk down the street. And the beach is prime real estate for vendors who are trying to sell everything from crafts to blankets to sunglasses to skewers of shrimp. A different vendor comes by your group on the beach about every minute or two. A simple “No, Gracias” or a shake of the head is enough to keep them moving along to the next group. I wonder how much money a person tends to make in a typical day like that. What really sticks in my mind is seeing very young children walking around selling things…sometimes at 10:00 at night. That has to be a difficult life for sure.

We enjoyed many delicious meals at the restaurants in town – Margarita Grill, Coexist Café, Gaby’s, Le Bistro Café. A lot of restaurants specialize in Mexican cuisine (of course) but generally offer other options as well. In the middle of our week, we did a day trip called “Diana’s Tour”. We boarded a catamaran and spent the day cruising along the coastline, stopped to do a little snorkeling, stopped for a drink on a secluded beach, and then spent a couple of hours on a resort beach where we had lunch before cruising back to Old Puerto Vallarta. The day was filled with music, drinks, food, and the sighting of a few whales lounging in the water just offshore. We remarked on the lack of regulations -- so different than what you would find in the United States. Before we boarded the catamaran, Captain Diana was handing out Dramamine to anyone who desired some...no waiver to sign or anything. And later that morning, she was giving “Space Cookies” (it’s like a "special" brownie) to a small group of passengers. We also noticed that the passenger load was way over the posted capacity. Oh well…everyone had fun, no one got hurt, and we all made it back to port safely.

Speaking of easy-to-obtain drugs, we saw a Farmacia or a Super Farmacia on practically every street corner in Puerto Vallarta! I can’t get over the fact that anyone can just walk in off the street and purchase pretty much any drugs over the counter. Of course, when I went into a Farmacia, I bought an ice cream bar. :-)

Bernie and I, as well as our group of friends, all really enjoyed our vacation in Puerto Vallarta. The weather was consistently sunny and warm, the prices were reasonable, we felt relatively safe walking around the neighborhood, we didn’t get sick from any of the food or water, and the beach was quite nice. In fact, I was impressed by the fact that there were no shells, stones, or seaweed anywhere along the Blue Chairs / Green Chairs Beach by the hotels. Just soft, white sand. It was wonderful, and I’m excited to go back!