The New Adventures of Old Vallarta (Puerto Vallarta)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	Puerto Vallarta
Date:	17/04/09 (215 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lovely promenade and old town, great weather

Disadvantages: Not all that many restaurants in the hotel zone

Choosing to spend Semana Santa, the week before Easter, in Vallarta was not difficult. I've been to Acapulco, and I spent a month near Cancún when I first arrived in Mexico, so Vallarta was the obvious choice for my next beach trip. Located about 90 minutes by air from Mexico City, Vallarta is served by dozens of flights from the capital every day. We flew early Sunday morning and returned the following Sunday afternoon, getting just over a week in the resort.

Vallarta airport is surprisingly nice. It is certainly better than the tiny thing in Veracruz, but then it is an international airport, with tons of flights to the USA and Canada as well as domestically within Mexico. We arrived at the start of a busy holiday week, but it was less than 30 minutes from exiting the plane to getting into a taxi, as baggage reclaim was quick. When we were leaving to come home, we found the airport had a very good selection of shops and restaurants to kill time before a delayed-as-expected flight.

The airport is located near the Marina, in-between the resorts of Puerto Vallarta and Nuevo Vallarta. The only taxi service available is the extortionate 'authorised-airport-taxi' set-up, which cost us 195 pesos (just under £10) to our hotel in the hotel zone. That may not sound too bad, but coming back we picked up a taxi right outside the hotel and it cost 50 pesos (£2.50) for the same journey in reverse.

There are 3 main parts to Vallarta, and we explored all of them.
PUERTO VALLARTA includes the old town and the hotel zone. We stayed on the edge of this and it was an hour's walk along an uninspired road to reach the proper old town. Alternatively, busses run this route too, for 5.50 pesos (27p) per trip. It's easy to get around because the busses all state their destinations on their windscreens, usually in a list of their stops e.g. WalMart, Zona Hotellera, Malecón , Downtown.

The old town is definitely worth seeing. The Malecón or promenade runs along most of it, and from here you can see impressive sand sculptures on the beach below, and catch sight of the Voladores, groups of flying men who fling themselves off a tall pole and spin to the ground on ropes in a nice synchronised way. You can also admire the various statues along the sea front, many of which are designed to be touched / climbed on / sat in. There was always a queue for photos of the ladder one, which I think as a tourist in the town you are legally or at least morally obliged to climb at least once during your stay.

A little beyond this is a small open air auditorium where there were different street performers and bands each night we walked past. Continue on and you'll find stalls selling souvenirs and food. Next comes the Isla Rio Cuale, a small island in the middle of a river where there are various boutiques and restaurants. It's quite a posh area but you'd never know from the rather random groups of (Mexican) tourists swimming in the brown waters, making it look like something from Africa rather than an upscale Mexican beach resort.

If you leave the Malecón and head inland, you can find the town's cathedral and a number of other bars and shops, though nothing too appealing - we were there during Spring Break, so most of the places had a distinctly young and drunken feel to them. The restaurants here are quite expensive for Vallarta, and hideously expensive for Mexico as a whole, as they cater to the tourist trade, but if you're there on holiday and still thinking in £ or $, you won't think them that bad. Most places had English menus and bilingual staff. A selection of fast food joints are also available.

The Hotel Zone is to the north end of Puerto Vallarta and boasts various large complexes, plus the sort of smaller place we stayed in. Unfortunately you cannot walk along a promenade here as the hotels are built right onto the beachfront, with no access except to residents. You can get onto the beach itself quite easily, but unless you want to walk along the sand, you have to head back to the road. There are virtually no restaurants round here, because most of the hotels are All Inclusive, and therefore their guests tend to dine in rather than eat out. Our plan to eat out a few times (we were staying in a self-catering place) soon faltered, so apart from one nice meal at the Italian buffet place, and a snack on the last day, we didn't go anywhere. There are two mini shopping centres in this area, Plaza Genovesa and Plaza Caracol, the latter of which boasts a cinema and decent food court as well as some small boutiques. There are also two massive supermarkets in this part of town Mega and Soriana, so self-catering was not a problem.

MARINA VALLARTA is, no surprises here, the town's marina, and the place where the cruise ships dock. It is about 40 minutes walk from the north end of the Hotel Zone, but again busses will take you there for 5.50 pesos - get off at WalMart opposite the big shopping centre. We headed here one evening expecting to find the old town but on a smaller scale, with just a few restaurants and shops to explore. Instead, apart from the shopping mall, we found nothing but more hotels and the naval hospital - really not all that useful. If you're a sailing fan you might enjoy wandering around, looking at the smaller boats moored there, but otherwise it's worth only the briefest of looks.

NUEVO VALLARTA is the 'new' resort on the coast, and located north of the airport. It isn't even in the same state as the rest of the places. We were under the mistaken impression that it was a proper resort, so once again decided to spend an evening exploring it for a change. This was a mistake: we boarded the bus at WalMart and asked the driver to tell us when we were there, which he promised he would. It was over an hour before we started to get a bit concerned, and about 15 minutes later that we realised we were on our way back to Puerto Vallarta, having taken what we subsequently began to call 'an exciting bus tour' of the resort. It's not that we missed it - it's that there's nothing there apart from some very large, very posh hotels and golf courses. The bus went round picking people up, but it turned out they were all heading for downtown Puerto Vallarta, because Nuevo Vallarta itself does not have a downtown, and therefore is not worth a trip unless that's where your hotel is located.

If you fancy a break from the main parts of town, various tour operators offer day and half-day trips, but these seemed pretty generic - zip lining, swimming with dolphins, parasailing - and nothing unique to Vallarta.

The BEACHES spread throughout the bay are pretty, with nice golden sand, but the developments have built down quite a bit onto the beachfront, so they are quite narrow - nothing like the sand dunes of St Annes I grew up playing on. While we were there, one area was roped off for the Spring Break-types, and lots of beer stands had been set up there, along with a massive sound system. We spent several mornings on the stretch a little north of here, and it was nice and quiet, though that could just be because Mexicans don't seem to get up in the morning. The sea is very rough though, and although there are no shells to be seen, the bit where the tide comes into is full of crushed rocks and pebbles, and rather hard on the feet. In the end I only paddled a bit, since the waves really were rather violent, and in most areas there is no life guard on duty. Everyone else seemed to have the same idea - apart from a few brave souls swimming, there were few people in the water, and no lilos or rings as you might expect.

The reason we spent mornings on the beach, is to do with the WEATHER. Generally, Vallarta is a good weather place though like anywhere in Mexico hurricanes are a risk, albeit a small one. However when we went, days were not all that long, and we wanted to make the most of the sunshine. Being on the west coast of Mexico, the sun doesn't appear in the sky until quite late - about 8.30am at that time of year. Even then it wasn't very high in the sky, and it took another hour to hit the hotel's swimming pool, surrounded as it was by various buildings, so we took to the beach in mornings as this was where we found the sun earlier. The great thing about Mexico is that it gets hot quickly - pretty much as soon as you are in direct sunlight, you start to warm up, even if it's still early. The trade-off for the late sunrises was the pretty sunsets we got over the beach, visible from the Malecón and also from the main road that lead back to our hotel. The sun was setting about 8 - 8.30pm when we were there, so we were generally out and about at that time, and managed to catch it.

I would definitely recommend a trip to Vallarta as an alternative to Cancún or Acapulco. Something about the city just appealed more to me - it has a nice mix of old and new, of Mexican and International, and the perfect weather didn't hurt. It's a place I would like to return to, and one I was sorry to leave.

Summary: A great Mexican beach resort