Mexico: Puerto Vallarta: Go beyond the all-inclusive beach resorts and cruise ship terminals
PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico — The tour bus was empty when it picked me up at the Hotel Los Arcos in Puerto Vallarta’s Old Town.
We rumbled through the skinny streets laid out long ago for donkey carts, past the whitewashed, red-roofed buildings with bougainvillea dripping from wrought-iron balconies, and headed north to the Hotel Zone in the newer end of town.
Tom Uhlenbrock
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
(enlarge photo)
Along the Malecón you’ll find an array of unusual public art. The Pacific resort city started as a small fishing village in 1851.
Tom Uhlenbrock
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
(enlarge photo)
At Las Cascadas in the jungle near Puerto Vallarta, Linda the parrot will steal your heart (and possibly your lunch).
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An hour later, each seat filled with tourists from the fancy resorts and cruise ship terminals, the bus pulled up and unloaded at our first destination: the Hotel Los Arcos in Old Town.
Gambino, the guide, explained that his job is to pry visitors from their poolside perches at the all-inclusive hotels, where the temptation is to hang out and sip a never-ending flow of piña coladas.
“Tourists come and eat at the resorts, and party that night at Planet Hollywood or Hard Rock Cafe, and think they’ve been to Mexico,” he said. “The international bars have international prices, and the only Mexicans you see are the waiters.”
The “Old Mexico” of Puerto Vallarta deserves a closer look, either on foot, in a rental car or aboard a tour bus.
Musts on the sightseeing route are the remodeled Malecón seaside boardwalk, with lots of unusual public art and where the young and restless go to see and be seen; Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, with its crownlike spire; and the lushly overgrown Cuale River Island, where stylish restaurants and boutiques line the boulder-strewn stream.
The city was settled in 1851 by the Sanchez family near the mouth of the Cuale, where the Sierra Madres drop down to an arc of sandy beach lining Banderas Bay. Originally called Las Penas, the name was changed in 1918 to Puerto, or “port,” and Vallarta for Ignacio Luis Vallarta, the governor of the state of Jalisco.
The sleepy fishing village was awakened in 1954 when Mexicana Airlines realized the town’s tourism potential and began offering flights to Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlán. The area rose to star status in 1963 when movie director John Huston went looking for a tropical location to film a Tennessee Williams play and found the rugged cliffside beach south of the city.
“The Night of the Iguana” introduced the rest of the world to this secluded stretch of Pacific coast, and Puerto Vallarta’s population bloomed from roughly 2,000 inhabitants to nearly 260,000 over the next several decades. Huston, himself, retired to a remote cove outside Puerto Vallarta and the star of his film, Richard Burton, bought a villa here for his new love interest, Elizabeth Taylor.
“Before 1960, there were no roads to Puerto Vallarta — to get here, you had to swim or fly,” said Gambino, the guide. “The big bomb in tourists started in 1970. To protect Old Vallarta, they passed laws. The only thing you could change was the function of the buildings.”
The occasional donkey cart still trudges through the cobbled streets of Old Town, but nowadays it’s likely to be leading a parade of impatient SUV drivers. And movie directors still use Puerto Vallarta as a backdrop for everything from “Predator” to “Herbie Goes Bananas.”
Some three million tourists show up each year, and tour guides such as Gambino and Jorge Luna try to get them away from the ritzy hotels and cruise ships to experience the Mexican culture thriving in Old Town.
“Today, there’s three cruise ships in port, and that’s a bit too many,” Luna said. “Two is fine; three, and we don’t have the tourist services they deserve.”
And if you tire of the scenery and culture, there’s always Hooters, Domino’s, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club. “Nobody gets homesick in my hometown,” Gambino said.
The open-air lobby of Los Arcos looked out onto a large swimming pool sandwiched between high-rise wings of the hotel, with the ocean just beyond. On the sand, umbrellas shaded chaise lounges where locals and visitors alike read, napped, baked, drank, played cards or strapped themselves into harnesses for parasail flights over the glistening bay.
Vendors roamed the promenade separating the beachfront hotels from the sand, selling colorful shawls, silver jewelry, straw hats and ironwood carvings of leaping dolphins and soaring sailfish. Hotel security guards were posted nearby, making sure the sales pitch never got too pushy.
All of Puerto Vallarta’s 40 beaches are open to the public, even those fronting swanky resorts such as Crown Paradise, Krystal and Fiesta Americana in the northern Hotel Zone. Buy a piña colada and you’ll be treated like a guest.
At Los Muertos Pier down the beach, a friendly salesman tried to interest me in a deep-sea fishing trip for $200. “The captain brings an ice chest with drinks for you,” he said. “If he has six fishermen, he brings six ice chests.”
My room at Los Arcos had all-white decor with a walk-in tiled shower and a flower-draped balcony above the beach. I saw no iguanas, but a tiny sliver of a gecko patrolled the ceiling, bellowing out a surprisingly loud chirp at night.
The hotel was within walking distance of the flea markets, although Gambino advised that the real values were in the quality shops and galleries that lined the streets of Old Town.
“Go to the shops for presents for yourself, and to the flea market for presents for your friends,” he said. ‘
There’s a wide range of hotels in Puerto Vallarta, with rates from $20 to $300 a night. Prices at Los Arcos vary by the season, with winter rates for all-inclusive rooms ranging from $55 to $117 a night for two people.
I could order off the menu at the hotel’s beachside restaurant or gorge at the bountiful buffet of fresh fish and traditional dishes. While the piña coladas were fine, the best thing I drank during my stay was “jugo de sandia,” fresh watermelon juice.
So far, Gambino hadn’t shown me anything I hadn’t seen wandering around Old Town on my own. I got my 20 bucks’ worth as we left the city limits and headed south on a paved highway.
First, the bus meandered through the winding streets of Conchas Chinas, a residential area where the gated hillside villas had million-dollar sea views and prices starting at half that. “Those Mexicans who know how to live well live here,” said our guide.
A few miles later, we rounded a curve and discovered that Huston got it right some 40 years ago. Below stretched the town of Mismaloya on a gorgeous half-moon of sand beneath the tropical forest. Once the secluded setting for his movie, the cove now holds what some consider the area’s finest hotel, La Jolla de Mismaloya.
“When they made the movie, nothing was here, just a humble village,” Gambino said. “The only way to get here was by boat.”
Our bus paused for a photo stop and, right on cue, a young man with an iguana draped over his shoulder appeared to pose for a few pesos. You could visit the still-standing movie sets and John Huston’s Seafood Restaurant, but we rolled on by.
The bus chugged away from the sea into the jungle interior and we stopped for lunch under the thatched roof of Las Cascadas. The restaurant was next door to Chico’s Paradise, a hangout of the stars who film in the area. A waterfall below splashed through rocky chutes and pools, with boys diving for the coins tossed from the restaurant terrace.
While I dined on 6-inch grilled shrimp stuffed with cheese and wrapped in bacon, a mariachi band played for a table of tourists, singing “Roll Out the Barrel.” I was busy clapping along when the restaurant’s pet, a large green parrot named Linda, landed on the arm of the empty chair next to me and flew off with a half-eaten lobster tail from my dining partner’s plate.
Polka music and parrot thievery in paradise. Now that was worth the 20 bucks.
If you go . . .
Puerto Vallarta has a wide variety of accommodations, with rates ranging from $20 up to $300 a night and more. Most are listed on the official Web site at www.visitpuertovallarta.com. Also useful are www.allaboutpuertovallarta.com and www.puertovallarta.net. There are plenty of ritzy all-inclusives, but hotels on the beach in the Old Town section are nice and a bargain at less than $100 a night.
The rainy season is from late June through early October, with higher temperatures and humidity. December through April is the peak season, when hotel rates are highest. October through December, the rain has stopped, the weather is less humid and hot, and fewer tourists mean cheaper hotels.
Everybody who goes has a favorite restaurant. Mine is La Fuente Del Puente, which overlooks the Cuale River. Cafe des Artistes is great for upscale dining. A friend likes two restaurants on the river island, River Cafe and El Andariego. My guide said the best seafood in Old Town is at the Shrimp Factory, while Mariachi Loco has the best Mexican food and ambience.
The Bay of Banderas encloses two marine national parks, Los Arcos and Marieta Islands, which offer diving and snorkeling tours. Humpback whales visit during the winter months through mid-April. There are no ruins in the Puerto Vallarta area, but the city has the Pre-Hispanic Museum on the Cuale River.
What to buy: The street vendors and flea markets are fun and cheap, but the real treasures are in the quality shops and boutiques of Old Town. A heavy sterling-silver cuff bracelet was priced at $160, before haggling. A large ceramic Talavera platter painted with birds and fruit like an Old Master still-life was priced at $80. Several shops feature works by the Huichol Indians, who take wood or pottery molds, cover them with beeswax and then decorate them with intricate beaded designs. A small jaguar head costs about $90, a lizard about $30. The vendors take American dollars, but return pesos in change.
