geraldp
Contributor
Puerto Vallarta Trip Report: 7/2 7/9
After two failed attempts to get back to Cancun area last year (due to hurricane Emily and then hurricane Wilma) we decided to try the Mexican West Coast this year to avoid the Caribbean altogether during hurricane season. We arrived Sunday afternoon into the Puerto Vallarta airport. Compared to the huge Disneyland-style lines at the Cancun airport customs counter we were extremely impressed by how short the lines were at Puerto Vallarta. We de-planed, had 4 people in front of us going through customs, grabbed our luggage, and headed out through all the shuttle/timeshare salespeople to look for our pre-arranged shuttle. We were given free transport by the Mayan Palace in Nuevo Vallarta as part of our stay.
Puerto Vallarta impressed me my only other experience in Mexico is the area South of Cancun from the airport down through Puerto Morelos, down through Playa Del Carmen and down to Akumel (as well as the island of Cozumel). While that area is beautiful and unique, it is very rural and you pass through some pretty poor areas. Many of the cars you see on the road are pretty beat up. Puerto Vallarta is a thriving city, and I was really impressed by how much new building was going on. I saw a huge number of new vehicles on the road brand new F150 pickups, Chevy Suburbans, and European sedans. Another interesting point I observed was that where-as most of the tourists I saw in the Cancun/Cozumel area were from USA/Canada (and Europe), here in Puerto Vallarta most of the tourists were wealthy Mexicans on holiday.
We arrived at the Mayan Palace, where we immediately requested an upgrade to the Grand Mayan. This condo has three separate areas, each with their own pool and facilities, and the Grand Mayan was the nicest of the three. Plus Grand Mayan residents are able to enjoy all three pool areas. We got a room in the Grand Mayan on the 7th floor overlooking the golf course to the East. It was very nice. Our friends Scott & Karin and their daughter Liz had arrived 3 hours earlier and were waiting for us on the beach, margaritas in hand. So we all checked in and took a look around. We had a HUGE pool, an even bigger wave pool with a large slide, and a floating river pool running around the whole area. The grounds even had a small railroad running all the way around the property for transportation. This was all right in front of a half a mile of pristine beach front, complete with palapas, lounge chairs, and waiters running around getting people drinks. Compared to the Mayan Palace on the Riviera Maya this had a much nicer beach. The pool area in Riviera Maya is larger, but if you count the pool area in all three areas of the Nuevo Vallarta Mayan Palace overall this facility was larger. Plus NV has the huge double wave pool.
Monday we kind of relaxed, then in the afternoon headed into the El Centro area of Puerto Vallarta south of us by about a 20 minute taxi ride. It was HOT, and we walked up and down the boardwalk stopping in shops to window shop and enjoy their air conditioning. We finally settled down at a restaurant on the beach called Daiquiri Dicks to try their daiquiris. They were pretty good. After some more window shopping we climbed a huge hill to the South of town to eat at a recommended restaurant called Palermos. The food here was fantastic, it had a fantastic view overlooking the Bay of Banderas, and we had a pretty good mariachi band serenading us. I would highly recommend this restaurant.
Tuesday we all piled into a taxi and headed to the marina on the Peines Pier. I had opted to go with the Pacific Scuba (www.pacificscuba.com.mx) dive shop, based partly on the glowing recommendation on ScubaBoard, but also on the fact that the owner of the shop (Javier) had visited our local dive club in Portland Oregon last summer trying to drum up business. We were not disappointed by Pacific Scuba. My wife Carolyn and our friends Scott, Karin, and Liz were all snorkelers, and I was the only diver, so Pacific Scuba set us up with Alex as the dive master and Lucio as the captain on their boat Foca. It was a small fast boat, but had a nice canopy to keep us shaded on the way out. Our first day of diving was at Los Arcos a large haystack style rock formation on the South side of the bay about a 45 minute boat ride away. While the snorkelers all piled into the water I geared up and Alex and I dove a site he called Devils Canyon. The temperature was 82, and the surface water temperature was 85, so I opted to dive without my wetsuit. This ended up being a mistake, as the water temperature was a cool 75 degrees once I got below 60 feet. The visibility was about 40-50 feet. I knew ahead of time that the diving here in Puerto Vallarta was not going to give me near the visibility nor the corals off of Cozumel, so I wasnt too disappointed. What I was impressed by was the different kinds of fish I saw. I found a dozen or more moray eels spotted, green, and zebra. Tons of puffer fish balloon fish, Guinea fowl puffers, and bulleseye puffers, long spine porcupinefish, and a couple of rainbow scorpion fish. I saw king angelfish, sergeant majors, lots of jacks, and an octopus under a rock. Most impressive was the wall down around 75 feet there was the edge of the abyss 1800 feet straight down. Max depth for us on this dive was 75 feet, 52 minutes. When I came up I was surprised that a couple of dozen more boats had arrived some of the huge, disgorging hundreds and hundreds of snorkelers into the water. There were several great big catamaran party boats, with bad 70s disco music blaring out over the water, party going snorkelers dancing on board with drinks in their hands. With all the boats zipping around I was amazed that nobody was run over. During the Surface Interval Lucio dropped us off at the beach and we had a snack at a local restaurant.
2nd dive was at a site called Shallow of Christ a set of rock and coral foundations that vaguely resembled a Christ statue (if the visibility was good). The visibility here was only about 30 feet. I saw several more morays, and another octopus. Most of the dive was in and around rock/coral pinnacles, and overall it was pretty nice. I saw a king spiny sea urchin that was beautiful it looked like it was under a black light. It had a brilliant magenta color with a white luminescent center. The overall dive was 76 feet deep, 48 minutes.
Alex served us lunch, then we headed back. On the way back to the pier we passed through a group of jumping dolphins. Alex called them spinner dolphins. There were several hundred of them jumping all around us in a half-mile circle. We stopped the boat and just watch these magnificent animals for about 15 minutes or so.
Wednesday was a non-dive day for us. We had prearranged to do a canopy tour with a company called Canopy Tours de Los Veranos. For this trip it was just Scott, Liz and me, as Carolyn and Karin wanted to stay by the pool. After an hour or so bus ride south we arrived in a very thick jungle area. We were within a few miles of the area where they filmed The Predator A film by the way that starred both the future governor of California AND the future governor of Minnesota. It was a very dense triple-canopy area. This was a great experience. They harnessed us up and gave us a pulley system to carry with us between the zip lines. After climbing up to the top they harnessed us in and sent us down the zip line. The first zip was easy about 15 feet high and about 30 feet long just to give us a feel for the zipline. After that they got progressively higher and longer, with the biggest being about 1200 feet long and 540 feet above the canyon floor. In all there were 14 zip lines. It was a fantastic experience. We didnt see a whole lot of animal life apparently the animals come out at night. The final zipline ended up in a restaurant, where we had some lunch while waiting for our bus ride back. We were right in front of a river where we could have gone for a swim, but mercifully the weather was relatively cool that day so we just enjoyed the jungle river canyon.
Part 2 to follow...
After two failed attempts to get back to Cancun area last year (due to hurricane Emily and then hurricane Wilma) we decided to try the Mexican West Coast this year to avoid the Caribbean altogether during hurricane season. We arrived Sunday afternoon into the Puerto Vallarta airport. Compared to the huge Disneyland-style lines at the Cancun airport customs counter we were extremely impressed by how short the lines were at Puerto Vallarta. We de-planed, had 4 people in front of us going through customs, grabbed our luggage, and headed out through all the shuttle/timeshare salespeople to look for our pre-arranged shuttle. We were given free transport by the Mayan Palace in Nuevo Vallarta as part of our stay.
Puerto Vallarta impressed me my only other experience in Mexico is the area South of Cancun from the airport down through Puerto Morelos, down through Playa Del Carmen and down to Akumel (as well as the island of Cozumel). While that area is beautiful and unique, it is very rural and you pass through some pretty poor areas. Many of the cars you see on the road are pretty beat up. Puerto Vallarta is a thriving city, and I was really impressed by how much new building was going on. I saw a huge number of new vehicles on the road brand new F150 pickups, Chevy Suburbans, and European sedans. Another interesting point I observed was that where-as most of the tourists I saw in the Cancun/Cozumel area were from USA/Canada (and Europe), here in Puerto Vallarta most of the tourists were wealthy Mexicans on holiday.
We arrived at the Mayan Palace, where we immediately requested an upgrade to the Grand Mayan. This condo has three separate areas, each with their own pool and facilities, and the Grand Mayan was the nicest of the three. Plus Grand Mayan residents are able to enjoy all three pool areas. We got a room in the Grand Mayan on the 7th floor overlooking the golf course to the East. It was very nice. Our friends Scott & Karin and their daughter Liz had arrived 3 hours earlier and were waiting for us on the beach, margaritas in hand. So we all checked in and took a look around. We had a HUGE pool, an even bigger wave pool with a large slide, and a floating river pool running around the whole area. The grounds even had a small railroad running all the way around the property for transportation. This was all right in front of a half a mile of pristine beach front, complete with palapas, lounge chairs, and waiters running around getting people drinks. Compared to the Mayan Palace on the Riviera Maya this had a much nicer beach. The pool area in Riviera Maya is larger, but if you count the pool area in all three areas of the Nuevo Vallarta Mayan Palace overall this facility was larger. Plus NV has the huge double wave pool.
Monday we kind of relaxed, then in the afternoon headed into the El Centro area of Puerto Vallarta south of us by about a 20 minute taxi ride. It was HOT, and we walked up and down the boardwalk stopping in shops to window shop and enjoy their air conditioning. We finally settled down at a restaurant on the beach called Daiquiri Dicks to try their daiquiris. They were pretty good. After some more window shopping we climbed a huge hill to the South of town to eat at a recommended restaurant called Palermos. The food here was fantastic, it had a fantastic view overlooking the Bay of Banderas, and we had a pretty good mariachi band serenading us. I would highly recommend this restaurant.
Tuesday we all piled into a taxi and headed to the marina on the Peines Pier. I had opted to go with the Pacific Scuba (www.pacificscuba.com.mx) dive shop, based partly on the glowing recommendation on ScubaBoard, but also on the fact that the owner of the shop (Javier) had visited our local dive club in Portland Oregon last summer trying to drum up business. We were not disappointed by Pacific Scuba. My wife Carolyn and our friends Scott, Karin, and Liz were all snorkelers, and I was the only diver, so Pacific Scuba set us up with Alex as the dive master and Lucio as the captain on their boat Foca. It was a small fast boat, but had a nice canopy to keep us shaded on the way out. Our first day of diving was at Los Arcos a large haystack style rock formation on the South side of the bay about a 45 minute boat ride away. While the snorkelers all piled into the water I geared up and Alex and I dove a site he called Devils Canyon. The temperature was 82, and the surface water temperature was 85, so I opted to dive without my wetsuit. This ended up being a mistake, as the water temperature was a cool 75 degrees once I got below 60 feet. The visibility was about 40-50 feet. I knew ahead of time that the diving here in Puerto Vallarta was not going to give me near the visibility nor the corals off of Cozumel, so I wasnt too disappointed. What I was impressed by was the different kinds of fish I saw. I found a dozen or more moray eels spotted, green, and zebra. Tons of puffer fish balloon fish, Guinea fowl puffers, and bulleseye puffers, long spine porcupinefish, and a couple of rainbow scorpion fish. I saw king angelfish, sergeant majors, lots of jacks, and an octopus under a rock. Most impressive was the wall down around 75 feet there was the edge of the abyss 1800 feet straight down. Max depth for us on this dive was 75 feet, 52 minutes. When I came up I was surprised that a couple of dozen more boats had arrived some of the huge, disgorging hundreds and hundreds of snorkelers into the water. There were several great big catamaran party boats, with bad 70s disco music blaring out over the water, party going snorkelers dancing on board with drinks in their hands. With all the boats zipping around I was amazed that nobody was run over. During the Surface Interval Lucio dropped us off at the beach and we had a snack at a local restaurant.
2nd dive was at a site called Shallow of Christ a set of rock and coral foundations that vaguely resembled a Christ statue (if the visibility was good). The visibility here was only about 30 feet. I saw several more morays, and another octopus. Most of the dive was in and around rock/coral pinnacles, and overall it was pretty nice. I saw a king spiny sea urchin that was beautiful it looked like it was under a black light. It had a brilliant magenta color with a white luminescent center. The overall dive was 76 feet deep, 48 minutes.
Alex served us lunch, then we headed back. On the way back to the pier we passed through a group of jumping dolphins. Alex called them spinner dolphins. There were several hundred of them jumping all around us in a half-mile circle. We stopped the boat and just watch these magnificent animals for about 15 minutes or so.
Wednesday was a non-dive day for us. We had prearranged to do a canopy tour with a company called Canopy Tours de Los Veranos. For this trip it was just Scott, Liz and me, as Carolyn and Karin wanted to stay by the pool. After an hour or so bus ride south we arrived in a very thick jungle area. We were within a few miles of the area where they filmed The Predator A film by the way that starred both the future governor of California AND the future governor of Minnesota. It was a very dense triple-canopy area. This was a great experience. They harnessed us up and gave us a pulley system to carry with us between the zip lines. After climbing up to the top they harnessed us in and sent us down the zip line. The first zip was easy about 15 feet high and about 30 feet long just to give us a feel for the zipline. After that they got progressively higher and longer, with the biggest being about 1200 feet long and 540 feet above the canyon floor. In all there were 14 zip lines. It was a fantastic experience. We didnt see a whole lot of animal life apparently the animals come out at night. The final zipline ended up in a restaurant, where we had some lunch while waiting for our bus ride back. We were right in front of a river where we could have gone for a swim, but mercifully the weather was relatively cool that day so we just enjoyed the jungle river canyon.
Part 2 to follow...
