Puerto Vallarta

It was a nice ride south from San Blas with the road once again winding up into a small range and the temperature rising again into the high thirties. There were a couple of small towns along the way and also a small crocodile farm. I stopped in for lunch and met the young guy working there. They had only been opened for four months and it was quite a good setup for the crocs, each with their own enclosure and concrete pool.

Salvador explained that they take crocodiles that are either a pest or injured in the wild. The civil security guys catch them and this place was set up as a place to keep local crocs. They come from a large coastal marshland nearby. One small one had a damaged front leg and has been nursed back to health. I really like what they were doing and for fifteen Pesos it’s worth a look. Salvador and I had lunch together under a big shady tree and I shared some bananas and muesli bars with him.

I was getting closer to Puerto Vallarta and it became apparent there was some serious American money here. About ten or fifteen kilometres before reaching the town, I made a turnoff to a small peninsular that looked appealing on the map. The road became four lanes wide with tall central streetlights, the kind I had not seen in Mexico. A large wall and monitored gates enclosed some impressively large and extensive buildings, possibly condos, sitting on the top of the headland. There was a golf course and a gang of Mexicans literally raking rocks from the centre strip of the road.

 I wound down to the coast and found myself in a very touristic area with all the souvenir shops and vendors selling trinkets and t-shirts along the cobbled road. This type of area blatantly aimed at the tourist market never appeals to me so I kept going. I thought there might be some nice beach camping somewhere but without the sandflies, but as I came closer to Puerto Vallarta, it became apparent that this was a major tourist destination and all of the beachfronts were lined with large resort-like buildings and very little access to the beach.

 I rode into an area called Nuevo Puerto Vallarta and wound through a labyrinth of manicured streets before coming to a large shopping mall complete with Starbucks, Subway and McDonalds. I felt like I had landed back in the USA. A nice coffee at Starbucks did appeal and use of free wifi was a must. I needed to try to find something that would be reasonably priced here.

 Ironically I paid more for the coffee than I had for my camping fees last night so I took a seat and started searching. An American lady, Melissa, struck up a conversation with me and immediately picked that I was Australian and asked about what I was doing. She sells apartment ‘fractions’ here where you can buy in to part of an apartment and use it for a given period of time each year, similar to time share. We talked for a while and I explained I was just after somewhere to camp near the beach and she started doing some Google searching for me.

 Melissa told me she was meeting with her ex-husband to discuss seeing his children more regularly…the type of conversation that happens to me a lot! Maybe I am just a good listener but people tend to open up to me with their personal stories quite quickly and unfortunately for Melissa, I was mostly focused on the time of day and my need to find somewhere to stay before dark. She found an RV park by the beach that was backtracking quite a few kilometres and it seemed quite expensive and a bit fiddly to find for what it was. I shouldn’t expect anything else here.

 I thanked her for her help and said I must get going, although afterwards I thought I should have been more forward and asked if there were any empty units I could stay for the night. Missed opportunity? Maybe not.

 I appreciate her help but I didn’t take her suggestion, opting to head into the old centre of town and find a cheap hotel. Centro Puerto Vallarta is made up of one-way roads made from rocks cemented together. This is quite common in Mexico and I am starting to wonder whose idea it originally was to shake everyone’s bones to pieces and destroy vehicle suspension. With the fading light it was harder to see the sunken inspection points and missing rocks, the traffic was busy and slow, and eventually I just had to stop and ask for a price at a modest looking hotel.

 ‘Nine hundred Pesos is a bit more than I had planned to pay. I’m looking for something more around three hundred.’

The kind English-speaking hotelier pointed me to another part of town not far away over the bridge, so I remounted and rattled my way to where I was directed. Here I found about four quaint looking hotels, none of which had parking other than in the street, so I picked one and they had a room for 250 Pesos. I parked Ziggy right out the front and they did offer me to park in the foyer, the first time this had happened, but with the cobbled roads as a run up to a six-inch gutter, followed by a hallway that ran downhill into the hotel, it had all the makings of a disaster to try and get out in the morning. I parked outside the front door.

 In search of food, I did a loop of the nearby streets and opted for tacos from a street vendor after seeing high prices in the restaurants. Aware that the beach was only a few blocks away, I walked that direction to check it out. It felt like I had walked into a movie set or back to beachside California. There were crowds of people milling along the coastal walkway with a background of tourist shops, upmarket restaurants, little sitting areas around giant sculptures, with a sprinkling of poor Mexican street vendors selling artwork, jewellery and handicrafts to etch out a living.

 There were numerous bars also and I tuned into some of the conversations and most were in American English. Now this was an irony for me. In the US I was told by almost every American I met to ‘be careful’ in Mexico, and now here I was in Mexico, surrounded by American holiday-makers. I knew Cancun was a big destination for Americans but I didn’t know it was here also. I walked and observed and for an hour and a half and forgot I was in Mexico. It felt like the USA. I joined the irony and bought a gelato then walked back to my hotel room, forgetting the idea I had about maybe staying an extra day to have a good look around. I enjoy being in Mexico and I have really enjoyed meeting Mexican people, and I wanted to stay in that realm. I didn't bother taking photos.