Gringo Town

After leaving Guanajuato last week, we took a long and windy bus trip to Puerto Vallarta, situated on the beautiful Banderas Bay. We are now on the western coast of México, bordering the Pacific Ocean. I think we are a bit spoilt in Australia with our beautiful beaches, but it is still very nice here. There are huge mountains right on the coast, and I love the way they just drop straight into the ocean. Puerto Vallarta itself is very westernised, with large expensive resorts, American chainstores, and on every block people trying to sell us tours in broken english. Many canadians come to Puerto Vallarta to escape their freezing winter, so the place is totally populated with them. We do love canadians (hi Josh), but there are just so many here!! We are a little dissapointed that we can get away with speaking English here too, and have to force ourselves to keep practising our Spanish.


A man balancing rocks for tips.


Puerto Vallarta from a cool Cuban restaurant we had lunch in.

There are many restaurants spread along the beach, where you can sit back to eat local cuisine in a dingy cafe with your toes in the sand, or sit up higher in a restaurant and watch the bay. Behind the restaurants is a strip of hotels and resorts that tower over the bay, and a few streets back is the real México. This is where our hotel is, where we are awakened during the night with the "boom, boom" of subwoofers and loud untasteful Mexican music. We walk past lots of markets and little stalls every day, selling random touristy merchandise, and with salespeople yelling at us in American accents "Hey honeymooners, come look in my store, I am cheaper than my neighbours!". It gets a bit tiring constantly shaking our head saying no gracias, so we are finding routes through town that avoid them.


Finally found a quiet place in Puerto Vallarta.


This is the small town of Yelapa.

Yelapa is only accessible by water-taxi, and is a 45min boat ride from Puerto Vallarta. It's a pretty little village with a nice beach and friendly locals. Nyall almost died when a coconut fell milimeters away from his head, but apart from a fright he is fine. We were thinking of studying Spanish here for a month, but it all got too expensive. Instead we just went for a daytrip (We almost had to sleep on the beach when we missed the last boat back to Vallarta for the day, luckily the boat driver remembered about us and came back to pick us up).


A dog on the boat on the way to Yelapa. He wasn't happy, but it made us wish we had Lily with us!

All in all, we still love it here! It is a very different Mexico to what we have experienced yet, but it is still fun to be here. I think our bodies have appreciated being fed restaurant food for a little bit, and something that is a bit more familiar. We are both healthy again now which is making our stay much more enjoyable.

Next stop: Troncones, a small beach town 12 hours south of here.