In a novel I am working on, my character is about to embark on a trip to Puerot Vallarta. Having never been there, I am looking for first had experiences and descriptions.
Please share your travel stories with me about Puerto Vallarta - especially specifics (airport, hotel, location, tourist spots).
Thanks!
Wasn’t there for long, so my info is limited, and not very positive.
It’s a BIG city, densely built, with people on the street downtown ALL the time. The beach would be nice if the outdoor cafes weren’t built all the way to the high-tide line. It’s got steep hills, par for the course in western Mexico. Just north of town is a timeshare outfit where this really sleazy American tried to sell me a unit. Place for very stupid people who have no right to have the money they do.
Um…the hilliness is more toward the south. It flattens considerably as you go north. Dense as it is, there is no hi-rise district, a la American cities.
Dunno if that’s useful. It was a while ago. I liked Acapulco a lot better.
I stayed in my boss’ time share there once, for a week (as a Christmas gift, they gave me a week in their timeshare - I told my husband he was staying home with the kid and I took my two girlfriends. Great vacation!) and I was struck by how…artificial it seemed. I guess a lot of touristy places are like this, but it was my first experience with one. Everywhere we went that was on “resort” turf was bright and happy and lush and carefully manufactured to make sure we were having a great time at all times, and the stretches between that we’d occasionally drive through were desolate and desert-y. We did go into the city proper for shopping one day, where I found the people to be very nice and only moderately pushy (although the only place I had to compare it to was Bali, where merchants are insanely pushy.) I found a few good deals there, but nothing spectacular, and the silver prices were nowhere near as good as I had been led to believe. Got a couple nice leather purses, though.
My friend won the limbo contest, we got spectacularly plowed on tequila and/or margaritas and/or “cucarachas” - some insane combination of Kahlua and Bailey’s and rum and tequila and I don’t know what all, which is placed in a glass and lit on fire and drunk with a straw - the goal being to drink it all quickly before the flame goes out. It’s cleverly designed to get tourists very, very drunk in a very short amount of time.
We were each approached by cute male looking for a hook-up - my two friends from hotel staff, and I from a tourist, so that was good for the egos! (We all turned them down.) 
Great food. That’s where I learned my favorite, most simple guacamole: just avocados, chopped onion, chopped tomato, lime juice, cilantro and salt. We had some great hangover food: “quesadillas”, which were warmed flour tortillas served next to a plate of melted cheese and chorizo, which you would scoop onto the tortilla and eat.
I liked it in a sit-by-the-pool and relax by day, pretend-you’re-on-Girls-Gone-Wild (sans nudity and lesbian sex) by night sort of way, but I’m not going out of my way to go back.
This thread is better suited for IMHO.
I’ll move it for you.
Cajun Man
for the SDMB
I went there with my family as a teenager but we mostly stayed in a resort. The beaches there were good. The general area itself is typical Mexico which basically means it is a true 3rd world experience. The outskirts of the city had extreme poverty like starving dogs and kids without real clothes. The airport was in Puerto Vallarta I think. It was really run down with a few crappy shops some of which were simply closed. It wasn’t at all like an American airport. I liked it but the poverty was disturbing.