Here Comes The Sun

In late March, we took a more traditional late winter trip – Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for a week. We had an early start that morning – alarms going off at 4:20 for our 7:00 flight. We made it onboard with plenty of time for breakfast after dropping our bags.

And this time, we had Granny and Grandpa too!

Sadly, our departure had the first rejected takeoff that I’ve ever experienced, where we accelerated down the runway and then slowed back down again pretty much instantly. We then went back to the terminal for the maintenance engineers to investigate an alert that came on during takeoff. So we didn’t actually get to takeoff again until 10:15 am. At least they were able to solve the issue and the plane didn’t need to be taken out of service! I was happy that I’d ordered a second breakfast on the first attempt because by 11:30 I was getting pretty hungry again.

The rest of the trip was uneventful except for a 30 minute wait on the taxiway on arrival in Puerto Vallarta waiting for a parking spot – PVR doesn’t see large widebody aircraft like the 787-9 Dreamliner so there are only a few apron positions that can take them – and as a remote stand, you get to ride a bus to the terminal afterwards. Feels just like Europe!

We stayed in a condo right in town in the Zona Romantica for the week. It was a block in from the beach and had a great rooftop terrace and pool. Most of the trip we spent either up there, relaxing on the balcony, or enjoying different foods.

We spent a lot of time on the rooftop during the week.

And trying many different restaurants – Puerto Vallarta has a lot of excellent food offerings and we only ate at two places twice during the whole trip.

Grilled Whole Red Snapper:

This delicious looking charcoal rotisserie was at Pancho’s Takos which was right next to Cafe de Olla where we ate the first night. Everytime we walked by, Pancho’s had a massive lineup of people standing in the sun, but we didn’t bother as it seemed like it was good but overhyped.

Here’s Pancho’s setting up for the evening on another day.

Cafe de Olla next door had much more seating, a good selection, reasonable prices, and their own great outdoor charcoal grill.

Group photo by Ellie:

A few shots of the area around our condo. Very walkable. Having a car would have been a nuisance and a hassle in that area !

Our friends, Marta, Przemek, Alex, and Marcus Heske were also down at the same time staying at one of the all inclusive resorts north of town. We met up with them a few times.

We visited the beach near our condo.

Gringo Gulch.

And discovered that we were close to an apartment that they were renting the following week with some other friends, so we climbed some more steep steps and sidewalks. It was a very interesting older part of town a bit more off the main tourist track.

To end up at the bottom of an extremely steep hill leading up to the apartment, that had a self operated funicular to lessen the burden on weary legs. The funicular started in the parking garage of another building which was unexpected. We hiked up the stairs instead of using this unfamiliar device.

The view from the top was great ! Marta’s pics she showed us of sunset from up there were awesome.

Ellie found some fresh papayas for Granny at the top.

And a very different view looking behind the hill.

After some other people who were staying in the area explained how to operate the funicular, we rode on the way down the hill.

We walked back down to the beach, passing the famous Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose bells were ringing for Palm Sunday.

Dinner was found at Roberto’s, a place on the Malecon.

Another day we met up again to take a trip to Yelapa, a small community south of Puerto Vallarta accessible only by sea. We took an Uber from town to Boca de Tomatlan which is where the main water taxi terminal is sited. But after hearing the sales pitch from one of the private boat operators and a bit of discussion and negotiation, we decided to take a private trip for the day. The cost difference was about 800 pesos. After we saw some of the water taxi lineups in the afternoon, we were glad that we did it this way. And we got an extra stop out of it too – well worth the extra. We had a good day on El Pollito (Chicken Little)

Ellie was a bit nervous about the boat ride, but after bouncing around in the swells she couldn’t get enough of it !

After landing in Yelapa and hearing a few sales pitches from beach restaurant staff, we just walked around and played on the beach for a bit, which was very peaceful as there was hardly anyone there at the time (we were early). We only met people who had stayed the night there, no daytrippers as they would come in later.

Marcus really wanted to scare Ellie while she was posing for this photo on the beach.

After not enough time on this quiet beach for the kids, we set out to explore the actual village, which was accessed by a lot of steep steps and narrow pathways – no vehicles here except ATVs along the “main streets”.

One of the highlights of Yelapa – actually two of the highlights – are waterfalls. One of them is a relatively easy, short walk up the paths to the top of the town and wasn’t very impressive at the end of the dry season as we are. We did not venture to the further and more dramatic one which has a much higher flow but would have been a long hike for everyone with potentially a river crossing.

A few stray dogs followed us back down towards the sea as we sought out a lunch stop.

Ended up at Gloria’s. Yelapa was getting really busy now that the day trippers were all in.

Then back to the beach to get our captain to take us to the next stop.

We had initially unloaded directly on the beach but the swells were too big now, so we had to walk over to this pier on the north side of the cove. There was a somewhat suspect ladder leading down to the waterline and El Pollito.

Ellie having more fun on the boat again.

Initially we had hoped to go snorkelling off the boat but this afternoon the sea was just too rough to do that. So we headed to Quimixto, another sea-accessible only village.

Quimixto also has a waterfall that you can hike to, so that’s what we did. It took about 45 minutes each way, and we saw others being transported up and down by horse and ATV, but overall it was pretty quiet along the trail.

I think we enjoyed Quimixto more than Yelapa. There were far less tourists, the restaurants along the path looked inviting, and there was far less trash. Granny stayed onboard El Pollito for this stop, too bad she missed out!

Some more good food. This pizza place was recommended to us by some visitors from Ontario that we met on the roof terrace, and it was very, very good – completely unexpected for PVR.

We had street churros to finish – the only street food of the trip as I’m really leery about tummy issues while travelling!

On our last meet up day with the Heske’s we explored the marina area, which is close to the airport.

After a good lunch, of course!

Our last sunset on the rooftop was accompanied by McDonald’s. After a long day of walking in the sun, we couldn’t be bothered to go out anywhere again and weren’t that hungry anyway.

Ellie really wanted me to take a picture of our local OXXO, the Mexican equivalent of 7-Eleven.

Ellie on the plane – 4 hours late. We were originally scheduled to go back on the same plane as we came in on, which was departing at 1:50 PM. Well, that plane seems to have developed a different mechanical issues a couple days after we’d arrived and had been grounded in Calgary awaiting repair since then. WestJet doesn’t have many big planes, which hold twice as many people as a 737, so they had to sub in an extra 737 flight to accomodate the overflow, but we didn’t leave until 6 PM. We had a later night than planned, but we still got home the same day.

Hasta luego, Puerto Vallarta! It’s been a nice week in the sun.