Puerto Vallarta Trip Report: 7/2 – 7/9 (Part 1)

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geraldp

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Location
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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 wasn’t 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 70’s 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 didn’t 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...
 
Puerto Vallarta Trip Report (Part 2)

Thursday we all piled into the taxi again and headed back to the pier. This time we were headed to a site called Majahuitas beach. This was even further south past Los Arcos – about an hour or so boat ride. This time the 5 of us were joined by 3 additional divers. I wore my 3-5-3mm full wetsuit the rest of the week, although after the first day my computer never registered below 81 degrees at the bottom. Visibility was terrible – about 10-20 feet. I buddied up with Norman – a new diver from Kansas City. Alex took us down to 92 feet trying to get better visibility, but no luck. I did see an octopus and several moray eels. Interestingly Carolyn said the snorkeling here was far better than that at Los Arcos. The visibility in the shallows was much better than it was down below, and there were a lot more fish. This dive was 92 feet max depth, 49 minutes long.

During the Surface Interval Lucio again dropped us off at the beach. We enjoyed a nice rest on the beach.

2nd dive of the day was off of Caletas Point, while the snorkelers swam near the Majahuitas beach. Again the visibility was terrible, but I did see a couple of stingrays and a lobster on this dive, along with a couple of moray eels and lots of the ubiquitous puffer fish. This dive was 68 feet deep for 62 minutes.

Friday I taxied off to the pier by myself, as the snorkelers in my group were done for this trip. This time we went to a site called Marietas Islands. The site is unique in that the island is home to the blue footed boobie bird, which is only found here and in the Galapagos islands. We went out on a slightly larger boat, the Marla I, and Amelio was our captain. This was a fairly long haul, normally about an hours ride to the North of the bay, but made 45 minutes longer by several stops we made on the way out. On the way out to the island we spotted a huge group of fish jumping, and Alex directed Amelio to ride through it so he could do some fishing. With no luck there, we spotted another large fish-jumping area, so we went through that. Finally he caught one tuna. Then we spotted a huge plastic drum of gasoline floating on the water. We picked that up and found another one. In all we picked up 4 drums of gasoline. Our guess was that it was from drug runners who were lightening their load running from the Federales. We probably picked up at least 200 gallons of gasoline.

On this trip we had Alex as the primary dive master, and Armando was the dive master for one other diver. In addition to that there was a couple from New York who had hired a personal instructor (the guy was on his very first open water dive after getting his certification 3 years earlier), and a couple from Monterey who had hired an expert on nudibranchs and other sea animals to help them find and identify the tiny little nudibranchs to photograph. So in all we had 3 dive masters and an instructor for 5 divers. It turned out that the guy from Monterey was in the same line of work I was in, and we knew several of the same people (small world). I buddied up with Alex, and the New York couple buddied together in our group. Armando and the other diver teamed up and went on their own dive, and the Monterey couple teamed up with their expert for their own dive. Our first dive was at a site Alex called Amarradero. He also called the “the little tunnels”. It was a fantastic dive with great swim throughs. Visibility was the best I had seen here, about 60 feet or so. I saw 3 green moray eels, including a large one that I got up close and personal with in the middle of a swim through. Alex had cleaned his tuna on the boat, and fed the fish head to a couple of green moray eels we spotted out in the open. It was a lot of fun watching these guys go at the food, trying to fend off the fish. There were quite a few jelly fish on the surface, so I was glad to have my wetsuit on this trip. Both of the divers from New York got stung. Overall this was a nice long dive at 66 minutes, max depth 62 feet.

The 2nd dive we motored over to another spot and we saw a manta ray swimming by. So we anchored and tried to jump in to dive with him but another boat zoomed in and scared him off. On this dive we found 4 octopuses out in the open. Another nice dive, this one was for 60 minutes, max depth 57 feet.

We were fed lunch before we headed back. For a special treat Alex filleted his tuna, then carefully treated each piece with two kinds of hot sauce, Worcester sauce, and sprinkled with fresh lime juice. We snacked on very fresh sushi. That was wonderful.

Saturday was a day at the condo riding the river pool and the wave pool and enjoying the sun. Dinner was at the Fajita Republic restaurant. This is another restaurant I highly recommend. There are two of them – one in the El Centro area of PV and one in the Nuevo Vallarta area. During the week we tried them both – both are excellent but the nod goes to the one down town for overall atmosphere. Sadly we had to leave on Sunday. It was a great week.

Jerry
 
Sounds like a blast, we will be staying at the Grand Mayan in November and I can't wait.
 
Sound good...thanks for sharing
 

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