I think that learning geography when you’re traveling should never be skipped. What better way to learn where something is than go there? Several people have asked where we went. We were just south of Puerto Vallarta. My daughter plotted our flight path on a map. We had to avoid bad weather or some type of turbulance on the way down, so we were routed way inland. That made it a little more interesting. The pilot would announce what city we were flying over periodically, so that was fun and enhanced our geography lesson while we were travelling.
Here is her map.
For those of you who are now so curious about the Puerto Vallarta area, I found this website that has some interesting info for tourists. Here is the map from that website.
We were down by the Mismaloya/Boca de Tomatlan area. If you are looking to travel there for any reason, I would highly recommend checking into Mismaloya. There is a nice hotel there. I’ve never stayed there, but I’ve walked around and in it to check it out before. I just like that it is away from the city out there and it is easy to go out to the beach. You can easily catch a water taxi (a boat) and go to villages that have no roads into them. All the travel into these villages is either by water taxi or mule. However from Mismaloya it is not so easy to go grocery shopping, but they have a good bus system there, so it’s not too bad.
This was actually my ninth trip to the area. One of those trips was our honeymoon. You might guess that we love it there! We are very fortunate to have family with a house there and so we have wonderful accomodations when we go down. We have stayed three times in time share though, in Puerto Vallarta and up in Nuevo Vallarta. In my opinion, the neat things to see are not at the resorts, although they’re a nice place to stay. So figuring out a way to get out and about is important to be able to see the habitat and the area around there.
My one, last comment about the area is save your shopping for at home. If you can get away from Puerto Vallarta out to some small villages on their market day, shopping can be interesting. I once purchased a Mexican blanket at one of these markets when we were driving up to San Blas that I really like. (San Blas is another really awesome spot for birding.) I had priced the identical blanket in Puerto Vallarta and it was double the price there as to what I paid in the village. Of course, you have to “bargain” with them, but even then that was their “best deals” compared.
So my travel advice is, if you were to ever go, find some form of transportation, even if it’s the bus, and get out and see things away from where all the tourists are huddled together. You’ll really enjoy it, at least, we do.