Puerto Vallarta sits on the Pacific Ocean on a very large bay, 150 miles south of Cabo and the Baja and 150 miles due east of Guadalajara.
Puerto Vallarta is a “big” busy built up city next to the ocean, with a real downtown; a city with lots of house built on a steep hill that sits above the city. The streets are cobblestone and all slow going with lots of traffic.
We never spent more than an afternoon in Puerto Vallarta so I can’t comment too much on it other than it is toursity, the beaches seemed crowded and the “artisans shopping” is endlessly the same of everything over and over. Lots of tourisity activities there. The tourist aspect is also fed by huge cruise ships that stop there M, T, W - so picking a different day to visit might also help. We did enjoy the one afternoon we wandered around.
We ended up wanting to be on the beach - a bit quieter. And so we booked an AirBnb in Nuevo Vallarta also known as Nuevo Nayarit. This is a town on the same large bay just north of Puerto Vallarta, and just north of the airport which sits between Nuevo Vallarta and Puerto Vallarta. This isn’t a city but really a big strip of developments - hotels and condos. There are far less restaurants than in Puerto Vallarta. However Nuevo Vallarta is just south of Bucerías which is a nice quiet town with lots and lots of really great restaurants. I suppose you could get by with out a car in Nuevo Vallarta - but we enjoyed having a car for the convenience of being able to drive to Bucerías and the surrounding towns. We only drove into Puerto Vallarta once, the traffic and stop lights make it slow and go and there is limited parking there - though there are for sure some public parking spots - (once you get to them) - 2 we found were this one midway, and this one down near the “artisans shopping”.
Speaking of driving - I did have a "run in" with the police. First of all the left hand turns in the area - happen from the 3rd right lane to the right of the two main lanes. And there is a barrier between two lanes and that 3rd outer lane - and so you have to "plan" ahead by getting over and then going left when the left hand turn light comes on. These left hand turn lanes always got me - I couldn't get them in my head. How you get from that 3rd lane back into the middle lanes is also not clear, so I attempted to get from the 3rd lane into the middle lanes but that is technically "running a red light" and a cop standing at the street light "pulled me over" by waving me to the side. She spoke no English, we spoke no Spanish - so we used her Google translate on her phone - and she said the fine was 3000 pesos for running a red light - and she got a screw driver out of her butt bag and said she was going to take off the license plate and take it to the station and we could come down and get it later and pay the fine. So .... I dialed the lady who was the property manager where we stayed and she talked on the phone for a while - and then the property manager told me it would be 1000 pesos. So tried to give the police woman 1000 pesos but she said - "uno problemento" or something like that and then punched into her Google translate that I had to give her the 1000 pesos so that no one could see it - so I had to put the 1000 pesos under the notebook as she handed me my license. Our taxi driver back to the airport said that we should have only payed 200-300 pesos - that would have been plenty.
We stayed on the northern end of Nuevo Vallarta, close to Bucerias at the Marítima Playa Flamingos Rentals, which is a large condo unit - security gate, lobby, pools on the roof, pools next to the condo and then nice private beach area with tables and umbrella huts. The ocean was nice, some sloping sand with some waves but shallow sand bar not too far out that made for fun playing and swimming in the water. Great sunsets across the bay each evening. There was a local restaurant - which wasn’t that good - but was nice to order Pina Coladas (sans alcohol for us) while sitting at the beach. Another very lovely perk of the Maritima Playa Flamingos was they had a spa in the condominium and the $450 peso massages on the beach were lovely!
We loved the grocery store La Comer - so much fresh food options - fruit, awesome bakery (with home made hostess cupcakes), wide selection of “Mexican” fresh food - like the fresh made tortillas, huge fresh buffet servings of pico and guacamole.
Sofi and I drove out to Sayulita one morning, which is supposed to be a quieter, younger hippish surf town, but we found it small, crowded streets, with lots of golf carts, a very crowded beach with lots of people. Though lots of a bit more artistic shops, and some great restaurants, had the best shrimp tacos of our trip at Marys. I also drove out to Higuero Blanca and hiked up to the top of Monkey Hill which had good views of Punta Mita.
Sofi, Miles and myself also had a great trip with Mictlan Surf out to the Marietas Islands - where I went on two dives and they went snorkeling. Great crew, nice small boat with beautiful ocean, sun and the islands were full of birds and we saw humpback whales on our way back. There is also a “secret beach” excursion you can go to - but we opted to not do that one -and we were also the only 3 on the boat - so it was nice and intimate - as compared to the “booze cruise” charters we saw with like 50 people on a catamaran.
Restaurants that I liked in Bucerias and Nuevo Vallarta : in NV both the Riveria Grill and Ciao Steak and Pizza were expensive (by Mexican standards) but nice, as was La Peska at the Marina Riviera Nayarit (which we went to after a diving/snorkling trip to Marietta’s Islands with Mictlan Surf shop). In Bucerias I liked breakfast at Bistro Cobojo and Luna Luna and we had a very delicious dinner at Armando’s Place.