After leaving Mazatlán, we hit the first really winding roads of the trip… and for the purpose of this sentence, don’t take “really” lightly. Thus began what has inconsistently been the most insane stretch of road I dare imagine. Ultra-steep, ultra-winding, ultra-filled with gigantic, poorly labled (often only a hand-painted sign some local has put up), insanely placed (directly after a sign that says 80km/hr speed limit) speed bumps, and ultra-filled with Mexican drivers with some new concept I don’t have a name for that is an intense mixture of carelessness, haste, and both suicidal and homicidal tendencies featuring the whole extended family riding along in the back of your pickup.
While the Mexican version of the Pacific Coast Highway, here Mexico highway 200, doesn’t hug the coast quite as much as Highway 1 in California, it offers far better weather, conditions that force the driver to be very aware of his beautiful surroundings to avoid death, and offering beaches and mountainous ocean vistas that honestly beat anything California has to offer. As you’d expect though, there’s always the Mexican twist… At one overlook so impressive I backtracked to snap a couple photos, I was at one point completely distracted from the beauty overwhelming my view by a horrible aroma. I walked up to the edge of the view and looked down. See the following images:
The view...
... the garbage.
Another cultural difference: No Mexican highway is devoid of massive piles of rotting garbage.
We were on our way from one tourist town to another: Puerto Vallarta. In between, other than mountains, we passed through terrain I’d think of as jungle for the first time. Incredibly lush scenery full of the kind of palm trees with massive, surreally colored fronds that seem to be exploding like a shaped charge out of the top that you don’t see back in the states. The road also took us through Tepic, where we stopped for lunch. I randomly selected a hut advertising chicken. The non-existant menu had one item on it, the aforementioned chicken, and the cook suggested we should probably content ourselves with 2 orders. We obliged. An order is apparantly half a chicken, grilled and seasoned to deliciousness and served with the requisite tortillas and rice. No utensils were provided, which let me tell you, when you’re covered with road dirt stuck to sunscreen stuck to your skin, you love.
The way out of Tepic offered another amazing sight: seemingly endless rolling mountains and foothills covered in tall, fuzzy sugar cane. The rugged fuzzy landscape had the requisite winding roads combing their way throughout, and cut through the sugar cane, added another other-worldly feel to the place. We lucked out for one of the few times on our way through Mexican cities, and managed to find our way out without event.
We made it to Puerto Vallarta near dusk. The old downtown is surrounded by miles and miles of highrise Americanized condos and resorts, and not knowing what to expect, I claim luck alone for keeping us going through the sprawl before a sign that pointed towards the “Centro” appeared. We managed to find a wireless hotspot long enough to assure that we hadn’t heard back from Ms. Baren about a free place for the night, but all the thanks in the world to the gang remains. Instead we went through a hell of sorts searching for a hotel.
As we’ve said, our timing for exploring the so-called “Mexican Riviera” stinks. A room in Puerto Vallarta comes at only the highest premium when we were there. Grumpy, tired, and driving through the old part of town, which is rugged, incredibly steep, and with roads made of motorcycle-killing field stone, we were at risk of disaster. Outside one hotel, I tried to park my bike on a hill so steep that when I went to put it on its kickstand, it started to fall over the stand, and I couldn’t get my foot down far enough (steeep!) to push it back up. I was somehow able to keep it from tumbling completely over and onto the car unlucky enough to be next in line down the hill, and with my dad busy parking himself (which he pulled off far better than I), I managed to flag down a pedestrian to save me without further incident. This near-miss was on our 3rd or 4th hotel attempt, all of which had come back extremely expensive. My dad wanted to bite the bullet. Who knew I was the bigger jew? We settled on heading to one final hotel, and I excercised some of my trademark luck, and found a place 4 blocks from the major boardwalk with a pool and complimentary breakfast for about $30 american dollars. Hard to beat.
And what a place! When I talked to the woman at our hotel, she didn’t originally mention the cheap room we accepted. When I cringed at her offered price, she mentioned a place on the 4th (actually what we think of as 5th) floor with a “shared” bathroom, and no air conditioning, at a bargain basement price. Sounded great to me! She didn’t have the key so she called up to someone 4 floors above, who shouted to send me up. 4 flights of stairs later, I waited behind a strange corner for a guy to emerge with the key. As the one who was fixing up this once-beautiful-but-now-rundown hotel, he was quick to point out all the flaws and parts he was still waiting for: The ceiling fan was a death trap, use the standalone unit over here, You can’t really open the drapes, Etc. Hell, the room we “shared” the bathroom with didn’t even have beds in it.
As should be needless to say by this point, we took the room and stepped out briefly together before my dad, still recovering from his bout with what must have been Pneumonia, went home. I ventured forth as per usual, again enjoying my tall-man status and drinking on the streets. Puerto Vallarta certainly was gorgeous. With a beach that didn’t quite beat Mazatlán, but a set of attractions and a more centralized downtown, it won hands down in my book. There were bars both blaring horrible club tunes, and more standard flare. A jazzy band blasted Cuban-inspired dampened-trumpet beats with a lively Mexican flare from an expensive-looking packed hotspot. The boardwalk itself was full of very cool, thoroughly post-modern brass sculptures depicting magical staircases, strange interpretations of people, and cephalopodic creatures turned into chairs. It also had some of the most amazing sand sculptures I’ve ever seen. My stomach still wasn’t really into the thoroughly Mexican and not-terribly-talkative-to-forgeigners scene, and I came home decently early to find my dad with stories of strange goings on in our hotel.
Puerto Vallarta Sand Sculptures
He told me to walk back by the corner the renovator originally emerged from, and I obliged. In the back of our floor was piled mattresses, chairs, ceiling fans, bricks, tiles, tools, and wood. A cot was set up in one corner, and a truly massive power transformer hummed diligently on a balcony, loosely cordoned off but seemingly begging for a liability suit if we weren’t 2000 miles from the US. There was also someone talking on a cell phone in one of the darkest reaches of the room, so I tiptoed my way out. But that wasn’t all: there were stairs to the roof! On top of which was a fantastic, dabilitated roof deck sporting a long-since decommissioned, but thoroughly impressive, built-in hot tub. Partway up the hill, from the top of our tall hotel, you could see hints of the ocean and Malecón, the city, and the built-up mountain that dominates the old downtown area. It was truly gorgeous… and of course thoroughly stuffed with crap.
The way out of Puerto Vallarta in the morning, again of course, left us thoroughly confused but fortunate enough to make it out without any serious incident, and also treated us to brilliant views of the craigy, old-world-developed, and thoroughly impressive coast.
