Beautiful Beaches and Art Galleries in Nuevo and Puerto Vallarta

Our latest adventure took us from Panama to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. PV has been on our list for a while because it is a resort town and we have relatives there, but we didn’t want to go to Mexico until we got vaccinated. In addition to hanging out with family, we did a few fun things, besides breaking this website. (I’m sure some of you have noticed that we have had issues with the website and our Friday emails. I think I got everything fixed.)

Discovering Nuevo Vallarta and Bucerias

We decided to stay in Nuevo Vallarta near my relatives. It is just 15 minutes north of the airport. They have bought a beachfront condo but it isn’t done yet. In the meantime, they are living in a gated golf course community.

We were struck by how much building is going on in Puerto Vallarta, Nuevo Vallarta, and a place a little further north called Bucerias. These places are always on the shortlist for Americans to retire, so of course, we were curious. The Nuevo Vallarta community has lots of amenities that include nice restaurants, nice grocery stores, a hospital, several golf courses, a marina, and a nice beach. We were even fortunate enough to meet with a large group of our fellow nomads for lunch at the marina in Puerto Vallarta.

Bucerias is about a 10 minute drive north of Nuevo Vallarta and, like Nuevo, is in the state of Nayarit, while Puerto Vallarta is in Jalisco. To us, it didn’t seem to make too big a difference. I have heard of people who said they preferred Bucerias to Puerto Vallarta, so we went for a look. We stopped at this cute little restaurant right on the beach, but aside from a few new condos, Bucerias is pretty undeveloped. We got the impression that it is a place that locals can still afford to live in. There were some local craft stores and small food stores, but not much else.

Further north is Punta Mita, a surfing paradise that we didn’t visit.

Resort Living

To us, resort living involves pretty spaces, usually either a golf course or the beach and palm trees. We have also been following warm weather since last March. On that count, our condo in Nuevo Vallarta didn’t disappoint. Our condo sat on a pretty golf course in the El Tigre community. Our patio had a view of a fountain, grass, and palm trees. The pool, a short walk away, looked onto the golf course and of course, the temperature was lovely, in the 80s every day.

We were able to join the local club that included access to the best gym I’ve encountered on our travels over the last two years and access to a beach club. The beach club had a pool, food, drinks, and cute palapas on the beach. It was easy to call for a reservation and once we arrived the attendants’ set up our lounge chairs under the assigned palapa. Then they came around and served us drinks. The beach is very large, clean, and pretty empty. It fronts mostly privately-owned condos, not hotels for at least a mile down the beach so there were a lot of beach walkers out. We put our feet in the water and it was fairly warm but it was the Pacific. The Pacific is never quite as inviting as the Atlantic, at least for me.

Art Walk and Old Town Puerto Vallarta

While we did go into Puerto Vallarta a number of times for dinner, one particular evening we went into town to visit art galleries. Every Wednesday a number of galleries participate in an art walk. Some galleries also provide free refreshments. There is some really nice art in Puerto Vallarta and it was fun to walk around the cobblestone neighborhood and explore. We wound up at the main square with the church just before dark.

The last time I visited PV was nearly 20 years ago and there are only two things I remember: the main square and its market, and the beach walk known as the Malecon. While the main square hadn’t changed, the Malecon certainly had. After the galleries, we decided to go to the water and have a look. The main road used to go along the beach with shops on one side and an ocean sidewalk on the other side. In the last few years, they decided to close the road to vehicles and reroute traffic, so now the Malecon is a large promenade along the beach with the ocean on one side and shops, restaurants, and clubs on the other.

In addition to watching some pole performers, which we did remember from 20 years ago, we were able to sit and have a drink by the ocean before our dinner. The area is quite touristy and caters to the young clubbing crowd but I liked it anyway.

Good Eats in Nuevo and Puerto Vallarta

It seems that there has been a proliferation of fancy, expensive restaurants in both Puerto and Nuevo Vallarta. We were still able to find some tacos but fancy, loud, and expensive seems to be the name of the game. While the food and the variety were good, we weren’t blown away and it was more expensive than we figured it would be in Mexico. That said, the better restaurants were the Sonora Prime, La Madalena, and Tintoque the only Michelin star restaurant in Mexico.

Get the InDriver App

We chose not to rent a car for this stay, so we were a bit reliant on rideshare apps when the relatives weren’t up for playing chauffeur.  Sadly, Uber drivers pretty much never pick up folks where we were staying in Nuevo Vallarta. Instead, locals use the InDriver app, which has a slightly different business model.

Basically, you enter into the app where you want to go to/from and a price you are willing to pay. Local drivers then bid for the fare. You can see how close they are and the price they are willing to take. I was able to use Uber to get estimated pricing beforehand and then I offered 2/3 of that rate. There were always able to find a nearby driver willing to take the rate.

We understand that InDriver takes less of a cut of the final fare than Uber, allowing for the cheaper cost to riders. I should also note there are a number of US cities where the service works, in case you are interested.

Another complication was that Mike was unable to sign in to InDriver while in PV because the app uses Facebook to log in there. His Pixel phone FB app would not allow this. He was able to log in once he returned to the US, but then it was too late. I had no trouble logging in from my iPhone. So consider doing some prep before you go if you don’t have an iPhone.

Returning in the Spring

One decision we postponed until after getting to PV was where we would hang out for our warm break after the upcoming ski season. It was between PV, Playa del Carmen, and Panama. After a few days we chose PV, so my last few days were spent visiting condos to pick one for later.

Since we now knew a realtor, I reached out and asked about rentals for next March so I didn’t have to trust Airbnb. This is the first time that we have been able to actually see a place before renting it and check out the beds and furniture, which was great. After looking at a condo in PV near the marina and nightlife, one on the golf course and two places further north on the beach in Nuevo Vallarta, I picked one on the beach in Nuevo Vallarta for March. We decided to rent a car in the spring, which changed some of our requirements. The big selling point for the condo I picked was our ability to hear the surf from every room and I could see the ocean from the bed.

Even though the condo is on the north side of Nuevo Vallarta it is still less than 20 minutes from the airport and only 30 minutes to downtown Puerto Vallarta. We are planning to explore more on our next trip to the area.

Which condo would you pick: one near the action in PV, on a golf course, or on a quiet nearly deserted part of the beach out of town?