Puerto Vallarta

We arrived in Puerto Vallarta on 7th November. The bus journey was an absolute nightmare. It was meant to take only 7 hours, but after more than 9 hours, we arrived at 2am. We caught a taxi to the Hotel Belmar, and Jo went and checked out 2 possible rooms we could have. We thought it was best Jo went after my choice of room didn't go down too well in La Paz. The girl did well!

The room was on the top floor of the hotel, and it had a balcony looking out over the sea. It also had a kitchenette, which we were very grateful for as this meant we could do our own cooking and save some money at the same time. All this for only 20 pounds a night.

The following day we checked out the scuba diving operators as we had heard that Puerto Vallarta had some good dive sites with the possibility of seeing manta rays, whales, turtles and sharks due to it being the deepest bay in the world. We decided on Ocean Quest and bought a 3-day 6 tank package which had a free night dive thrown in. The night dive was good as we saw plenty of lobsters for the first time. Although they were too quick to catch. We didn´t know they could move that fast!

The other 3 day´s diving was also good, the best site being El Morro where we saw a giant green turtle, over 1.5m long. He seemed to be quite inquistive and stayed with us for a couple of minutes before swimming into the abyss. Unfortunately though, we did not see any mantas or whales as it was just out of season.

We have really enjoyed Puerto Vallarta mainly because it is a laid back place, and because we had a really good hotel room where we could sit out on the balcony and watch the sunset with a beer in hand. We also managed to polish off a bottle of Baileys in just 4 days!! I think it had a leak in the bottom(?) All in all, this has been our favourite place in Mexico so far.

On the 14th November, we had to say goodbye to our hotel and catch the bus to Mexico City. A 14 hour bus ride ahead of us. Oh, what joy!!