Puerto Vallarta · Mexico

Overview

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The second most popular destination in Mexico, Puerto Vallarta occupies a nice niche between the other big resort cities -- it's more sophisticated than Cancún, but more laid-back than Acapulco. Part of its popularity is owed to the fact that development has left its Old Town unscathed, so there are cobblestone streets and graceful churches in the city center instead of glass and concrete towers. Moreover, the city has the best dining and shopping on the coast.

Although Puerto Vallarta has spread north and south over the years, every attempt has been made to keep its character intact. City ordinances prohibit neon signs, require houses to be painted white, and dictate other architectural details downtown, where pack mules still occasionally clomp along the streets. Above downtown, steep roads twist through jungles of pines and palms, and rivers rush down to meet fine sand beaches and rocky coves.

The beautiful Bahía de Banderas (Banderas, or Flags, Bay) provides shelter from storms at sea and has been attracting outsiders since the 16th century. Pirates and explorers paused here to relax -- or maybe plunder and pillage -- during long trips. Sir Francis Drake apparently stopped here. In the mid-1850s, Don Guadalupe Sánchez Carrillo developed the bay as a port for the silver mines by the Río Cuale. Then it was known as Puerto de Peñas (Rocky Port) and had about 1,500 inhabitants. In 1918 it was made a municipality and renamed for Ignacio L. Vallarta, a governor of Jalisco State.

In the 1950s Puerto Vallarta was essentially a hideaway for those in the know -- the wealthy and a few hardy escapists. When it first entered the general public's consciousness, with John Huston's 1964 movie The Night of the Iguana, it was a quiet fishing and farming community. After the movie was released, tourism boomed, and today PV has some 300,000 residents. Airports, hotels, and highways have supplanted palm groves and fishing shacks. About 2 million people visit each year, and from November through April the cobblestone streets are clogged with pedestrians and cars.