Estero El Salado – Puerto Vallarta

Estero El Salado – Puerto Vallarta

An eco-reserve in the heart of Puerto Vallarta’s jam-packed hotel zone? Unbelievable, but that’s exactly what I found at Estero El Salado, one of the city’s newest and most unexpected attractions.

In spite of the traffic, it took only about five minutes to drive from our beachside hotel to the incongruously green haven separated by chain-link fence from the restaurants, shopping emporiums and high-rise resorts that crowd bustling Boulevard Francisco Medina Ascencio. (more…)

Puerto Vallarta Fan Club

I’ve joined the Puerto Vallarta fan club pretty late. I know this former Mexican fishing village with the romantic Liz Taylor-Richard Burton connection has long been a favourite of my Okanagan neighbours, but I didn’t get the attraction. Labouring under the belief that PV is just another beach lined with high-rise hotels, I wasn’t interested. My idea of purgatory is a full week stuck in a beach resort. Call me crazy (and many of you will), but although I like a poolside Margarita as much as the next winter-weary Canadian, I can only down so much tequila and after I’ve ploughed through my second trashy e-novel, I just have to get up and do something—preferably involving a new experience and an excuse to haul out my long lens.

So I was less than enthusiastic about PV as the location for a conference I recently attended. Boy, how wrong could I be? (more…)