Reply To: Trip Report – Dublin, Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta

[NorthernLass]

Final thoughts and top tips.

I would absolutely love to go back and see more of CDMX and other archaeological sites (there are nearly 200 in Mexico!), however I’m not sure OH would be persuaded.

If you’re of a nervous disposition, Mexico may not be for you. There was appalling violence reported daily, though we never saw any trouble and found everyone we encountered friendly and helpful. It was quite surreal to think of millions of ordinary working people going about their everyday lives side by side with daily murders and kidnappings. The authorities are taking some impressive and innovative steps to prevent crime – for example there are separate spaces for women and children at stations and on the metro, and poster campaigns on public transport and in public and hotel bathrooms with helplines for victims of domestic abuse and human trafficking. Police and security staff were to be seem in huge numbers, on every street corner in CDMX (though OH pointed out that they seemed to spend most of their time looking at their mobiles) They are armed to the teeth – we even saw security guards in shops toting machine guns!

Public transport – very cheap and efficient and we used it quite a bit, during the day time anyway. You need to buy a travel card in one of the stations and load it with some pesos then you can use it on the metro, the buses, and the cable car system (which sadly we didn’t get to try). Each journey is 6/7 pesos, so it’s a very cost-effective option. Services are frequent and reliable. though as you’d expect it gets busy at times. There were always police officers and cleaners in the stations so they are a relatively safe and pleasant experience!

Ubers are cheap (avoid the “authorised taxis” at CDMX as they quoted us 10 x the Uber price!). On arrival at CDMX T1, go to gate 7 and order an Uber from the app as normal, it will pick you up at the kerbside.

MEX is modern and clean, with plenty of food options and shops (including mini markets where you can buy very reasonably priced things like bottles of water, coffee and sandwiches). We had some very tasty tacos al pastor before security on the way home as we’d been warned about the poor lounge offering. The AA lounge which is apparently for OW pax had decent drinks and limited hot and cold food. The barman will make you a cocktail if you fancy a final margarita before departure.

We ate in a few informal places and also at El Cardenal, a family-owned restaurant with a few outlets in CDMX. We weren’t very adventurous or sophisticated, I’m afraid, as we love tacos, burritos and that kind of thing and happily ate different varieties of them on numerous occasions! Street food is ubiquitous in CDMX and the pavements are crowded with vendors and local customers. If you want to try it, you can find plenty of vendors cooking it in front of you on hotel-style hot skillets, which is quite reassuring.

The tap water is reportedly not drinkable so we didn’t risk it – bottled water is cheap and in the 2 Hiltons we stayed in, we were given 2 smalls bottles each day. For further supplies we bought it cheaply in the supermarkets like Oxxo which are on every corner. When we were in PV with a full kitchen, I boiled and chilled water to drink so we weren’t using too much plastic (we also bought one of those gallon bottles and decanted it into smaller, reusable ones).

Apart from the bottled water, Mexico is quite far ahead environmentally of the USA and some Caribbean islands. Straws are banned and drinks in resorts are supplied in reusable plastic cups.

Puerto Vallarta was clearly once quite beautiful, with the Sierra Madre backdrop, but feels a bit like Playa de las Americas now! We stayed between the beach and the Marina and only went into the town proper once, where we were approached on every corner by people pushing bars, restaurants, beach loungers and far less legal things! There’s a quite pleasant area by the Cuale river where you can spot pelicans, herons and other attractive birds, but there wasn’t much else which was appealing.

prices are also a fair bit lower than in the US and Caribbean – happy hour cocktails at our resort were the equivalent of £3 and there was a cabana next to the beach staffed by numerous therapists who would provide an hour-long massage or facial treatment for about £35.

What was definitely worth going for was the ocean life – December to March is whale watching season, and on the 2 boat trips we took we saw orcas, humpback whales, dolphins, a large sea turtle and a shark right up next to the boat. We used Vallarta Adventures which is slick, well-established operation mainly aimed at cruise passengers, but we were impressed; there was no over-crowding on the boats and each excursion includes food and drink – including a full buffet breakfast onboard on the whale-watching trip, and lunch at a beach restaurant on the Marietas Islands trip (which wasn’t specifically a whale-watching trip, but during which we were surrounded by a pod of orcas for several minutes). All in all, much better value than equivalent excursions we’ve done in the Caribbean.

OH did 2 separate dive trips and said marine life was plentiful, but visibility was quite poor. owever, I think the opportunity to get his SLR out to photograph the humpback whales made up for this!

I would definitely recommend the Hilton Reforma in CDMX if you want to keep costs down – at 160k HH points for 5 nights it felt like a real bargain. The rooms were a bit dated, however we had a splendid view of the smoking Popocatpetl volcano first thing in the morning before the smog descended over the city. There was a pleasant outdoor area with a small swimming pool, and several restaurants, including branches of El Cardenal, and Sonora, an upmarket-ish steak house. Breakfast was very good – there was a large selection of hot and cold buffet items (including delicious cut melon and papaya) and the chef would make whatever variety of eggs or omelette you wanted, along with tacos and other Mexican specialities. There was an indoor pool and spa but we didn’t use these.

All in all we had a fantastic time and ticked off many bucket-list items. Feel free to ask more questions as I’ve definitely not covered everything!