Overview

Puerto Vallarta, despite the fact that it is Mexico’s second most popular vacation destination, visited by an excess of 2 million tourists per year, somehow manages to maintain its purely Mexican appeal. Perhaps its the cobblestone streets, or the grand churches with ornate steeples and adobe roofs, or the ancient fishing vessels that still bob back and forth in the bay, anchored next to glittering yachts and sleek white sailboats, but Puerto Vallarta, or “PVR” as it is more affectionately called, still looks and tastes like Mexico. In fact, Puerto Vallarta’s government officials have taken great lengths to maintain the Mexican village-like quality of the town, prohibiting neon signs and mandating that homes be painted a chalky white.

Formerly a small fishing village, Puerto Vallarta was virtually unknown until the 1964 John Huston film, The Night of the Iguana, which was filmed there and starred Richard Burton and Ava Gardner. Almost overnight PVR became a popular vacation destination, and its popularity has only increased ever since. While much of the popularity of Puerto Vallarta can be attributed to its beauty and charm, it also has some of the best restaurants and shopping in all of Mexico, and the seafood is as fresh as it gets.

Many of the new all inclusive resorts are located about 30 minutes outside of the city of Puerto Vallarta in a region known as Nuevo Vallarta. Here you’ll find a wide variety of beachfront properties that appeal to every type of traveller including families, singles, honeymooners and groups. At-resort weddings have become very popular in the last decade and Nuevo Vallarta is a very popular location for a couple to get married. The resorts in Nuevo Vallarta, due to their distance from the city proper, are largely self-contained featuring discos, a variety of dining options, daily activities, watersports, nightly entertainment and even babysitting services. There is really no reason to leave the resort.

Puerto Vallarta’s location on the west coast of Mexico makes it convenient for Canadians who live on the west coast, and there is a wide selection of all inclusive vacation packages to Puerto Vallarta available from Vancouver, as well as the rest of Canada.

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