Liu's Motorcycle Diaries: Sayulita to Puerto Vallarta

It would take only about an hour to get to Puerto Vallarta from Sayulita, so we took our time packing and exploring the town once more in the morning before leaving. The town had a different feel in the morning; it wasn't as loud and bustling as it had been the night before. It was almost like walking the streets of New Orleans after a night of partying. Though, once we got down to the centro area we found early birds eating their breakfast and heading out to the beach. It was a windy day, so there wasn't too much activity on the water aside from a few boats and paddle boarders. We walked around the whole town to get a better idea of what it was like during the day, and then settled into a busy commercialized restaurant for some breakfast. Actually, we hadn't had a real breakfast up until this point the entire time we had been in Mexico. Eric doesn't eat breakfast for one, and aside from that we always have the sense that we need to get up and out as quickly as possible in order to get to the next town before the sun goes down. This doesn't make sense really; if we just ate breakfast instead of a long lunch we would be taking up just as much time. In any event, our first Mexican American breakfast was fantastic!

Hippie father and daughter buying necklaces together (Bare feet and all)

A couple of dogs play in a nearby store. We watch for a while because the small Chihuahua reminds us of Kimmi (The behavior, anyway).

Bird of paradise in a palm tree?

After breakfast we needed to head back to our hotel to check out on time. We were actually happy that we weren’t able to book another night in Sayulita because we felt we had seen enough of the town now after our morning walk, and the weather wasn’t great for lounging around the beach all day anyway. After checking out we were loading up our bike when a family from California (originally for the UK) who we spoke with the previous day approached us. The couple had two small kids, with a boy who was enamored with motorcycles. The previous day he asked his dad if they could wait around for us to “take off” but we were just getting off of the bike at that point. He was happy that they happened to be walking by our parking area when we were actually taking off this time. We said our goodbyes while the boy watched carefully exactly what we did while “taking off” (how nerve wracking), while the young girl yelled “have a happy Christmas!” This was the first time Eric and I had realized that it was only 3 days away from Christmas by this time. What a strange feeling it was to be in Mexico on vacation instead of holiday shopping 3 days before Christmas. But a good feeling at that!

The day before we wanted to drive through San Francisco, Mexico, a small town just 10 minutes north of Sayulita. We would have made it to Sayulita past dark if we made the stop so we didn’t feel like we had the time. Originally I wanted to stay in San Francisco because they have a pretty great hostel/bed and breakfast for 38 bucks a night. Unfortunately, the hostel was booked and so were all the other semi cheap places in town so we stayed in Sayulita instead. It turns out Sayulta is pretty expensive itself, but had a bigger town to offer to make up for its prices. San Francisco is cute, quaint, & beachy, but small. It has just one road to drive through to get to the beach. This would be a great town to stop in for one night, but it would be a better day trip while staying in Sayulita. So we drove through the one road-town to see the beach at the end, took some pictures, and headed back out to the main road.

Our next stop would be Punta de Mita on the way to Puerto Vallarta. I had read somewhere that Punta de Mita was Cancun’s Tulum. That is, to go to Punta de Mita instead of Puerto Vallarta because it had a much more relaxing and small town vibe than busy Puerto Vallarta. Well, the book was right, I suppose; it just wasn’t right in the way I expected it to be. Upon entering Punta de Mita, there was not much going on. The streets were dead, there were no people wondering about, and restaurants might as well have been closed as far as I could tell. Once we pulled onto the main road where all the hotels were, we realized that Punta de Mita is a resort only town made of one simple street. There are touts everywhere hoping to sell something, and were more aggressive than touts we’ve seen in the past as they walked in front of cars in order to get them to stop before heading into their closed off resorts. It is impossible to see what any of the resorts looked like due to this massive wall that divides two worlds; one of resorts and one of, well, Mexico. We saw a couple people out and about walking around but I assume most people simply stay in their resorts the entire time they are in town. Ill never understand why one would want to spend so much air fare to get to a place where they don't plan on leaving their hotel.

We got off the bike to ask how much a boat would cost to get to Marieta Islands from Punta, but they couldn’t give us an accurate price. Apparently the boat is a set price, and depending on how many people are on the boat that day the price is divided per person. I read that it was cheaper to get to Murieta Islands from Punta because the ride was only about 20 mins compared to Puerto Vallartas 1 hour ride. In the end, we decided it is probably not worth the 30 minute drive back up to Punta de Mita to save money on a boat ride since we didn’t gain any useful knowledge by asking around that day.

I was extremely happy we didn’t stay in Punta de Mita the night before since we aren’t into resort style.. anything, actually. After leaving Punta de Mita we headed to Puerto Vallarta. We had made a reservation at a hotel the night before and planned to meet up with Ed, a guy we found on ADVrider who offered to watch our bike for us while we fly back home. There was only one hostel with a private room left by the time we went to book our room the night before at 27 US per person, so we decided to book a semi resort style hotel for 60 US instead that Eric found on hotels.com since it was about the same price (yes, I know I just contradicted myself). We checked into our grand hotel room, freshened up, made ourselves a small drink that Eric needed after a long wait getting into our hotel room in the hot sun, and headed towards the pool for some fun in the sun before heading out to meet Ed. The hotel had a total of 3 pools and a nice sitting area under cute little palapas on the beach. We soaked up the sun until about 4, showered, and packed up to meet Ed.

View from our room:

Before meeting at Ed’s place we wanted to pick up a bike cover at Walmart since the bike would be sitting in the sun and weather for about a month. We couldn’t find a bike cover, so instead we bought a bed sheet to at least keep the sun and bird droppings off of the bike. When walking back to our bike we saw another couple with a 1200 BMW parked next to our bike. They were walking in as we were walking out, so we were able to chat for a little while. They were from France, and had been on the road for about 3 years now. We asked how long they were planning to be in Mexico for and they said something like “eh, who knows, we are just taking our time”. We thought this was great, and didn’t have much to offer conversation wise to them as we were just starting our trip ourselves and were planning on flying back home the next day. It is a sad day to run into other bike companions and not be able to ride together due to our schedule. Oh well, one day we will be traveling full time too.

We met at Ed’s a little later than planned, met Ed himself, and put our bed sheet over the bike for storage. Eric had asked me in the store if we should buy a full or twin sized bed sheet and I confirmed that we only needed a twin. Eric argued that a full would be a better size but I held my ground on the twin. Well, Eric ended up being right, as the twin barely covered the top of the bike. We put together this ghetto arrangement before heading out for drinks with Ed.

Ed gave a nice tour of centro PV and then took us to a beach side eatery with tables under palapas. Here, both margaritas and beers were only 1 USD so we all ordered a satisfying margarita and chatted for a while. As it turns out, Ed had been on quite a few fascinating rides himself before settling down in PV where he is now in real estate. We talked about rides, bikes, and life over a few more margaritas and dinner before Ed was kind enough to drop us off at our hotel. The rest of the night Eric and I sobered up on the beach watching sky lanterns rise and then fall.