What do you have to say? ROH you want. Doggy I got it. Roh you need, roh roh roh roh roh
Rawl I'm asking, is for a little Roh-spect just a little bit. Laska, don't lick the camera.
Laska, do you want to be in the video?
So we are still here in Puerto Vallarta and today we're talking about
something that, for a while we considered not bringing up, because we like to
really highlight the most positive things that we can about any place that
we are traveling, because there's no sense thriving on anything that's
negative. When it comes down to it, complaining doesn't really do anything.
But, since being here we've noticed a few things that we really strongly don't
like. And coming here wanted to loved Puerto Vallarta because we heard so many
great things. We watched a bunch of videos from the Kinetic Kennons. Really,
really wanted to love this place. But it's realistic to you talk about how
we're actually feeling about a place, rather than just paint everything with
rainbows. So today we're talking about why we kind of dislike Puerto Vallarta.
To give you a little landscape of our situation, because I think that
really affects why we're feeling this way. First of all, we're here during the
busiest time of the year. Peak time during spring break. Neither of us are a
huge fan of big crowds and lots of people.
Another thing is, we're trying to travel on a budget. We're not like your typical
vacationer staying at one of the resorts or right in the most sought
after part of town, like in the old town area. We're staying at an Airbnb.
It's a gorgeous house, but it is a little bit of a walk. To walk away from here
we're going down a really steep cobblestone hill, and then
get back up it's a bit of a climb. So if we need to get any groceries or anything,
it's difficult enough to do it on your own two feet but let alone with a bunch of
heavy bags. But at least we get free exercise every day so that's cool. We were
gonna get a gym membership while we were here. Immediately, we were like nope, we
don't need that. Also, part of our situation is that we have a Siberian
husky named Laska. This is our Siberian husky, who whenever we're taking a video, seems like
she really hates being held like this. That's not the case. In this neighborhood
There are a lot of, wait for it, cats. cat. Really? We're gonna
redo that and you're gonna act interested like you always are. So we
can't really take Laska for w-a-l-k-s. She knows that word too. Without the fear of
her trying to get one, pull us down the really steep hill. That's just an
accident waiting to happen. It's not really ideal. For her, she needs a lot of
exercise every day. We couldn't take her for the exercise that she so badly needs
to not be psycho. She's been psycho. What do you have to say about Puerto Vallarta?
Roh Roh Vallarta. Puert-Roh Vallarta. I keep seeing C-A-Ts
everywhere and you won't let me eat them. I know. Also, we've been learning Spanish for
quite a while and we've been trying to continue learning Spanish as we travel
through Mexico. Leading up to this point, we have been doing 30-minute daily lessons
through either Pimsleur or Rocket Languages. That was in preparation to
come to Mexico and we've been really, really diligent about continuing to do
that, even on days when we're just like not having it. So coming here it was a
little bit of shock. We'll get into that a little more later in the video. So
those are the things that kind of make up our situation. First, we're gonna be
talking about what we absolutely love about Puerto Vallarta and then we're
gonna be talking about the things that aren't quite is desirable, or don't really
suit our situation, and might not suit your preferences either.
Okay, so first. Why do we love Puerto Vallarta? The produce is amazing and full of Fs. Fs?
Yes. Fresh, flavorful, fragrant, fun, fantastic and felicious. Felicious. Jordan's favorite
word to describe food is delicious. so but if going with the Fs, Felicious. And
that's been really great, go to into the local markets. I cut my first ever papaya
I've never handled the fruit before. You don't even know what it looked like
before coming here. I honestly didn't. If you showed me, presented me with a papaya, I would
have wondered if it was a giant mango maybe? But it's a tropical fruit so it's
not something that I've ever had at my disposal in Phoenix. And then you go to
restaurants and then get a lot of this local fresh produce, which is just
overflowing with flavor, and it's amazing. Speaking of restaurants, we've found some
real gems here. Yeah. Select restaurants that have really affordable prices, big
portions, with great service. Yeah, for instance Freddy's Tucan, Pancake
House, oh Pipi's, that's another one. And yes, I can't say that name without feeling
like an idiot but that's what it's called.
Although we haven't eaten there, all of the Oceans Bay, you've hopefully seen our
ridiculous $1 Margarita tour. Those margaritas are strong and really really
good. So lots of good restaurants. And we really love the ocean here. It's
absolutely gorgeous. Yeah, it's really clear. You look out there, every time I'm
just amazed at how many hues of blues and greens there are. We haven't been to
the beach yet cuz we were a little bit turned off by our one experience. This
guy asked us every single day, come in and get margaritas, I'm finally
like "Okay." And in like, I don't know, 90 minutes that we were,
There's probably different vendors that were asking us to buy
different things, and it was kind of exhausting after a while to be like no
gracias, no gracias, no gracias. That really takes away from the experience. I
think there's a little part of me that's kind of like "Do I really want to go to the beach?"
A few other things we really like, the surrounding landscape, including the
mountains, all the nature around us is beautiful. And the drive into Puerto Vallarta
was the most spectacular that we've ever experienced. Driving all the
way from Phoenix, Arizona to here in Puerto Vallarta. We came from Tepic
before this and the drive here was through these mountainous rainforests,
and just amazing. To have that just a short drive away, that could add a lot to
the experience for fun day excursions. Ziplining and stuff through the rainforests.
And now, BUM BUM BUM. What don't we like about Puerto Vallarta? Why is it not for us? What is it
about this delightful city that makes it a little bit less desirable? Probably the
big glaring feature that we've noticed, especially because, like we said before,
we came here in probably the most busy time of year, is that it is way too
touristy for us. It doesn't feel like an authentic local feel of a Mexican
experience that we've gotten in a lot of the other cities and towns that we've
gone through. And even comparing it to Mazatlán,
it's just so many more people here. You're having to fight the crowds and
wait a long time to get into restaurants. And that also probably contributes to
the next thing, which is the prices. If you're coming from the US, yeah things
are probably still going to be a little cheaper than you were paying. But, if you're like us
and you're trying to travel on a budget, you can't live anywhere near the most
desirable spots, it's, it's just too expensive. The city is very walkable if
you're living right there, and if you never leave that area there's tons of
restaurants and stuff around there. But if you're like us and trying to spend a
little less, then you have a 30 minute walk every time you want to get to the
places you want to go. And then, something else in terms of prices are that if you
look up a place online. And I'm even talking about the restaurant itself, has
its own menu listed online with certain prices, and then you go to the place, the
prices are 50% more than that. Or even more. We've noticed a little bit of
dishonesty happening, or at least maybe they're just not updating their websites,
and those are the prices for the off season or something. But if you're coming
at this time of the year, like we are, the prices are just like skyrocketed. That's
been a little bit discouraging. Of course we walk down the cobblestone streets and
risk our lives crossing my busy roads where the busses just literally, oh my
gosh, if there's ever a time when we were gonna get hit by a bus, it's here. But then you
get to a place and you're expecting a breakfast to be
59 pesos, and all of a sudden it's 129 pesos. It's kind of a little bit of a
shock. Cobblestone streets. That's something else, it might seem like no big
deal, and cobblestone streets are pretty. Or at least that's what I thought before
coming here. But they are a paid to walk on, or drive on. Driving on this, I just felt like I was gonna rattle
my car apart, and we take Ubers. It just does a number on your car. We've spent on
our travels so far, the most time in Mazatlán and Puerto Vallarta, so those
are the two main places we have to compare to each other, and compared to
Mazatlán, uber costs almost twice as much. What do you think of the overall
cleanliness of the city? Mazatlán is another pretty touristy destination. There''s a lot of
traffic from the US a people visiting Mazatlán. But comparing these two cities,
it is almost night and day in terms of how clean the cities are. People do still
take pride in sweeping, and kind of like scrubbing the sidewalk in front of their
businesses, but the cleanest. It's time to wake up saws that rooster. The cleanest spot that
we've found is the malecon area and that old town romantic district. Here in Puerto Vallarta.
Here in Puerto Vallarta. Everywhere else, it's a little bit more grungier, the streets aren't as nice, and that's maybe
partly to do with the cobblestone streets. Like how do you clean those? I
mean, where'd you even begin? But in general, if there's practices like instead of bins
that people put their garbage in, every night there are just piles of garbage in
the middle of the street, and then at some time the garbage fairies come
and pick it up and take it somewhere. When they do that, it creates a whole
bunch of trash all over the place because stuff blows around, some stuff might
not get picked up if it's not properly bagged. I need to put a little disclaimer on
this one because I do prefer this over the U.S. Here there's lots of people who
are always trying to earn a buck. They're always trying to sell you something
I prefer that over the US, where so many people are just asking for money and not
trying to sell you something. But, with that said, the vendors here in the places
we've been in Puerto Vallarta are relentless! Relentless!
When we were in Mazatlán, we had a lot of vendors there too, but here it's twice,
three times as often you'll get asked to buy their blanket, buy their weed, buy
their pipes, buy their fruit. By the way, I'm pretty sure that just about anyone
selling something here, whether it's fruit, or blankets, or purses.
Taxi rides. Taxi rides. It seems like that's just the front that they have in order
to ask you if you want to buy a pipe, and then if you say no you don't want to buy
a pipe, suddenly that means you want to buy some weed then. And we have had to tell
people multiple times. Weed ("we had" drug pun) had to tell people. Weed had to tell
people "No fumamos, no fumamos" "we don't smoke, we don't smoke."
Yeah, we don't smoke and even though we say no fumamos, they're like how about weed?
Like "No fumamos nada" we don't smoke anything, so kindly go along your way. But
yeah, like Jordan said, it's just absurd how many people are trying to sell you
something. Just walking down the malecon you're being offered tequila
tastings, no thank you, come in and look at my shop, no thank you.
Have dollar margaritas. Look at my menu. Look at my menu. I mean, we get it, that's how people
need to make a living. And there have been times that were like, oh we're
hungry, how about we try out this place? We wouldn't have done that if they weren't
standing out there and promoting their business, or promoting whatever they were
selling. Where the tours, the activities, it just goes on and on. On and on.
We'd noticed after a while of being here that we were starting to get kind of
short with each other, and have these little stupid arguments over pretty much
absolutely nothing. Like what side of the sidewalk we were walking on or just
like really dumb stuff like that. I had to think about it for a little bit, and
something that I really strongly truly believe is that you have a finite amount
of energy to give to anything during a day. All these interactions that we're
having where we're having to just constantly say no gracias, no
gracias. No, I'm not interested. All those are taking
away little pieces of this finite amount of energy that we have to give. So at a
certain point, you're spent. And that's when these dumb little bickering
arguments start to happen. If we were living here, we would have to be very,
very careful about where we're putting our energy because the energy that
they're taking away, each of these little interactions, are something that comes
from the creative energy that we have to spend on writing blog posts, or creating
these videos, or really anything that we enjoy doing. That's something that is a
really big turn-off, one of the biggest I would say about
this city. And you don't get as much of that as you get off the malecon, but then it
gets pretty dirty, and also walking down the streets, bus fumes are horrendous.
We've obviously been walking to pretty much every single place unless it's
really late at night where we don't feel like it's safe to do that. Going down one
of the main roads here, it was maybe like ten minutes into this walk, and I
started feeling like it was burning my throat to breathe, and so I was noticing
taking shorter and shorter breaths. It was starting to get really painful. I feel
bad for the people that are living along this street, because not a lot of houses
here have air conditioning. If your sole way to get fresh air is by opening your
windows and stuff, which is what our host does, the windows are open all
the time. That's really unhealthy and I just feel
bad. I feel like I should be wearing a mask all the time. Especially when we're
on the main roads, but even when we're not, and we're just on your average
neighborhood street with the cars driving by, their emissions are terrible
here. It's not as terrible today to see behind us what the smog looks like,
but from our Airbnb here, we can always see a layer of smog across the city. And I
think because today it's a lot windier, it looks a lot more clear because this is
so populated, and there's a lot of tourism, that's something that you have
to deal with. Comparing it to Mazatlán, once again, I didn't notice any pollution
there. No. But the pollution alone would be enough to keep us from living here. We
want a city that's clean. That doesn't just mean clean streets, but also clean
air. As we mentioned in the beginning, leading up to our time coming to Mexico,
we were doing 30-minute daily lessons to learn Spanish. Jordan had started doing
it without me. What was your experience? These lessons,
you need to do them every single day, otherwise you experience a lot of setbacks.
They're not gonna be nearly as effective, and you're going to have to backtrack.
Also, you have to be extremely diligent about doing them every single day. When I
started doing them, I really wanted to learn Spanish. I was pretty good about it
for the first month or two, and then I would either forget, or just get lazy, get lazy, complacent,
exactly. And then I take two weeks off and then have to backtrack a bunch of
lessons, and it just went back and forth like that until I had this lovely lady
start doing that with me, and we held each other accountable. It was a lot of
hard work, and even on the days just were dragging, and you didn't have the mental
clarity, we still pushed through that because we are committed to learning
Spanish. Because I think that's an important thing for us being here in
Mexico, and being involved, and immersed is being able to speak the language, and
not just expecting that everyone speaks English. That was really important. And then
when we came to Puerto Vallarta, an interesting thing happened. We started
speaking Spanish to people and they would speak back to us in English. And we
would continue to speak Spanish in the conversation, and they would continue to
speak English back to us. They put this awkward deal where we're like "Do they
want me to speak English? Am I being disrespectful by speaking Spanish?" Or we
just didn't know. The more we've talked to people, the more we've noticed this.
We greet them in Spanish and they just go off talking in English. And even when we
get away from the more touristy areas, that still seems to be the case. Even to
the point where we were at this bar and the bartender actually got mad at us for
speaking Spanish. He was like you guys don't have to speak Spanish to me, speak
English here. It's like, oookay. Where are we? With all the tourism here, we find ourselves in a
restaurant, and every single person in the restaurant is speaking English all
around us. We felt like being here is actually setting us back on our progress
of learning Spanish. And it's sort of like an interesting situation to be in,
where we feel like we're trying to be immersed, and be respectful, become part
of Mexico. And we're kind of getting pushback, almost, for doing that. So that is
the final reason why we don't think Puerto Vallarta is for us. Now all
this being said, we know that this is not everyone's situation. Maybe you are just
coming here to vacation and it's a beautiful place to do that! The ocean's
are great, the hotels are nice. And if you don't speak Spanish, that's perfect. It's
fine because almost everyone speaks English. So we can see why this is a
desirable ideal place to vacation or visit for certain types of people with
different situations than ours, but for these reasons, we're out. Is this a peace sign? Like this?
Peace. Pizza. Get it? A piece of pizza? [Inaudible]