Driving to Puerto Vallarta

Are you crazy? Why would you do that? How long does it take? Aren't you afraid?

These were the most common responses I had when I shared with people my plans to drive from San Diego to Puerto Vallarta. The answers are, possibly, because I want to and have a bunch of stuff I want to take with me, 3 days, and not at all.

One thing I kept thinking about was the fact my father drove from Michigan to Mexico city in 1947. That's right over 50 years ago my dad and some friends drove my dad's car to Mexico City so they could study there for a semester. Now I can only imagine what the roads were like then (I do know he went thru 2 sets of tires on the way down) and how few people spoke English. Today there are toll roads that are very similar to our highways and you can almost always find someone who speaks English.

Three of us loaded up my SUV to the brim and headed out on a beautiful sunny morning.
Troy (my artist and decorator) Marlon (my assistant) and myself. We drove 7 hours the first day and spent the night in Nogales Arizona. I had decided to drive to Arizona and head down rather than go down the Baja peninsula and take the ferry across the sea of Cortez. The drive to Nogales was easy and with-out incident. We overnighted there and met up the following day with my friend Andi (from SD) at her parents home in Nogales (see pictures on website). We had an incredible day there with a "small" family BBQ (65 people).

We arrived at 11AM and left at midnight, we ate drank and laughed our way thru the day. Fina and Guaro Gonzales were our host and they and their Friends and family could not have made us feel more at home. We especially enjoyed meeting Fina's friend Mary who suggested we overnight the next day is a small town we had never heard of called Alamos. Since my friend Andi had assure me that we could drive to Mazatlan the following day (when questioned about that in front of others she said Ooops). The next morning we set off for Alamos. We stopped across the border and obtained Visa'a for ourselves and then headed out.

The drive was beautiful (dessert turned into farm land and the sea of Cortez was always nearby) we had no issues and arrived in Alamos around 5 pm. As we drove into this incredibly preserved 16th century town in the mountains I knew we wouldn't be able to leave in the morning without exploring further. We checked into a beautiful inn (former Monastery) and enjoyed the pool before heading out for dinner. Dinner was from a street cart that night so we could watch the festivities in the main square. Families and couples were out strolling and listening to the bands everywhere you looked. That night as we lay in bed in our quaint room we awoke to hear a local w\walking home after a night of cervasas, serenading the beautiful night. he had an incredible voice and it was surreal to say the least, he sang of love and heartache.

We awoke early and headed out to see what Alamos had to share. We were told there was a small trolley that came around and we could jump on at anytime to see the town. After touring on our own for a couple of hours we asked where to catch the trolley. We were told at the town square. As we waited for the trolley Troy and I were admiring the beautiful mural's on the underside of the towns gazebo. As we were talking about it a man appeared and joined our conversation. He was very knowledgeable and shared how the town had been established by the British in the 1600's. They brought in Chinese and locals to work the mines. The town was abandoned in the early 1900's when the mines were closed. It was brought back and made famous to some in the early 30' and 40's by the arrival of Bing Crosby, Carrol O'Connor and Mary Astor to just name a few of the celebrities who bought and refurbished homes there at that time.

Our new friend ended up being part of the visitors bureau and was available for hire. We climbed into the back of his pick up truck and spent the next 5 hours learning a great deal about the town and it's people. To say we had an incredible day is an understatement, we all agreed we could turn around and head back to San Diego right then and between the day with the Garcia's and the day in Alamos we had already had a fantastic vacation.... and yet we had 6 weeks in Puerto Vallarta to look forward to.

The following morning we were off early, all went well until at a check point we found out we had not obtained the proper paperwork for the car and were forced to back track 150 miles to obtain the permit. Off we went, after a difficult time locating the proper place to obtain the permit (we tipped an off duty police officer $15 to show us the way) we were back on the road again. We overnighted in a "no tell motel" that was just fine for our purpose and off we went the following morning. Now we were in true farm land with corn fields as far as you could see with an occasional orange grove in between, it certainly threw this Midwest guy off to see that. Stopping every couple of hours to scrape the bugs off the windshield we moved right along.

About 2 hours outside of Puerto Vallarta on a beautiful mountain pass with trucks and cars winding their way towards Puerto Vallarta the car shut off for no apparent reason. It happened so fast and I had to make a desicion very quickly which involved me saying to Troy and Marlon "hang on" and I headed the car for the opposite side of the road because there was a break in oncoming traffic and I was with out power steering or breaks. We stopped before the small piece of land gave way to the edge of the mountain and exited the car. Now most know I am fairly handy at a number of things, mechanical things however are my weak spot (only outdone by technical). I did figure that we had a challenge with either the fuel filter or pump. As we vacillated about what to do there suddenly appeared a local guy beside us. "Car trouble" he asked in fairly good English. No just enjoying the view was what I thought but said, yep! Me too he replied and pointed to an old pick up truck loaded with watermelons headed the opposite direction we had not even noticed since he too had needed to pull off on a small spit of land. By taking the fuel lines off and turning the ignition a couple of times (watch for the spurting gas) and then jumping on the bumper to slosh the gas around I managed to get the car started. We had already supplied our other stranded motorist with some antifreeze I had stored in the car. He in turn had supplied us with a watermelon. In our hurry to get back on the road I realized we had left the 1/2 full jug of antifreeze on the side of the road. I also realized the next person to overheat on that long climb to the top of that mountain would be sure to think there was a God when they realized that bright yellow jug actually contained antifreeze. We rolled into Puerto Vallarta around 7:30 and were met at Casa Alegre by my incredible friend Tina who had flown in that day from Michigan...

And so that is the abbreviated story of our drive down, I will say that May 31rst Marlon and I head out again to spend the month of June at My Casa Alegre (Troy fly's in for the last 2 weeks). Anyone want to ride along???

See you in Puerto Vallarta soon!
Dean McConkey
www.MyCasaAlegre.com
Make My Casa Alegre your home when visiting Puerto Vallarta, Mexico!

Comments or suggestions?
e-mail Dean McConkey
MyCasaAlegre@gmail.com