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All images (c) Charles Binns - Landscape Photography, Nature Photography, Travel Photography.
Puerto Vallarta is a Mexican resort city situated on the Pacific Ocean's Bahía de Banderas and is named after Ignacio Vallarta, a former governor of the state of Jalisco.
Nestled between palm-covered mountains, a river and an azure sea, Puerto Vallarta is seriously picturesque. It's also full of cobblestone streets and whitewashed houses, and sits in front of a gorgeous sandy beach. There are dolphins in the bay year-round, and humpback whales between November and March.
The peak holiday periods are July and August, mid-December to early January, and a week either side of Easter. At these times, resorts attract big tourist crowds. November to April are reliably dry, warm, blissful and popular months for travel among North Americans and Europeans.
The water is perfect for swimming all year long. Diving and snorkeling can be good year-round, but visibility is usually highest (except during plankton blooms) in the dry winter months. Fun surf can be reasonably expected year-round, but waves are biggest from May to November. Deep-sea fishing, also practiced all year, has its own species-specific seasons. Bird-watchers often prefer winter visits, when birds migrate down to the coastal lagoons from North America. Whale-watching is best from January to March.
Little is known about the history of the area prior to the 19th century. There is archeological evidence of continuous human habitation from 580 B.C., and there is archeological evidence (from sites near Ixtapa and in Col. Lázaro Cardenas)that the area belonged to the Aztatlán culture which dominated Jalisco, Nayarit and Michoacán from aprox. 900-1200 A.D. Unfortunately the limited evidence and relative lack of interest in occidental Mexican archeology have meant that we still know very little about pre-historic life in the area.
Spanish missionary and conquistador documents chronicle skirmishes between the Spanish colonizers and the local peoples. In 1524, for example, a large battle between Hernán Cortés and an army of 10,000 to 20,000 Indians resulted in Cortés taking control of much of the Ameca valley. The valley was then named Banderas (flags) after the colorful standards carried by the natives.
Also the area appears on maps and in sailing logs as a bay of refuge for the Manila Galleon trade as well as for other coastal seafarers. As such it figures in some accounts of pirate operations and smuggling and pirate contravention efforts by the viceregal government. During the 17th and 18th centuries the Banderas Valley and its beaches along the Bay of Banderas served as supply points for ships seeking refuge in the bay. The area also served as a point where smuggled goods could be sent on to the Sierra towns near Mascota, evading the customs operations at San Blas, Nayarit.
During the 18th century, Puerto Vallarta (known at the time as Las Penas) grew in size, transforming itself from a small fishing and pearl-diving village into a small beach-landing port serving the Sierra towns. At the time the main port serving Jalisco was located at San Blas, but the inconvenient overland route from San Blas to the Sierra towns made Puerto Vallarta a more convenient alternative for smaller shipments, not to mention smuggling operations which evaded the tax collectors at San Blas. Puerto Vallarta also became a vacation destination for residents of the Sierra Towns, and by the mid 19th century, the town already had its regularly returning population of vacationers. Most of the early settlers in Puerto Vallarta were families who had left the Sierra towns for one reason or another.
In 1918, the village was elevated to municipality status and renamed after former state governor Ignacio Vallarta. The first airplane service arrived in 1932, with electrical service on a small scale arriving about the same time. The first suspension bridge over the Cuale went up in 1933. The city's first plumbing system was started in 1939. In 1942 Puerto Vallarta was finally connected by road to Compastela, Nay.
By the 1950s Puerto Vallarta had started to attract Americans, mostly writers and artists in search of a retreat from the USA of the era of Eisenhower and McCarthy. The city also attracted Mexican artists and writers who were willing to trade its scenic and bucolic advantages for the comforts of life in the larger cities.
The American director John Huston filmed his 1963 film The Night of the Iguana in Mismaloya, a small town just south of Puerto Vallarta. During the filming, the US media gave extensive coverage to Elizabeth Taylor's extra-marital affair with Richard Burton, as well as covering the frequent fighting between Huston and the film's four stars. The subsequent publicity helped put Puerto Vallarta on the map for US tourists.
The jungle scenes of the film Predator were filmed on location in the hills behind Mismaloya. The film starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and was directed by John McTiernan. McTiernan lost quite a bit of weight during the filming because he was afraid to eat the local food.
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