I was lucky enough to attend my friends beachfront wedding last weekend on the beach near Vallarta in Sayulita. We all rented a large Villa and spent the entire weekend playing on the beach – and having a great time. Most weddings are not like that!! Its usually a stressful few days worrying about the details but not TJ’s wedding. The bride and groom were so relaxed knowing that all their best friends and family were staying in the villa – enjoying and relaxing as the staff pampered us with wonderful buffet breakfasts and afternoon snacks and drinks on the beach. We spent the days surfing, horseback riding in the surf, snorkeling – some of the boys went fishing or to play golf while the ladies enjoyed our ocean front massages in little white tents set up just to pamper us!! It was totally idillic. The wedding itself was so calm and lovely – just a bride and groom barefoot on the sand as the sun set – not fuss – just perfect. I recommend this type of wedding for anyone interested in having a memorable experience that is soulful – not stressful!!

lovely yelapaIf you visiting Puerto Vallarta there are certainly a lot of “must do’s” on the list. By far the biggest has to be a trip to Yelapa. “Yelapa, you may say” – “never heard of that” its not even on the roadmap? For good reason – you cannot get there by road unless you are a marathon hiker or mountain biker. Yelapa is a tiny fishing village accessibly only by boat, But getting there is both affordable and a trip in and of itself.  Pongas aka little boat leave almost hour sly from Los Muertos beach just at the edge of the Romanitc Zone and also a few times a day from the end of the road at El Boca de Tomatlan. Either on is just a few dollar trip – $8 per person at last price check and it takes about an hour.  Years ago the boat captains used to have to quickly help you jump out of the boat on arrival with all your belongings held high on your head as the tide receded – but today they have two very modern docks and you can unload with out excitement. Personally I like the excitement of watching frighted men and women jump into the water holding way too much personal  luggage for a day trip!! Times have changed in Yelapa – when I first started going there in the early 1980′s they had no electricity of telephones – talk about pure heaven. As night fall canldes would flicker in every window and the only sounds were some distance singing or the noise from passers by chatting on the way home.  Today they have both and when a telephone rings the whole village is aware as most homes still do not sport glass windows – just open are arches that let in the fresh air and sunshine.  There are no cars here – donkeys are the preferred means of getting larger items up the hill – these days thats mostly bricks being used for building newer home up river as more foreigners find this oasis and rent lands from locals to build their retreats.  The activity of the day most days is beach going – with a half dozen great place to sit complete with lounge chairs and table service of cold beer and  great local food – who could ask for more! Save room for dessert as Yelapa s favorite resident is the “Pie Lady” every day she walks the beach pies stacked several high balanced on her head – offering chocolate, lemon, and my all time favorite fresh coconut. Now this is a must do.

One of the newest additions to the adventure scene in Puerto Vallarta is the Zip Line tour – offered by Vallarta Adventures. www.vallartaadventures.com So of course my crazy teen age sons and my GI Joe adventure action figure husband had to do it. Now I have done a zip line tour in Costa Rica that was pretty awesome and not to scary so I of course was more than willing to go along.

So we arrive at the tour center and board a crazy 4 wheel drive open air “vehicle” that looks like it was straight out of the movie “Predator” – and away we go high into the jungle areas above Vallarta.  The young guys who outfit us and give us our safety talk are so funny and have us all laughing so hard with their jokes and antics,  I forget that I am high above the city ready to “Zip” down a mountainside hanging only by some nylon steps suspended from what looks like a pretty thin wire.

For some reason it was ordained that our of our group I go first – something about being the lightest one – I guess that diet is paying off after all – non the less – I hook up my harness as a light rain begins to fall. The guides are excited – they say this means we will go faster!!! Oh joy!!

So my first Zip is a blast – almost  half a mile of at least 40 miles an hour flying over jungle tree tops. As my husband gets ready for his turn the guys on my platform are on alert – he is a big guy and I guess they want to be ready – because they all call out – “Get ready – El Gordito is on the line” – lucky he could not hear them – I think he might take offense!

All in all it was a terrific day and I highly recommend this terrific activity.

I am not in Vallarta at the moment – but I am longing to be strolling down the Malecon with Spring in the air!!! It really is my favorite time of year in Mexico. Its warm but not too warm and people just seem to have spring fever and are more talkative and lively than usual.  I love getting up in the morning and just putting on a bathing suit and sarong and your set for the day. I got an e-mail from a new company that is renting stand up paddle boards. So happy this has finally caught on in the Bay and I cannot wait to rent one next time I am there.

I had to re-blog this from Lonely Planet -its a great article.

Every week or so I get asked, ‘Is it safe to go to Mexico?’ I had always said, if you’re thoughtful about where you go, yes. But after my most recent trip there, I’m changing my answer… to a question:

Do you think it’s safe to go to Texas?

To be clear, violence in Mexico is no joke. There have been over 47,000 drug-related murders alone in the past five years. Its murder rate – 18 per 100,000 according to this United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime report – is more than three times the US rate of 4.8 per 100,000. Though Mexican tourism is starting to bounce back, Americans appear more reluctant to return than Canadians and Brits (5.7 million Americans visited in 2011, down 3% from 2010 – and, according to Expedia, more than four of five bookings were adults going without children). Many who don’t go cite violence as the reason.

What you don’t get from most reports in the US is statistical evidence that Americans are less likely to face violence on average in Mexico than at home, particularly when you zero in on Mexico’s most popular travel destinations. For example, the gateway to Disney World, Orlando, saw 7.5 murders per 100,000 residents in 2010 per the FBI; this is higher than Cancun or Puerto Vallarta, with rates of 1.83 and 5.9 respectively, per a Stanford University report (see data visualization here, summarized on this chart, page 21). Yet in March, the Texas Department of Public Safety advised against ‘spring break’ travel anywhere in Mexico, a country the size of the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy combined. Never mind that popular destinations like the Bahamas, Belize and Jamaica have far higher homicide rates (36, 42 and 52 per 100,000). Why the singular focus?

Before you nix Mexico altogether, consider these five things:

1. Mexico may be more dangerous than the US overall, but not for Americans.

According to FBI crime statistics, 4.8 Americans per 100,000 were murdered in the US in 2010. The US State Department reports that 120 Americans of the 5.7 million who visited Mexico last year were murdered, which is a rate of 2.1 of 100,000 visitors. Regardless of whether they were or weren’t connected to drug trafficking, which is often not clear, it’s less than half the US national rate.

2. Texans are twice as safe in Mexico, and three times safer than in Houston.

Looking at the numbers, it might be wise for Texans to ignore their Public Safety department’s advice against Mexico travel. Five per 100,000 Texans were homicide victims in 2010, per the FBI. Houston was worse, with 143 murders, or a rate of 6.8 – over three times the rate for Americans in Mexico.

3. And it’s not just Texas.

It’s interesting comparing each of the countries’ most dangerous cities. New Orleans, host city of next year’s Super Bowl, broke its own tourism record last year with 8 million visitors. Yet the Big Easy has ten times the US homicide rate, close to triple Mexico’s national rate.

Few go to Ciudad Juarez, a border town of 1.3 million that saw 8 to 11 murders a day in 2010 (accounts differ – CNN went with 8). It’s unlikely to ever be a tourism hostpot, but things have been quietly improving there. By 2011, CNN reported, the homicide rate dropped by 45%, and the first six weeks of this year saw an additional 57% drop, per this BBC story.

If that trend in Juarez continues all year, and it might not, the number of homicides would have dropped from over 3000 in 2010 to 710 in 2012. Meanwhile New Orleans’ homicide rate is increasing, up to 199 murders last year, equivalent to 736 in a city with the population of Juarez.

4. By the way, most of Mexico is not on the State Department’s travel warning.

The best of Mexico, in terms of travel, isn’t on the warning. The US warns against ‘non-essential travel’ to just four of Mexico’s 31 states (all in the north: Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango and Tamaulipas). The warning goes on to recommend against travel to select parts of other states, but not including many popular destinations such as Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, the Riviera Nayarit, Cancun, Cozumel and Tulum.

Meanwhile, 13 states are fully free from the State Department’s warning, including Baja California Sur, Yucatan, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guanajuato and others.

5. Malia Obama ignored the Texas advice.

Of all people, President Obama and first lady said ‘OK’ to their 13-year-old daughter’s spring break destination this year: Oaxaca. Then Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum made snide remarks over that, perhaps overlooking that Oaxaca state has a smaller body count from the drug war than his home state’s murder rate (Oaxaca’s 4.39 per 100,000 to Pennsylvania’s 5.2).

Oaxaca state, not on the US travel warning, is famed for its colonial city, Zapotec ruins and emerging beach destinations like Huatulco. Lonely Planet author Greg Benchwick even tried grasshoppers with the local mezcal (Malia apparently stuck with vanilla shakes.)

So, can you go to Mexico?

Yes. As the US State Department says, ‘millions of US citizens safely visit Mexico each year.’ Last year, when I took on the subject for CNN, one commenter suggested Lonely Planet was being paid to promote travel there. No we weren’t. We took on the subject simply because – as travelers so often know – there is another story beyond the perception back home, be it Vietnam welcoming Americans in the ’90s or Colombia’s dramatic safety improvements in the ’00s. And, equally as importantly, Mexico makes for some of the world’s greatest travel experiences – it’s honestly why I’m in this line of work.

So yes, you can go to Mexico, just as you can go to Texas, or New Orleans, or Orlando, or the Bahamas. It’s simply up to you to decide whether you want to.

Robert Reid is Lonely Planet’s New York–based US Travel Editor and has been going to Mexico since he was three (most recently to Chacala).

Read more: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/blog/2012/04/30/are-americans-safer-in-mexico-than-at-home/#ixzz1ubz3Dbjv

Traveled the world but Puerto Vallarta still owns my heart