Things to Do in Puerto Vallarta

The thing that surprises people who move to Puerto Vallarta is how much of what is worth doing is not in Puerto Vallarta. The malecón and the Zona Romántica carry the postcards, but the bay’s southern shore has villages with no road, the Sierra Madre has a silver town an hour inland, and the marine park offshore operates a permit system strict enough that you cannot simply turn up.

The malecón

Vallarta’s seafront promenade doubles as an open-air sculpture gallery, and the works are by named artists rather than municipal decoration. El niño sobre el caballo de mar by Rafael Zamarripa, near the old lighthouse, is the city’s emblem. Alejandro Colunga’s La rotonda del mar — the chairs — is the one everyone sits in. Sergio Bustamante’s En busca de la razón, Ramiz Barquet’s La Nostalgia, Mathis Lídice’s Los Milenios and Aníbal Riebeling’s unicorn are all worth finding.

It is free, it is busy at sunset, and after a few months it becomes the route you walk rather than the attraction you visit — which is the point.

Islas Marietas

The Marietas are a national park offshore in Nayarit, best known for Playa del Amor — the hidden beach inside a collapsed crater. Access is genuinely restricted and the rules are worth knowing before you promise anyone a trip:

• Entry costs 125 pesos per person per day, with 50% off for Mexican nationals and foreign residents on production of credentials, 75% off for students and faculty, and free entry for under-12s, seniors, pensioners and people with disabilities.
• You cannot go independently. Access is only through an operator holding a park permit, by boat from designated points such as Punta de Mita and Sayulita.
• The park opens Tuesday to Sunday, 08:00 to 18:00; Playa del Amor opens Wednesday to Sunday, 08:00 to 17:00, with numbers capped at a little over a hundred people a day.
• Rules are enforced: life jackets in the water, no alcohol, no single-use plastics, reef-safe sunscreen applied at least half an hour before swimming, and nothing removed from the islands.
• Access depends on sea conditions on the day and is never guaranteed.

That resident discount is the sort of thing that pays for a residency card over a few years, and it applies across the national protected-area system, not just here.

Whales

Humpbacks come into Banderas Bay to calve, and the season is set formally each year by the environment ministry. The 2025–26 season ran from 8 December to 23 March, covering Puerto Vallarta, Cabo Corrientes and Bahía de Banderas. Expect similar dates each year, published in the autumn.

Permanent exclusion zones protect mothers and calves: a 1.5 km radius around the Marietas and a 2 km coastal strip from Punta Mita to the mouth of the Río Ameca. Operators know them; a boat that ignores them is one to avoid.

Beaches, including the ones with no road

Playa de los Muertos in the Zona Romántica is the city beach — busy, sociable, lined with places to eat, and the departure point for boats south. Conchas Chinas, just around the headland, is quieter and rockier.

The bay’s southern shore is where it gets interesting. Las Ánimas, Quimixto, Majahuitas and Yelapa have no road access at all — you arrive by water taxi from Boca de Tomatlán or the Los Muertos pier. Yelapa, about thirty minutes out, is a village with a waterfall, a beach and a long history of people who came for a week and stayed. Going for the day is easy; the last boat back is the thing to keep an eye on.

As everywhere in Mexico, the beach itself is federal public property and access cannot lawfully be blocked, whatever a resort’s fencing implies.

Inland

San Sebastián del Oeste sits 60 km inland in the Sierra Madre, reached on the Guadalajara highway, and it is the best day trip from the city. A silver-mining town of some 20,000 people in the colonial era, it now has around 600 — cobbled streets, a plaza, the Casa Museo Doña Conchita, and old haciendas on the edges. It has been a Pueblo Mágico since 2011. Go for the January fiesta of San Sebastián if you want the charreadas and the fair.

The Vallarta Botanical Gardens, 24 km south on the coast road, charges 300 pesos for adults, 150 for children aged five to ten and nothing under five. Open 09:00 to 18:00 Tuesday to Sunday from April to November, and seven days a week from December to March. Allow two to three hours; no booking needed.

Eating

La Palapa has been on Los Muertos beach for decades and publishes its prices — breakfast 190 to 375 pesos, dinner mains 495 to 745. Joe Jack’s Fish Shack on Basilio Badillo has been the mid-market seafood standby since 2005, open daily from noon. Café des Artistes on Guadalupe Sánchez is the city’s fine-dining reference point.

The everyday scene, though, is in Versalles, which has quietly become the food neighborhood residents actually use, and in Pitillal. As in every Mexican beach city, the distance from the malecón is inversely proportional to the price.