Puerto Vallarta--How People Really Live

After partying with prosperous lawyers at the Marriott all-inclusive resort in Puerto Vallarta, we wanted to see how the Puerto Vallarta residents really live.

Dave arranged for a guide to show us around Puerto Vallarta on Saturday, March 4, 2023, after my classes, and then to drop us off at the airport.  The guide was a very interesting man who taught history and economics at the local college, as well as being a part-time guide.  He asked us where in the U.S. we came from.  When we said "Utah," he immediately asked if we were Mormon.  He had met many Mormons, on his tours, who were cruise ship passengers .  His children were also taught English by a Mormon missionary, "John," from Salt Lake City.  I wonder if John knew how much goodwill he had created in this man and his family, even though they never joined the Church.

We stopped at the local cemetery, with its above-ground graves, topped with sculptures.

 Many were family mausoleums, where more than one person was buried.

Along the walls of the cemetery were murals of "Day of the Dead" figures.

We visited the city market and stopped at a small tortilla factory, where corn tortillas were both made and sold.

The factory was stacked with many bags of corn.

We watched a workman turn the bags of corn into dough.

Other machines shaped and baked corn tortillas.

Finally, the tortillas were wrapped for sale.

Since Puerto Vallarta is on the sea, the market was full of fresh fish.

As we visited a local church, a wedding was in progress.  No one seemed to mind our stopping by.

Puerto Vallarta became a trendy tourist spot in the 1960s, after the film, "Night of the Iguana" was filmed there.  The film starred Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.  The real-life romance of Burton and Taylor was as steamy off-stage as their performance was on-stage.  Burton stayed with his wife in a hotel on one side of the road, but visited his lover, Taylor, by traveling across this bridge to her hotel room on the other side of the road.

This restaurant, "The Iguana," was named after the movie.

My most important wish for the tour was to stop at a store where we could buy Mexican talevera pottery.  The guide delivered!  This shop was full of talevera dinnerware of all shapes and sizes.  I came home with serving dishes for a lifetime of ethnic cooking!