Travel

May 22, 2016

Flights: Outbound

UA 1944 DEN-PVR

Hotel:

CasaManga Marriott Puerto Vallarta Resort & Spa  5/22-25

Airport Transportation:

Yellow Taxi (local)

City Transportation:

Local Bus

Flights Return:

May 25, 2016

UA 1703 PVR-IAH

UA 1146 IAH-DEN

 Observations:

Birthday Trip for a few days.  We are planning 3 trips to Mexico this year.  Crazy way to get “a week” in Mexico, but we have a vacation travel time constraint so this is how it rolls this year.  The exchange rate:  18 pesos to the dollar.  Direct flight from Denver, but return has a connection in Houston.  We do not use the white airport Taxi’s. Instead we walk over the adjacent highway which is to the left as you leave the arrivals hall.  There is typically a man at the bottom of the ramp on the other side who will get a cab for you.  Cheaper and not the chaos of dealing with the airport cabbies.  The ride back to the airport is even cheaper.

 

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 Summary:

Another good stay in PVR.  We enjoy the Marriott, in the Marina district, close to the airport, great people, easy to navigate and an easy bus ride to downtown.  Our PVR beach vacations are very mellow and are spent on the beach no matter the weather with a trip into town in the evening for the Malecon walk, Dinner, and visits to Old Town.  Our previous favorite restaurant, Las Palomas downtown, went out of business, soldout or whatever and a new re-modeled restaurant/bar took over.  We had many great times in Las Palomas (The Doves) and are sorry to see it go.  Our new go to is further south by the river, Oscar’s.  There are also a few new dining spots we wandered by in Old Town that look like fun.  Our flights were on time, check in and security check was good in PVR.  Getting through passport control and security in Houston was a nightmare.  If we didn’t have Global Entry we would have never made our connecting flight even with the two hour layover.  The bottleneck is getting through TSA back into the Airport after completing Customs.  There should be a TSA Pre-Check lane.  San Francisco provides a TSA Pre-Check lane which speeds up the process.  Houston doesn’t, but TSA is a bit challenged on multiple levels with no consistency at this point with security from a secure location.