Customer Reviews

Frommer's Portable Puerto Vallarta, Manzanillo & Guadalajara

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I got some good tips from the book. It helped me get familar with the layout of the area. In short, the top things I learned from the book were:

1) At the Puerto Vallarta airport keep your head down and don't talk to anyone. They're all trying to sell you something.

2) Use the pedestrian walk to cross over the highway and get a cheaper cab than from the airport. (We bargained and got a $13 USD ride to Nuevo Vallarta)

3) Vallarta Adventures is a reputable tour group in the area. We booked all our tours through them in advance on their website. www.vallarta-adventures.com

As someone who was on my 5th trip to Puerto Vallarta, I bought the book for some new ideas on restaurants I hadn't tried, and on new activities. The book does a good job for that purpose, and for its $10 price on amazon, I can't complain. However, its coverage of other subjects is fairly poor; I would almost say downright silly. For example, it spends 75 pages going through oodles of general information with limited to no relevance to Puerto Vallarta, such as how many Starbucks in the U.S. have T-mobile hotspots, the relative benefits of Yahoo versus Hotmail accounts, and the location of the South African embassy in Mexico City. For example, it goes through pages of customs formalities on taking your car into Mexico--yet I feel it's unlikely that someone who's going only to PV is going to drive there.
What makes this all the more silly is that the book devotes only 7 pages to hotels in PV. It describes two in the Marina Vallarta area, two in the northern Hotel Zone (one of which it doesn't particularly recommend, giving it one star), three downtown, and 3 in the southern Hotel Zone. Of the three hotels discussed in the downtown area, one has been long torn down (the Molino de Agua), one is kind of yucky (the Playa Los Arcos--I've stayed there), and the third is a rather quirky choice--the Hacienda San Angel. This last hotel is a long hike to any beach, and its rooms range in price from $310-$590 depending on the room and season (except one room which goes for as little as $235 in low season). I'm sure it's a fine hotel for a small niche of customers, but it's not what I would include if I had only very limited space for hotel choices in my book.
The book also has some space devoted to other cities, and another one of the other hotel recommendations which I found bizarre was the "Hotelito Desconocido" (unknown little hotel). Again, there must be a market for places like this, but I suspect that the market's pretty small for a hotel with no electricity (lit by candles), almost no activities, a beach with water unsafe to swim in (no swimming allowed), and mosquitos galore with rooms going for $300-$600 a night, not including a required meal plan.
I don't mean to imply this book is useless. I did learn about new places to go with it, and the price is right. However, I have issue with the choices of material the books covered: to much of certain things, and too little of others.

I enjoyed this guide book. It's not super comprehensive, but then it's not meant to be. The small size enabled me to slip into my pocket and carry it with me. It had enough information to guide me around Puerto Vallarta, and we tried several of the restaurants that it recommended with good results - the La Palapa restaurant was superb! I loved that place - slightly expensive, but worth it. A very romantic beach front restaurant.
Buy this guide-book and the Moon guide-book and you'll have enough information to explore the Puerto Vallarta area.

This 2008 portable edition out in 2007 gives an overview for the mainstream, first time tourist to the area. The back cover reads,
Experience a place the way the locals do...." but in reality it's
hardly more than an introduction for the non-trekker types. Maybe someone who wants to play golf, buy drinks and wade in the Ocean will gets something from this little volume; otherwise it's a superficial overview of the area.

I bought the book primarily to "discover" more about Manzanillo and was disappointed that it gave so little information.