Hidden Puerto Vallarta: Including the Bahia de Banderas and Sierra Madre Mountains (Hidden...

book: Hidden Puerto Vallarta: Including the Bahia de Banderas and Sierra Madre Mountains (Hidden Travel) | Richard Harris

books:

Hidden Puerto Vall...

	Hidden Puerto Vallarta: Including the Bahia de Banderas and Sierra Madre Mountains (Hidden Travel) Richard Harris Ulysses Press, 2006 - 232 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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Hidden Puerto Vallarta covers the popular spots in Nuevo Vallarta, then leads to ?hidden? spots in the Zona Romantica. It also covers the entire Bahia de Banderas and surrounding Sierra Madre mountains.

This new Hidden guide reviews a broad selection of lodging and dining options from inexpensive local hotels and authentic Mexican taco stands to ultra-deluxe resorts and world-class restaurants. It also covers in detail the many outdoor activities available including hiking, biking, horseback riding, bird-watching, scuba diving, snorkeling, whale watching, and dolphin adventures.

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Some good info, lots of mistakes

Overall the guide is only marginally usefull. It does contain a few usefull tips about what one might do off the beaten path.
There is something troubling about the book though. There a number of mistakes in the book that could only be made by someone pretending to have done things like riding city buses or searching out local fare without actually having done those things.
At one point the author suggests you can catch a city bus from the airport but need exact change. You can indeed catch a municipal bus from the airport, but you don't need exact change. The drivers all make change within reason as they do everywhere in Mexico.
In the dining section the author mentions that it's hard to find mexican food in Vallarta. This claim is absurd. There small mexican restaurants all over Vallarta. Vallarta is after all a destination for mexican vacationers too, and there is a solid demand for decent mexican food, especially Jalisciense food (e.g. birria), a demand met by hundreds of small to medium size restuarants all over town. There are even a couple of large fondas serving basic mexican food to hundreds every evening.
Another error in the book makes me think the author doesn't even spend much time in Mexico at all. He mentions the Cinco de Mayo holiday and says that it celebrates the battle of Puebla, which it does, but he says that the battle ended french occupation, which it didn't. The Battle of Puebla was a victory against the french, but at the beginning of the intervention. The intervention followed, with Maximillian installed as emperor etc. The battle is celebrated as a holiday becuase immediately after the battle Juarez declared it a holiday and no one has dared to remove it, even though the battle itself was ultimately of little historical consequence.
Overall the book gives the impression of a not so astute armchair traveller who really doesn't have that much to offer in terms of how to enjoy Vallarta in a less touristy sort of way. More troubling than the errors that pepper the book is the sense that one gets that the author is trying to pass himself off as something he is not: an expert in travelling off the beaten path in Mexico.

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