For this trip in November & December of 2019 we decided to try something different, going by bus from Puerto Vallarta all along the Mexican coast ending in Huatulco (La Crucecita), a distance of 1,467 km.

Flight to Puerto Vallarta, November 24.

PV rates as the town with the most things to do for tourists. This year we discovered a new Craft Brewery called Monzón, along with a craft beer watering hole called La Cervecería Unión. Al was thrilled! And we saw a totally unadvertised acrobatic show at the amphitheatre that rivalled Cirque de Soleil.

A Gigante sang a haunting opera while skeletons danced below. Characters hidden under her skirts crept out at the end of the song.

December 1.

PV to Manzanillo

On our way to Manzanillo the bus made one stop at Melaque, and the snack vendors crowded on the bus to sell their wares before we departed.

Manzanillo

A small city on the coast with a very Mexican town centre, an iguanario and a really inexpensive 2 1/2 hour cruise around the bays which included all the beer you could drink.

A small part of the feeding frenzy at the iguanario.

December 5

Manzanillo to Lázaro Cárdenas

Our first stop on the way was at Tecoman, a great little town, only an hour away from Manzanillo where we had an hour to explore. There was a market attached to the station with eateries and lots of things to look at. Lázaro Cardenas was a bit of a grubby little town, but it had a great restaurant and we only spent one night there.

December 6.

Arriving in Zihuatanejo, 20 Years Later

Back when Zihuatanejo was a small fishing village, this was the view of the beach from Elvira’s where we had stayed. To our delight, Zihuatanejo had grown up gracefully and we stayed several days there, mostly spent exploring the many beaches.

Then it was off to Puerto Escondido, another place we hadn’t been to in 20 years; oops! I was trying to track down some old photos of P.E. and realized that we were there in 1987 or 88, 30 plus years earlier. The photos are still mostly in envelopes, so need to be sorted and scanned. At any rate, that brought our biggest challenge on the trip: how to get to P.E. without having to spend any time whatsoever in Acapulco, a town that had deteriorated so badly even 20 years earlier that we had never wanted to go there again.

December 11.

Stopping at Marquelia, a little town no one has ever heard of.

Want some really fresh eggs for breakfast?

December 12.

Puerto Escondido, 30 plus years later.

Roasted sweet potatoes and plantains in a mobile smoking oven run by a beach vendor on the beach at Puerto Escondido.

December 19.

We sadly left Puerto Escondido for Huatulco and an all-inclusive resort called Dreams. All I have to say about it was that it was a totally different experience than the rest of the trip and one that I won’t repeat. We did get to go sailing, and at one point the water by the shore was full of fish…

So that was our last big trip and now I want to do it all over again. But that probably won’t be happening for a long, long time…

More from the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: the Long and Winding Road.

More about travelling in Mexico.