Sunburned and Sober-ish: A Puerto Vallarta Itinerary for the Reluctantly Adventurous

Your Day-By-Day Puerto Vallarta Itinerary (With Built-In Recovery Time)

What follows is a Puerto Vallarta itinerary scientifically designed to maximize enjoyment while minimizing both sunburn and the crushing guilt of spending an entire week horizontal on a beach towel. This careful balance of activity and recovery ensures you’ll return home with both stories and the energy to embellish them.

Day 1: Orientation and Beach Baptism

Arrive at PVR airport before 2pm to maximize your first day and minimize your time in an immigration line that multiplies exponentially after international flights land. Transportation choices reveal your traveler personality: take a licensed airport taxi ($25-30) if you value comfort, or channel your inner adventurer with the local bus ($2) if you enjoy starting vacations with mild anxiety and potential disorientation.

Checking into accommodations becomes a spectrum of financial commitment ranging from $50/night hostels where you’ll make “friends” whether you want to or not, to $500+ luxury resorts where staff remember your name with an accuracy that becomes mildly unsettling by day three. The oceanfront premium is worth every penny of your children’s inheritance – the sound of waves drowns out both your sunburn pain and lingering work thoughts.

Late afternoon demands a proper beach orientation at Los Muertos Beach. This is where your inaugural margarita ($8-12 at The Blue Shrimp) should be consumed while absorbing people-watching potential that rivals any Broadway show. The sunset stroll along the Malecón provides obligatory photo opportunities at the seahorse statue – every tourist has this picture, and now you must too, it’s practically a visa requirement.

For dinner, La Palapa offers oceanfront tables where the waves come so close you might get ceviche twice – once served by your waiter and once delivered by the tide. At $25-40 per person, it’s the perfect middle ground between street tacos and remortgaging your home for seafood.

Day 2: Old Town Immersion

Begin at Fredy’s Tucan where the pancakes are so fluffy they need their own Instagram account ($8-15). Fueled by excessive carbohydrates, embark on a self-guided walking tour of Zona Romántica, where each colorful building seems specifically designed for social media backgrounds.

The Isla Cuale market offers souvenir shopping where haggling is expected but being a jerk is not. The unwritten rule: whatever the first price, counter with half, then settle somewhere in between while maintaining enough cheerfulness to make everyone feel like winners in this capitalist theater.

Afternoon calls for cultural penance at the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe ($0 admission, $5 suggested donation). Note the crown atop the church that was damaged in an earthquake, as if God himself was doing some redecorating. The church provides excellent architectural photos and a brief respite from vendors asking if you want to buy silver “almost free, almost free.”

Evening demands a taco tour. Start at Panchos Takos (not a spelling error but a trademark workaround) for al pastor sliced from a vertical spit with pineapple that somehow makes the entire operation seem more authentic. Continue to Tacos El Cunado in the Romantic Zone, where $1-2 tacos arrive with such speed you’ll suspect they began cooking before you even decided to visit Mexico. Follow the “if locals eat there, you’ll survive” rule, which has a 98.7% accuracy rating among tourists with reasonable intestinal fortitude.

Day 3: Water Adventures

The Marietas Islands present a critical vacation decision point. Luxury tours ($80-150) include breakfast, open bar, and equipment for visiting the famous “Hidden Beach” – a geological formation requiring advance reservations and the swimming ability of an Olympic athlete combined with the body-contortion skills of a circus performer. The budget-conscious can opt for Los Arcos snorkeling trips ($40-60), where similar fish apparently don’t discriminate based on your tour price point.

Afternoon recovery at Playa Camarones comes with chair rental negotiations ($5-10) and the perpetual decision of whether to accept offers from beach vendors. The coconut man provides hydration with theatrical machete skills that would be alarming in any other context. Beach massage offers ($20-30 for 30 minutes) become increasingly tempting in direct proportion to your sunburn progression.

The evening Pirate Ship dinner cruise ($90) delivers entertainment quality directly proportional to how many rum punches you’ve consumed. By the third drink, the pirate actors seem Broadway-caliber and fellow tourists’ participation in dance contests becomes surprisingly engrossing dinner theater.

Day 4: Cultural Day and Shopping

Gallery hopping along Basilio Badillo street reveals Puerto Vallarta’s artistic spectrum. Prices range from “reasonable conversation piece” to “requires a separate customs declaration.” Learn to distinguish authentic art from mass-produced paintings that are about as Mexican as Taco Bell – genuine pieces typically lack fluorescent colors and the artist can usually be named by the gallery owner.

The Botanical Gardens ($10 entrance) sit 30 minutes south by bus ($2) or taxi ($30). The winding trails come with difficulty ratings roughly equivalent to sweating potential. The jungle trek to the river delivers humidity levels that render antiperspirant a sad joke, but the orchid collection and surprisingly good garden restaurant make botanical suffering worthwhile.

Afternoon shopping requires strategic planning. Serious silver buyers should visit Cassandra Shaw or Mundo de Cristal for legitimate pieces with actual silver content above 10%. Tequila shoppers fare best at Mama Lucia’s, where tasting “for educational purposes” begins around noon and purchasing decisions mysteriously become easier by 1pm.

Evening calls for either a food tour ($45-65) or cooking class ($75-95) at Gaby’s Restaurant Cooking School. The latter sends you home with salsa skills that will make your neighbors actually want to come to your dinner parties, rather than accepting invitations out of obligation and dread.

Day 5: Adventure Day

Canopy zipline tours ($85-120) get cataloged by height, length, and terror factor. Outdoor Adventure’s extreme option includes Tarzan swings that make grown men call for their mothers and rappelling experiences that recalibrate your understanding of “controlled falling.” The photos captured by strategically positioned staff photographers will show facial expressions you didn’t know you were capable of making.

Afternoon ATV jungle tours ($60-90) come with mud guarantees and clothing consequences – nothing worn will ever be white again. Vallarta Adventures and Estigo Tours both offer vehicles powerful enough to climb near-vertical terrain while guides pretend this is perfectly normal behavior for a Wednesday afternoon.

For those whose adventure tolerance registers below “potential emergency room visit,” the guided walking tour through El Nogalito ($40-50) offers waterfall swimming with substantially lower insurance implications. The guides identify plants with medicinal properties that indigenous people used for centuries before Advil, adding educational value to what is essentially a sweaty hike.

Recovery dinner at El Arrayan ($30-40 per person) features traditional Mexican dishes that will make you question why anyone would ever eat at Chipotle again. Their mole recipes involve 20+ ingredients and preparation times that would test the patience of Buddhist monks.

Day 6: Beach Hopping

Water taxis to Yelapa ($12 round trip) depart from Los Muertos pier hourly until 5pm. This former fishing village turned day-trip destination maintains just enough rustic charm to make visitors feel intrepid. Beach clubs charge $15 for loungers that magically include beverage service from attentive waiters who develop ESP for detecting empty glasses.

The legendary “pie lady” of Yelapa – actually several competing pie ladies – patrol the beach with slices of chocolate, coconut, and cheese desserts worth abandoning any diet for ($3-4 per slice). Their appearance on the beach triggers a Pavlovian response even among those who claimed they were “too full for dessert.”

Afternoon exploration of Mismaloya Beach comes with required acknowledgment of its Hollywood history as “The Night of the Iguana” filming location. Tour guides highlight the ironic contrast between Elizabeth Taylor’s glamorous affair with Richard Burton and your current appearance: sunburned nose, humidity-frizzed hair, and a growing collection of sand in unfortunate places.

Sunset dinner at Le Kliff ($75-100 per person) requires advance reservations and specific table requests for optimal view positioning. The price directly correlates to elevation – each peso buys approximately one foot of height above sea level, delivering increasingly spectacular sunset vistas with appropriately dramatic menu descriptions to match.

Day 7: Local Life and Departure Prep

The Emiliano Zapata market operates with an intensity that makes American farmers markets seem like sleepy afterthoughts. Tropical fruits with spiny exteriors and improbable colors taste nothing like the sad impersonators in your hometown grocery store. Vendors offer samples with the confidence of people selling genuinely superior products rather than merely adequate ones.

Brunch at Cafe San Angel ($10-15) provides coffee strong enough to alert neighboring towns and chilaquiles that solve any lingering effects from previous evening’s tequila research. Their fresh-squeezed orange juice contains approximately 47 vitamins not found in the reconstituted version back home.

Final souvenir shopping happens under the cloud of airline luggage weight limits. Tequila buyers face critical decisions ranging from $25 bottles appropriate for mixing to $250 special reserves better suited for reverent sipping than cleaning engine parts. Savvy shoppers learn that vacuum-packed coffee weighs less than beans in decorative pottery containers that will inevitably crack during transit anyway.

El Barracuda ($20-30) delivers the perfect farewell dinner with “last meal worthy” seafood platters. Located directly on the beach, the restaurant provides sunset views without the premium pricing of more touristic establishments. The Zarandeado fish, butterflied and grilled with regional spices, creates the meal memory that will sustain you through months of inferior seafood upon return.