Streetwalking - A Popular Passion in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

As fifteen year citizens of Puerto Vallarta, we have seen it develop from a comparatively small Mexican resort to a vibrant, globally identified holiday and retirement spot. It appears to get more beautiful and more customer friendly everyday as we watch the extraordinary improvements continue steadily to occur facing us.A couple of years ago, the town created today's conference center which has drawn numerous big national and international conferences to the area; the number growing each year. This year alone, they located the Royal Caribbean Nuestra Belleza beauty pageant (this pageant frequently decides the participants to represent Mexico in the Miss Universe, Miss World, and Miss International pageants), an Meeting of Journalists conference, and PV was recently selected to host Mexico's 27th National Medical Conference with 3,800 medical relevant guests. Put into those occasions, Vallarta recently hosted numerous contests for the XVI Pan American Games. Also, only in the past couple of weeks, President Calderon came to PV to speak at the Tianguis Tourism Conference where Vallarta managed about 7,000 conferees from throughout the world. That international conference was followed three months later by the Entire World Economic Forum for Latin America which hosted approximately 900 leaders from 70 different places. Again, President Calderon spoke to the guests and played an important part in the convention.In order to organize for several these considerable conferences and international events, the city leaders decided to commit a great deal of money and give a facelift to the city, a complete facelift. With federal and state funding, and a massive sum of local manpower, in an interval of less than half a year, the area has transformed it self into a showpiece.Included among the improvements were coloring striping of the local streets around town (absence of striping had caused some of them to become dangerous... now, the traffic tends to flow in shelves as opposed to be a free-for-all!), painting the curbs, crosswalks, and topes (speed bumps that may, without previous warning, damage your wheel position and suspension system, destroy your wheels and tires, or even worse, eliminate the whole undercarriage of one's vehicle), painting the base of the palm trees (they decorated virtually anything that did not move!), repairing chapters of the main bricked road and service streets through town, laying a new concrete highway south of town, changing the dilapidated Los Muertos pier with a brandname new contemporary pier, and they decided to reconstruct most of the sidewalks and curbs in the Downtown and Old Town areas.Being charming is one thing but having sidewalks and curbs that were badly developed 50 years back and now crumbling and heaving in every way is another thing. Not only were they ugly but they were quite dangerous, particularly when you were not making time for where you were walking. The sidewalks were so horrible, that people had to continually remind our visiting friends to view every single action they took while walking downtown. If you looked up for another, you stood the chance of spraining an, or worse. The curbs were chaos and especially poor at the road intersections; wheelchair access? You have got to be kidding!As a side note and being an exemplory case of how inattentive readers can be, about 10 years ago, simply for amusement while having lunch, we ran a questionnaire to see how many tourists were paying attention to where they were walking. The restaurant we were eating in gave out artificial $20 US bills as some sort of campaign stimulating a return visit. Well, we took one of these simple costs (a fantastic counterfeit bill!) and we folded it in half and then in half again. We put this stunning crisp new folded $20 bill on the sidewalk where many visitors were walking by. At least 200 people went nearly right over it and none of them glanced down; these were all passionate looking in the nearby stores or consuming the sights and sounds of the region. We gathered the bill and used it for a on our next visit!Since they were restoring most of the sidewalks, as the restaurant was left by us, the city planners chose to create the complete city more people friendly. In order to do this, many of the sidewalks, particularly on the key avenues through Downtown and Old Town, have been doubled as well as tripled in width. In fact, the complete road across the Malecon is now specified as a walking area and virtually closed to vehicle traffic. Luckily, the area has three new parking garages to accommodate those who would rather get to town than have a taxi or walk.The new sidewalks are not only plain vanilla sidewalks; they are highly decorated sidewalks with planters and stone rock inlays along the way. Fidencio Benitez, among the local Huichol Indians, using the "Mosaico Vallarta" strategy, designed the whole community of sidewalks for the duration of area. Senor Benitez involved in his design the "Origin of Vallarta" or perhaps a spot where the "Motherland meets the Ocean." Every single small cobblestone and volcanic pebble is placed by hand in the concrete resulting in an elaborate Indian pattern every where you go. The issue is; now that it is safe to let your eyes wander all over the place while admiring the mud statues, stacked stones, or mimes along the beach, or gaze at the breathtaking Sierra Madre foundation, or look in one of the art galleries, eateries, cantinas, curio stores, etc., the majority of the tourists are too often looking down admiring the artistry in the sidewalk.Not just have all of those changes satisfied the international visitors but they have made touring, or for that matter, surviving in Vallarta much better. After all, one of the first issues that Americans have about visiting or going to Mexico has to do with safety. We always appear to think of protection in terms of burglary, theft, or some violent personal attack but rarely in terms of falling down and breaking some thing! Before sidewalks were regained, they were a genuine safety hazard, specifically for visitors that were familiar with great, level, sleek, predictable sidewalks. The pavement changes have now been an important improvement for anyone except perhaps the hospital er attendants and the nearby heated surgeons!The new sidewalks also presented the town planners a chance to conceal many of the electrical and telephone cables thereby removing the old third planet search of electrical lines operating carelessly throughout the skyline. More over, the new Malecon was designed and made to allow elope rain water from the hills to flow under the Malecon to the bay instead of flood the downtown area. In this respect, the new sidewalks not just improved the appearance of the city however they improved the operation of the city, specially in the summer during the wet season.As unimportant as it can seem, these new sidewalks have favorably modified the whole experience of being in Vallarta. While preserving its charm as a Mexican coastal hotel with cobblestone paths, white stucco buildings with red tile roofs, and plants every-where, Vallarta today includes a newer, fresher, cleaner, and better feeling about it. Many of our friends get yourself a great deal of entertainment and pleasure (not forgetting, workout) from only walking leisurely about community. "Street walking" is rapidly learning to be a popular interest for many of the local citizenry. Those of you that have previously been to PV can immediately experience the difference; those of you that haven't, are in for a genuine treat.Now that Vallarta is now people helpful and concurrently, actually safer than it was before, hopefully you'll be motivated to think about visiting this wonderful city in the near future. Who knows, you too could become a component time "streetwalker!"