Dolphin Swimming

Puerto Vallarta: a history full of adventure

// January 26th, 2009 // View Comments // Locations, Vallarta

Bahía Banderas, Banderas bay, is the third largest natural bay in Mexico, and it’s divided almost equally between two states – Jalisco, where Puerto Vallarta is, and Nayarit, which begins an eight-minute drive north of the international airport in the middle of the Ameca River Bridge. The agricultural valley of the Ameca River and the important mining centers in the Sierra have given the town a very interesting past. The tourist destination of Puerto Vallarta, is bounded on the north by Punta Mita and on the south by Cape Corrientes.

Few details are known about the history of the area prior to the 19th century. There is some archeological evidence that the area belonged to the Aztatlán culture. The valley was then named Banderas (flags) after the colorful standards carried by the natives in the large battle between them and Hernan Cortez, in 1524.

During the 17th and 18th centuries the Banderas Valley and its beaches along the Bay of Banderas served as supply points for ships seeking refuge in the bay. In 1851 a boatman from Cihuatlán who used to bring salt to Los Muertos beach, became tired of waiting for the muleteers to come and pick up the load. So he saw it fit to establish himself in this beautiful place he would call Las Peñas. At the time the main port serving Jalisco was located at San Blas, but the inconvenient overland route from San Blas to the Sierra towns made Puerto Vallarta a more convenient alternative for smaller shipments. By the mid 19th century, the town already had its regularly returning population of vacationers. Las Peñas development into a self-sustaining village happened in the 1860’s, and in 1918 was renamed after a former state governor, Ignacio Vallarta.

photo credit: Lisa Andres

In 1942 in the New York based magazine Modern Mexico the first advertisement for a Puerto Vallarta vacation appeared, the page ad offered a flight from Guadalajara to a “primitive place of hunting and fishing”. Reinforced by intense advertising campaigns, Mexicana launched the Puerto Vallarta-Mazatlán-Los Angeles route in 1962.

In 1963, the director John Huston filmed “The Night of the Iguana” in a small town at south of Puerto Vallarta. For the first time received simultaneously big Hollywood Stars, national celebrities and intellectuals. Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardner, Sue Lyon and Richard Burton led the cast that also included Emilio “El Indio” Fernández. Tennessee Williams, author of “The Night of the Iguana,” visited the set frequently. During the filming, the US media gave extensive coverage to Elizabeth Taylor’s extramarital affair with Richard Burton. The subsequent publicity helped put Puerto Vallarta on the map for US tourists.

In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Puerto Vallarta was outfitted with the infrastructure required of an urban development and a modern tourist destination. The Mexican government invested in the development of highways, airport and utility infrastructure, making Puerto Vallarta easily accessible both by air and ground transportation for the first time.

It was only after 1973 that the construction of large hotels began. It experienced rapid growth in the number of larger luxury hotels, culminating in 1980 with the opening of the Sheraton Buganvilias. In 1982 the peso was devalued and Puerto Vallarta enjoyed a period of prosperity, it became a bargain destination for US tourists.

By 1985 the flux of tourism and immigrants demanded, on one hand, the building of new hotels and, on the other, the development of residential options for employees and executives. So while more and more workers were arriving in Puerto Vallarta to try to cash in on the booming tourist trade, less and less was being done to accommodate them with housing and related infrastructure. During the late 1980s the city worked to alleviate the situation by developing housing and infrastructure.

By the early 90s development of other destinations in Mexico like Ixtapa and Cancún caused a slump in travel to Puerto Vallarta. The efforts of the trust, of individual hotels and restaurants, free agents, gallery owners, tour operators and guardians of the environment created the miracle needed and Puerto Vallarta began the process of earning a position among world-class beach destinations.

Grand Cayman, a british territory touched by the Caribbean Sea

// January 26th, 2009 // View Comments // Grand Cayman, Locations

The Cayman Islands were first sighted by Christopher Columbus on 10 May, 1503, and named them Las Tortugas after the numerous sea turtles there. But it was only about three hundred years ago that people began to settle permanently on these islands.

photo credit: Fevi in Cayman

A 1523 map of the islands referred to them as Lagartos, meaning alligators or large lizards, but by 1530 the name Caymanas was being used. It is derived from the Carib Indian word for the marine crocodile, which is now known to have lived in the Islands. This name, or a variant, has been retained ever since. It is believed that the first people to actually land here were sailors from Sir Francis Drake’s 1585 expedition to the West Indies.

The first recorded permanent inhabitant of the Cayman Islands, Isaac Bodden, was born on Grand Cayman around 1700. He was the grandson of the original settler named Bodden who was likely one of Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers at the taking of Jamaica in 1655.

Spain recognized British possession of the Islands in the 1670 Treaty of Madrid. A variety of people settled on the islands: pirates, refugees from the Spanish Inquisition, shipwrecked sailors, and slaves. The majority of Caymanians are of African and British descent, with considerable interracial mixing. Following several unsuccessful attempts, permanent settlement of the islands began in the 1730s. The first settlers brought with them the scourge of slavery that was to last until emancipation in 1835. However, life was not easy for these pioneers, even for freemen, who made a living from subsistence farming and fishing, turtling and woodcutting. At that time, mahogany, in particular, was in great demand for the furniture industry in Europe.

Though Cayman was always regarded as a dependency of Jamaica, the reins of government by that colony were loosely held in the early years, and a tradition grew up of self-government, with matters of public concern decided at meetings of all free males. In 1831 a legislative assembly was established comprising two houses: the eight magistrates appointed by the Governor of Jamaica and ten elected representatives or vestrymen.

In 1953 the first airfield in the Cayman Islands was opened as well as the George Town Public Hospital. Barclays ushered in the age of formalised commerce by opening the first commercial bank. In 1959 Cayman received its first written constitution which, for the first time, allowed women to vote. Cayman ceased to be a dependency of Jamaica. The Islands opted to retain its links with Britain, a decision that continues to lend it political stability and has aided the growth of the financial sector. Following the lead of Bermuda and the Bahamas, the Cayman Legislative Assembly passed the Banks and Trust Companies Law of 1966, which laid the basis for offshore finance services.

In the late 1960s, the first cruise ships called into at George Town, but these visits were rare and in the first half of the 1970s, no more than eight arrived in one year. However, in the 1990s, cruise ship tourism exploded, and in 2007 more than 1,700,000 passengers entered Cayman waters.

Cancun - Isla Mujeres, former Mayan paradise & today’s tourist destination

// January 26th, 2009 // View Comments // Cancun / Isla Mujeres, Locations

According to the conqueror Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Quintana Roo was thickly populated by people who spoke the Mayan language. Years after the Conquest, most of the population died as a result of an outbreak of smallpox, leaving only small settlements on Isla Mujeres and Cozumel Island.

photo credit: sylvain.landry

Cancun was only developed as a tourism destination in the 1960s when Banco de México carried out a research to determine the feasibility of having more foreign income through tourism development. The chosen spot was a piece of a desert coastal line near a small fisherman village called Puerto Juarez.

The Cancun Project was officially approved in 1969, but didn’t begin until January, 1970, when the first Infratur (a government agency existing prior to the creation of Fonatur) technicians arrived. The initial objectives of the project were to open up a road from Puerto Juarez to the island, design a Master Development Plan and build a provisional air strip.

The first hotels opened in 1974. Promoted as a tropical paradise, Cancun attracted tourism from Canada, the US and Europe. The city has grown rapidly over the past thirty years and it means an important percentage of Mexico’s tourism-related revenue and Quintana Roo’s gross domestic product. Cancun has become the country’s largest tourism spot and is the most booming city in the Yucatan Peninsula.

photo credit: eheçatzin:.

Isla Mujeres, “Island of Women”, has a long and colorful history. It used to be the sanctuary for the goddess Ixchel, The Mayan goddess of fertility, reason, medicine and the moon. When the Spaniards arrived in 1517, they found many female shaped idols representing Ixchel, so they named it “Island of Women”.

For the next tree centuries, Isla was uninhabited. The only visitors were fishermen and pirates. During the Mexico’s Independence, many Mayans escaped to Cozumel, Holbox and Isla Mujeres, a small village began in what’s now downtown, Pueblo de Dolores. The mayans found the waters around the island to be a fisherman’s paradise and slowly the village started to grow.  It wasn’t until recent years that tourism became a large part of the island economy.

On the south tip of the island there was an ancient Mayan temple also used as a lighthouse. The light from torches was shown through holes in the walls, which could be seen by sailors. However, in 1988, Hurricane Gilbert partially destroyed the Mayan temple.

Ferry boats depart every half hour during daylight from Isla Mujeres to Puerto Juarez in Cancun. There are numerous places to eat fresh seafood and Mayan cuisine, shops, archeological places, diving shops and many other activities. The island boasts the second largest coral reef in the world, making of it the perfect spot for snorkeling and scuba diving. It is also home to a population of sea turtles, on the southern tip of the island you can find a turtle farm specially designed for their rehabilitation and breeding.