Sunday, October 17, 2004

Review of Hotel Sierra, Nuevo Vallarta

We just got back from a terrific week in Nuevo Vallarta (10/9-16/04). Our suite was immaculate -- it was thoroughly cleaned and mopped daily, and there were always wonderful surprises in how the washcloths and bathmats were folded. We had swans, frogs, and once a tuxedo shirt. Always delightful!

The food was well prepared, although the choices were very much the same from day to day. Mar Intimo was closed for remodeling, so we ate all our meals in the main restaurant (cafeteria? buffet?). Try the Mexican Coffee after your evening meal -- it's delicious and the flaming presentation is very fun. We also had a bottle of Baja Californai merlot every evening with our meal. I LOVED the all-inclusiveness -- being able to climb out of the pool and get a quick drink at the bar was awesome.

There's a lot of construction going on, but the noise was never enough to be an annoyance. The ocean muffles the sounds of jackhammers pretty well. I only noticed the noise when we were snoozing by the pool; never any issues from our room.

I saw literature about horsebackriding and other available activities, but we didn't spend much time hanging around the hotel, so I have no idea if they were truly available. We did spend several evenings in the bar -- one evening there was a dance program (very well done) and we sang karaoke another evening. We went on two snorkeling/scuba trips through Vallarta Adventures and also enjoyed their Rhythms of the Night evening. They were extremely professional, lots of fun, and I would recommend them wholeheartedly to anyone. We also took an ATV trip through Rancho Capomo. Everyone else there went on the horseback tour, so we had our own private guide. It was great -- we got to see a part of the country that isn't tailored to tourists!

Paradise Village, walking distance to the south, has a good-sized mall. There's one shop which sells Internet access for about $1.50 for 10 minutes. It turned out to be a much easier way to keep in touch with my family than by phone. I had a lot of trouble using my international MCI phone card.

Paradise Village also has jetskis for rent and has a water taxi that is a fun way to visit Puerto Vallarta, and only costs a little more than a taxi (I think it was around $16 or 18 for the two of us, as compared with $12 or 13 for a taxi). I also went parasailing from the beach in front of Paradise Village for $45 US.

The only parts of the trip I didn't like had nothing to do with Hotel Sierra. Beware when you visit Puerto Vallarta when a cruise ship is in harbor -- all the prices go up. We also hated the constant pressure (none from Hotel Sierra) to go to timeshare presentations (oh yeah, they're "vacation clubs" now) .

We did go to the Mayan Palace presentation -- it was supposed to be about 90 minutes and ended up taking more than 4 hours. Somehow, the price went from $168,000 down to about $7,000. I didn't pay much attention to the numbers or how the package was changing, because I had no intention of buying, anyway. After seeing this morning how many people are trying to unload their Mayan Palace purchases on ebay, I know we made the right decision. Our salesperson, Nick, was trying to convince us that we could make a profit by renting the lockout unit out to golfers. Anyway, we got a nice breakfast and tour out of the deal, along with a day of snorkeling/scuba diving and a bottle of Kahlua, so it wasn't a total waste. I plan to avoid such presentations from now on, though.

1 comment:

Liz said...

That sounds like a lot of fun, Mom. I'm glad you get to go do things like that and enjoy yourself now. :)