Botanical Gardens of Puerto Vallarta

On January 9th, we decided to take another trip with our friend April the tour guide.  This was a day trip to the botanical gardens of Puerto Vallarta.  They are located in the jungle outside the city.  By bus it could take you over three hours to get here, so an April tour was the way to go.  The first order of business was to have lunch.  You can't hike through the jungle without eating some great Mexican food first.  There is a rule you know.  The restaurant has fabulous views out over the mountains and river valley below.  They actually had couches and recliners in the restaurant overlooking the gardens.  We could easily have spent the whole day hanging out in the restaurant napping and sipping wine.  Not in that order, of course.  

The visitor center and restaurant.

Luckily, April being the good tour guide, tossed us out of the restaurant and set us up with a docent to give us the lay of the land.  There were several bird watchers in our group that like to extra time trying to spot unusual birds.  We did not share this interest, but wanted to hike all the trails within the gardens.  So we split from the group, which was perfectly acceptable to April and headed off on our own.  

There were spectacular plants and flowers everywhere.

Cathy still does not like these swinging bridges!

There was a lot of coffee growing here.  There was a nice explanation about the plant and the processing it goes through to become a grande super mocha no whip latte.  

This is what coffee looks like in the wild.  The coffee bean is inside the red berry.

There was a beautiful free running river at the lowest level of the gardens.  You could take a swim if you wanted, but we opted for a steep hike back up through the jungle.  In retrospect, the swim might have been a better plan.

The trail back up from the river was full of steep switchbacks, but was also full of beautiful jungle plants.  The plants are what we came to see.

The pond outside the restaurant.

They had a beautiful outdoor orchid exhibit.  Hundreds of different kinds of orchids from all over Mexico.

Nice.

Artsy fartsy.

Happy hikers waiting for the rest of the gang to get back.  If you spend to much time here flowers start growing out of your head!

On the way back, we stopped in Puerto Vallarta to see the new tourist pier that cost 80 Million Pesos.  The pier was very nice, but they could have used the money to fix all the car swallowing pot holes throughout Banderas Bay.  The locals are of course upset that their tax money went to something like this.  Infrastructure  is sorely lacking throughout the region, and the money could have been better spent.

The new tourist pier at the end of the street.

The day ended with a tour of the archeological museum on the island in the middle of the Romantic District.  The museum had a lot of interesting artifacts from the local area, along with good explanations of the exhibits in English.  After a quick stop at a local bakery that made surprisingly good French style pastries, we hopped back into the van for the ride home.  Everyone was tired, but satisfied that they had seen another little known part of Mexico.