San Sebastian del Oeste, Mexico, Part 1

Saturday was a big day. After several years of coming to Nuevo Vallarta and looking at the mountains from our balcony, we finally headed off to explore them. The town we headed to, San Sebastian, is about 70 kilometres away from Nuevo Vallarta in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range. As we are not familiar with the area we decided to tap into some local expertise and hired a car and driver. It was an excellent idea as Mario spent the day showing us things we never would have found on our own, providing information on the history of the area, the vegetation, local experience of where to stop, where to eat, and where to get the best views. Mario was originally a security guard at the ports, taking people on hikes as a side line, until he realized he could expand that to a career and attended University for a degree in tourism. That was 20 years ago and now during the week he leads tours from cruise ships that dock in Puerto Vallarta and on weekends he drives for a company taking people on private tours. He enjoys his profession and is happy to share his knowledge and love of Mexico.

We started off with a mini tour of Ixtapa which was on the route to the mountains and is Mario’s home town. We saw many vendors along the side of the road, selling a wide variety of produce at small stands or out of the back of their trucks. But the most surprising thing was seeing an old Mexican man on horseback with his metal milk pail and dog following along, and then a young boy on his donkey just meandering down the street. Mario commented that we fortunate to see a disappearing sight of old Mexico.