Where to Stay

There are plenty of accommodation options along the route, ranging from budget-friendly hostels to luxurious resorts. In Guadalajara, you can stay at the historic Hotel Morales or the trendy Casa Fayette.

In Sayulita, check out the colorful Casablanca Sayulita or the rustic-chic Hotelito Los Suenos. In Punta Mita, indulge in the lavish amenities of the Four Seasons Resort or the St. Regis Punta Mita Resort.

And in Puerto Vallarta, choose from the traditional Hotel Rosita or the contemporary Hotel Mousai.

Tips for the Road Trip

• Rent a car from a reputable company and make sure to have all the necessary documents and insurance coverage.
• Check the weather forecast before you go, as the region can be affected by tropical storms and hurricanes.
• Be prepared for toll roads, which are common along the route, and have cash or a credit card ready to pay.
• Plan your itinerary, but also allow for some flexibility to accommodate unexpected detours or changes.
• Pack sunscreen, bug spray, and comfortable clothing and shoes for outdoor activities.
• Learn some basic Spanish phrases to communicate with the locals and enhance your cultural experience.

Puerto Vallarta has been an expat haven for over 60 years. What was once a small village on Mexico’s Pacific Coast is now a major international resort, with an urban area that runs for nearly 30 miles along the shore of Banderas Bay.

The entire area—from southern Jalisco up to the bay’s northern point at Punta de Mita, in the state of Nayarit—is referred to as Costa Vallarta.

Costa Vallarta offers a seemingly endless number of activities, thanks to the natural attractions and the tourist infrastructure that has built up over time. You can saunter down the malecón (boardwalk) that stretches along the downtown area and look inside the boutiques, cafés, and restaurants.

Or you can spend the day on any of the more than half-dozen golf courses in the Puerto Vallarta area.

If you want to escape the heat, the nearby Sierra Madre mountains offer exhilarating activities such as hiking, biking, and canopy tours that take you swinging from branch to branch.

Near the Bay of Banderas are more options—whale watching, boat tours, fishing, sailing, dolphin excursions, kitesurfing, windsurfing, and parasailing.

Flights from Puerto Vallarta’s international airport can get you back to the U.S. in just a few hours. Puerto Vallarta is also a popular medical tourism destination, with several top hospitals offering state-of-the-art medical care.

Considered one of the prettiest small towns in Mexico, San Miguel is a Spanish colonial jewel glowing in pastel colors.

With a rich arts-and-crafts tradition, San Miguel has small shops a-plenty where you can spend hours admiring (and buying) pottery, painting, sculptures, hammered-tin mirrors, and lamps…the list is endless.

You can also enjoy its many art galleries, restaurants, and scenic plazas.

Like Puerto Vallarta, San Miguel is home to thousands of expats from all over the world. Here you can get by in English if you want, or speak Spanish if you prefer. If you greet folks in Spanish when you enter a shop, they continue in that language unless you decide otherwise.

Most North Americans love its high-desert climate, with warm days and cool nights most of the year, so it’s not surprising that of 140,000 people living in the metropolitan area, it is estimated that around 10,000 are expats.

There’s no international airport right in San Miguel, so choose from two in the region: León, which is about two hours away, and Querétaro, about an hour. Or if you prefer, just fly into Mexico City, three hours away, and take the bus to San Miguel.

Like San Miguel, Mérida is a Spanish-colonial city. But Mérida is a very different animal…

Unlike small-town San Miguel, Mérida is a metropolis of almost a million people, with universities, major corporations, museums, and its own international airport with direct flights back to the U.S.

In addition, Mérida is in the semi-tropical Yucatán Peninsula, at the opposite end of the country from San Miguel. It’s just half an hour from the Yucatán Gulf Coast, where the white-sand beaches are punctuated by little beach towns and you can still find beach homes for around $100,000.

Mérida is one of the safest cities in Mexico. Depending on how many suburbs are included, the population of metropolitan Mérida is approaching 1 million. But when you walk down the city’s tree-lined streets, some paved with hand-laid tiles, you feel as though you are in a city that is much smaller.

Mérida’s expat community numbers about 4,000, but that’s a drop in the bucket for a city this size. As a result, you’ll have more need—as well as opportunity—to learn Spanish here than in Puerto Vallarta or San Miguel. Or learn to sing it—this is a very musical city.

You’ll find bands performing in some plaza or other almost every day of the week. And if you think you know Mexican cooking, think again—Yucatán cuisine is distinctly different, and on display here in Mérida.

Lake Chapala is Mexico’s largest lake, and the surrounding area is also home to the largest concentration of US expats in the world.

Both US and Canadian expats have been attracted to the Lake Chapala area by homes with gentle arches, hand-painted tiles, and adjoining gardens that bloom all year round. It’s a part of the world where it’s easy to afford a cook, a maid, and a gardener.

Lake Chapala, Mexico’s largest lake, is about 50 miles long from east to west but not much more than 12 miles wide at its broadest point.

Chapala is about a mile high—roughly the same altitude as Denver—and the climate is delightful. January is the coolest month around Lake Chapala, with temperatures reaching about 71 F, May is the warmest month, with highs around 84 F.

Guadalajara a city of more than 5 million residents, is only 45 minutes away by car.

Real estate shoppers are often impressed with the Chapala area’s cultural and sporting opportunities, including English-language theater, frequent concerts, garden clubs, golf, tennis, hiking, yoga, and horseback riding.

On the north side of Lake Chapala, villages combine charm with an increasing amount of sophistication.

The town of Chapala itself is the largest, and along its cobblestone streets are taverns, shops, cafés, street vendors, and high-quality restaurants. Close by is the community of Vista del Lago, which has a popular country club and golf course.

Ajijic and Chapala are havens for artists and writers.

Expats and locals often get together on Wednesdays, when Ajijic’s huge outdoor market is open. It’s a great place to shop for hand-made carvings and jewelry, not to mention clothes, flowers, fruits, vegetables, cooked food, and household items.

Not far from Ajijic is San Antonio, a village that keeps a much lower profile. Here, a large percentage of expats live in beautiful houses that are secluded behind high walls.

Tulúm is a charming and growing resort town on the southern end of Mexico’s famed Riviera Maya.

With a palpable Bohemian vibe and a plentiful scattering of yoga practitioners and therapeutic massage businesses, this growing community retains its backpacker roots.

Some say they can feel the presence of the ancient Maya culture which dominated this region over 1,000 years ago.

The adjacent and spectacular archeological site of the same name is a prominent and impressive testament to this once-dominant civilization. At its peak between the 13th and 15th centuries, this ruin was a bustling trade and cultural center and is now a frequent stop for tourists.

The town of Tulúm, bisected by the coastal highway, is a stone’s throw from the sparkling sand and warm waters of the Caribbean Sea.

About 80 miles and two hours south of Cancún, the town is no longer the hidden gem it once was but is now well into the development phase with the construction of homes and condos on the rise to keep up with those wishing to claim their slice of paradise.

Living in the central town area will not require you to own a car, and walking and bicycling are both quite popular.

In fact, it seems there are often as many bikes on the road as there are motorized vehicles. Motor scooters are also quite popular for those who would rather not pedal around town.

Tulúm’s reputation as a spectacular vacation destination and a growing expat community is well-deserved. With a tropical climate, Tulúm offers a Caribbean lifestyle without the need to travel to and from an island.

Residents enjoy warm, turquoise Caribbean waters, a sparkling, perfect beach, and an offshore reef that provides plentiful opportunities for fishing, scuba diving, and snorkeling.

With the introduction of new, modern homes and condos, the population is thought to be well over 20 thousand and continues to rise as more people seek an affordable Caribbean lifestyle a bit off the beaten path.

Huatulco is a development planned by FONATUR, the Mexican government’s national trust fund for tourism development. It was one of five destinations picked by FONATUR more than 30 years ago as having world-class potential.

In many ways, Huatulco is a small town still emerging as a major destination. There are only about 56,000 residents, according to official figures, with about 1,000 being expats or pre-retirement, part-time visitors who own property.

Even during rush hour, you can drive from one side of town to the other in about six minutes.

You’ll see great—and puzzling—contrasts in Huatulco. This was originally a fishing village, and the larger town that has grown up, thanks to investments in the 1980s and 1990s, has a slight Disney-like quality.

In some areas, for instance, you’ll find large public walkways and promenades that have been built with no surrounding businesses to draw tourists and locals to them.

The four-lane highway that hugs the coast here is oversized for Huatulco’s current traffic needs.

The water treatment facilities are some of the best in Mexico.

Fishing, snorkeling, and diving are all very popular here. Every year Huatulco hosts several fishing tournaments. The biggest tournament, the Torneo de Pez Vela Huatulco (Huatulco Sailfish Tournament), attracts professional sports fishermen.

If you don’t feel like cooking, Huatulco has plenty of restaurant options and a variety of cuisines.

And despite its small population, Huatulco has an international airport with direct jet service to the U.K., U.S., and Canada, as well as to other parts of Mexico.

Ensenada is an attractive city that has long been one of the area’s major ports. Today Ensenada is also a top cruise ship destination and the site of numerous luxury housing developments.

Fishing, surfing, swimming, scuba diving, and sunbathing are popular in Ensenada, as they are in most other ocean-side cities in Baja. In Ensenada, there’s also golf, tennis, many excellent restaurants, nightclubs, cafés, theater, and ballet.

The city is host to several important sporting events during the year, such as regattas and the Baja 1000, an off-track race for motorcycles, and a variety of car classifications.

In the winter, the city’s bay (Bahía de Todos Santos) is a great spot for watching gray whales.

What the casual tourist may not know, however, is that Ensenada has several excellent research institutions and Mexico’s highest concentration of scientists, leading many to call Ensenada the “City of Science.”

Although real estate and daily expenses are much less in Baja than in most parts of the U.S., residents here almost always have a car.

Most air travelers either fly to San Diego and cross the border into Mexico or fly to the international airport in Tijuana.

A recently opened “air bridge” now connects San Diego with the Tijuana Airport. Travelers have reported taking a mere five minutes to cross the bridge on foot, avoiding the delays that cars crossing the border can experience.

Many expats in Baja take advantage of healthcare in nearby San Diego, but others use local facilities. Both Rosarito and Ensenada have some fine hospitals.

Facilities in Rosarito include the Clínica y Hospital Bonanova and the Sanoviv Institute, as well as several small hospitals and public hospitals.

In Ensenada, you’ll find the Clínica de Especialidades Médicas San Fernando, the Hospital Santa Rosa de Lima, and the Hospital Velmar, among others.

Although there are several theories as to the origin of the city’s name, the most likely is that it comes from Chapalac, the name of the last chief of the Nahuatl-speaking indigenous people of the region.

The residens of Chapala are known as “Chapalense”.

In its origins Chapala was a prehispanic settlement whose most remote antiquity is found in the XII century of our era, when a migration of tribes of Nahuatl origin (cocas) from the northwest of the country, touched these latitudes, finding the north shore of the lake. populated, as reported by Fray Antonio Tello, friar and Franciscan chronicler.

Four centuries later, in the year 1524, with the contact of the indigenous Cocas and Cazcanes with the Franciscan Fray Juan de Padilla and the Spanish soldier Alonso de Avalos, the lordship of Chapalingo was recognized as part of the New World.

The work of evangelization of the Franciscans Fray Miguel de Bolonia, Fray Martín de Jesús or de la Coruña and Fray Juan de Amolón, were built in 1531 with grass and adobes the Convent, the Hospital – in the place occupied by the chapel of Nuestra Señora del Rosario- of Axixic (Ajijic), and the church of Tlayacapán (San Antonio); in 1548 the Convent of Chapalingo (Chapala). The parishes of Chapala and Ajijic as well as the chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary were built in the eighteenth century on the occasion of the secularization of religious buildings to the Franciscans by the Archdiocese of Guadalajara.

During the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries Chapala was a “half-hearted” encomienda with the Spanish Crown populated mostly by Indians, with European colonization appearing at the end of the seventeenth century.

During the Independence, José Encarnación Rosas, originally from Chapala, operated in this area of ​​the Lake. Roses with 200 men and aided by the forces of José Santa Ana, on November 1, 1812 he faced Jose Antonio Serrato near La Barca, whom he defeated and took away 300 rifles.

Rosas in his pro-independence ranch acted alongside the wealthy hacendado Luis Macías, known by the aborigines as “El Brigadier”, as well as with the parish priest of Ocotlán, Marcos Castellanos and the aborigine José Santa Ana, originally from Mezcala.

In this last place they held one of the bloodiest fights of the insurgency, which filled with glory the chiefs and soldiers, most of whom were Indians, whose love for the cause of liberation gave these hosts so many victories. On November 25, 1816, the capitulation was signed, which came to end one of the most glorious feats of the War of Independence.

From 1825 to 1838 it belonged to the 3rd. Canton of La Barca, later to 1st. Canton of Guadalajara.

On March 27, 1824, the title of town was granted to Chapala, in the fifth proposal of the Territorial Division of the State Plan.

Chapala became an official municipality on September 10, 1864, by decree of the Jalisco State Congress.

It is from 1885 when Chapala begins to develop as a tourist center.

In the late 1940s the American writer Tennessee Williams settled in Chapala for a while to work on a play called The Poker Night, which later became A Streetcar Named Desire. As Williams explains in his essay “The Catastrophe of Success,” Chapala offered him an ideal place to work, “a remote place among strangers where there is good swimming.”

During the First World War, in 1915, Norwegian speculators intended to make Chapala a luxury resort town. A railway was to be built, with separate carriages for black and white people. In addition to the railway, the speculators would also provide two motor vessels to trafficate the lake with connections to the other small towns at the lake shore. A first class hotel was to be built, as well as an automobile club with attached casino. An extensive dam, 8 kilometers long to provide dry land with plots for luxury dwellings. What the shareholders in the company, “Compania di Fromento di Chapala” received, was only photographs of railway carriages and locomotives. See the book; Gullfeber by Kr.Fr.Brøgger, published in Oslo 1932.

Since the 1960s, Chapala has been frequented by both Mexican and international tourists. Among the area’s cultural attractions is mariachi music, which originated in the state of Jalisco. While many fine mariachi bands have been based in Chapala, the most famous groups are based in larger cities nearby. The most famous mariachi in Mexico is Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, founded in the late 19th century in the southern Jalisco city of Tecalitlán, but now based in Mexico City. Although mariachi music is believed to have originated in the town of Cocula, the greatest concentration of mariachis can be found in the city of Guadalajara, located about 30 miles north of Chapala; it is considered the city that most epitomizes the external concept of Mexico propagated by the international mass media (characterized by charros, tequila, sombreros, and mariachis). A worldwide mariachi festival is held there each fall, mariachis from throughout the world (including Europe and Asia) regularly participate.

By decree published on September 8, 1970, Villa de Chapala rises to the political category of city.

Another wave of immigration would take place in the late nineteenth century with the arrival of people from abroad who, attracted by the beauty of the riverbank and the benefits of its climate, built the first “summer” farms that little by little were transforming the landscape of this ” fishing village “as Father Orozco mentioned when he arrived at this place at the end of the 19th century.

These European-style estates built between 1878 and 1920 took a seat towards the east and west of the Parish of San Francisco de Asís on the shore and on the street that leads to the jetty contrasting its architecture with the landscape: front of the First Hotel, the “Arzapalo” (covered by the Mirador of the Beer Garden Restaurant), the Casa Braniff (now the Cazadores Restaurant), the Casa del Arq. Luis Barragán (south side of the Supermarket on Madero Avenue), the Hotel Palmera (today Hotel Nido) and the Hotel Niza (today the municipal presidency) both on Madero Avenue.

On the street Hidalgo are the Villas Bell, Villa Josefina, Villa Niza, Villa Tlalocán, Villa Ferrara, Villa San José, Villa Adriana and Villa Montecarlo (now Hotel). At the southern end of the street Aquiles Serdán are located Mi Pulman, Villa Aurora, Villa Ave Maria, in front of the Lake are the Casa Capetillo, and Villa Paz. Also on the Paseo Ramón Corona are located two fincas of the late nineteenth century.

Built between the first two decades of the present century, the Municipal Palace and the old station of the first and only rail service that operated and communicated to Chapala through the city of Guadalajara to the north of the country, and through the city of Mexico.

The building of the old Gonzales Gallo Railway Station, besides being considered the bulwark of the city, represents the takeoff of the Great Epoch of the Chapala Riviera. The railroad was more comfortable than the journey by mule or horse or the first stage that took up to 12 hours, or the first “Wichita” buses with hard tires that covered in 5 hours the distance the train made in only 3 hours.

Boat trips on the lake to the island of Mezcala and island of Scorpions (“Isla de los Alacranes”).

Paseos a caballo por el municipio, teniendo como recorrido el Parque de la Cristiania, Acapulquito (Zona Restaurantera popular), el Faro, el Malecón, la Iglesia de San Francisco, etc.

Other places located less than 2 hours away are Sayula, a town famous for the elaboration of fine knives, and Ciudad Guzmán, famous for its nut candies and enchiladas that you will find in the portals, as well as the mountain destinations of Mazamitla or Tapalpa in wooded areas.

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