Bumpy roads don’t necessarily sneak up on you in Puerto Vallarta but there are those that catch you by surprise and threaten to rearrange your kidneys. Our driving experts have reported the top well known axle-busters:
The area of Buenos Aires/Paso Ancho has been under steady redevelopment for decades, and oversized vehicles have all but destroyed the road surface for anything less than a slalom course. If your mode of transport is a two-wheeler, you can probably navigate without needing your teeth checked after a ride, but you’ll take a real rattling otherwise. I always watch with great envy when passing equestrians smoothly steer around potholes, some the size of which a horse might easily disappear.
Heading out of Puerto Vallarta, southbound, by way of the Small Tunnel on Highway 200 are gullies and gorges that aren’t so easy to spot, traversing from bright sun to shadow. Pockmarked like a meteorite landed in the highway at some point in the summer, they are impossible to avoid, since they are bunched together like inverted Cheerios. Puerto Vallarta’s chiropractors are especially fond of this route. Not for themselves, of course.
There’s a back way to Pitillal, which is a small town within the town of Puerto Vallarta, often referred to as PTL. This course should get you to Pitillal quicker when rush hour clogs Francisco Villa: passing through the colonia of Las Gaviotas, you could zip down Paseo del Marlin, which turns into Paseo de Las Torres. If you could only zip… Every rainy season, the ruts repaired over the winter reappear like a checkerboard in heat and those living in Las Sauces and Gaviotas live with the ubiquitous rumblings.
Roma is a street in Puerto Vallarta that takes you from Fluvial to Versalles and should be a speedy route. There are, however, canyons and valleys to be navigated and if you think of going this way in the dark, you can double your carnival-like thrills. There is no Right or Left in this navigation; not a Middle either. It’s a perilous dust rut!
Topping the list is Destination Cornerstone Hospital – You’re being transported by ambulance in an obvious emergency, accompanied by intense pain. Or… you could just be looking for a free parking spot outside the Soriana pay parking lot. Either way, washboard is an apt description of this street and it doesn’t ease up from beginning to end. If you are unlucky enough to be rolling over this ladder-like pavement, hold on to your dentures and be glad it’s not a lengthy journey. When you head out, it’s a good test of your post trauma pain meds.
Que es cómo es.
Thanks to Adam Garcia our new guest blogger for this great article on Puerto Vallarta life!