From the bus ride in, to the airport out, we bop around Puerto
Vallarta, a dynamic city on the west coast of Mexico.
Highlights include enjoying lunch and beers at Los Muertos
Brewery; wandering through Mundo de Cristal (House of Crystal), our favorite
pottery/souvenir shop; shopping and more shopping, watching a cocinero make tacos
de pastor, Bob eating ice cream made in a garafón (barrel), Lisa drinking a horchata
(flavored rice drink), walking along the Malecon (Boardwalk), dropping into a
jewelry store that feels like a mine, and ducking out of the rain into the
Huichol art store, where of course we buy a beaded mask to add to our
collection.
At the airport to head home, we decompress in the Priority
Pass Lounge, which has an excellent bar.
We donned dorky paper chef hats when Christan from the Joy
Squad took us on a 90-minute tour behind the scenes of the massive Vidanta
Resort in Nuevo Nayarit/Vallarta, Mexico. From housekeeping, to food service, to wine,
to excruciatingly delicious gourmet chocolates, we had a chance to see how a
large luxury resort is run.
Vidanta has six resorts in Mexico, and Nuevo Vallarta, just
north of Puerto Vallarta, is the flagship, with 5,000 employees trained to
serve guests with an amazing attention to detail to make their experiences at
Vidanta extraordinary.
We traveled through 1.7 kilometers of tunnels in an open-air
van escorted by a staff member on a segway. In the huge bowels of the complex,
we found administrative offices, carpentry, laundry, vehicle repair, electrical
repair, spare parts, supplies management, bakery, ice cream factory, homemade
jams, grocery store, trash and recycling (11 tons of recycling per day!). We
saw one of the employee cafeterias, the staff gym, shuttle buses for employees,
a hospitality training classroom, and a simulator in which staffers learn to
serve meals, clean and prepare bedrooms, and more. We were treated to bread,
jams, charcuterie, chocolate, and – the best surprise of all – discovered a
wine cave for tasting!
The Heart of the House Tour runs once a week, on Wednesdays,
and is limited to ten people. It’s worth a few hours in the morning if you’re
curious about how Vidanta is run. And it’s worth it to see chocolate
high-heeled shoes!
Vidanta Nueva Vallarta is giving tours as it soft opens its
long-promised "VidantaWorld Park" -- for a fee. Is it worth $100?
Come along and see! Vidanta describes this theme park as “a space that defies
all the rules of time, gravity, and even reality. A vacation taken to the
limits of your imagination.” I don’t know if it’s all that, but we paid $100
for the opportunity to find out, which we could put toward food and drinks in
the park.
We boarded the “SkyDream Parks Gondola” from Vidanta, which
gave us a nice aerial view of the complex, including its new pickleball courts
in the middle of nowhere. We were also treated to lovely views of Banderas Bay
on the Pacific coast of Mexico, and the mountains beyond. Vidanta says the
SkyDream is the first cable car system in the world in a beach development.
The park is opulent and lovely, with spectacular fountains,
beautifully designed restaurants, shaded spaces for relaxation, fountain
light-and-fire shows, music, and more. However, the park is not yet not fully
operating, and was still in “tour” mode as opposed to “use” mode. There is not
a lot of THERE there.
We rode the Vista Wheel (the only other ride was not
working) – slow and a little boring, with literally no view -- checked out the
carnival games and enjoyed our pick of fantastic food.
In the future, Vidanta is promising a jungle park, “ruins”
to explore, a water park, and all kinds of “thrilling attractions.” But this is
Vidanta, so who knows when or if this will happen? As of now, there is no firm
opening date, and a lot of staff members on hand to serve very few guests. But
it looks good
