From December 2021
I've covered the highlights of our trip to Puerto Vallarta over the last few weeks. So were all aspects of Puerta Vallarta a picture post card? No, not everything, although I liked it well enough that it would be high on the list of places to relocate, if I was going to relocate, which isn't happening in the short term.
Mexico has a very different social safety net than the United States. I would argue that it isn't necessarily worse--just different. Over the last several decades, the United States has experienced a widening gap between the very wealthy and the rest of us. We have a lot of poor people living on the edge.
In Puerto Vallarta, there seems to be a strong middle class, and people in the working class seem happy with less. But it hasn't escaped the problems of many other cities. Drugs and alcohol abuse is evident. There are drunks/addicts doing their thing and getting sick in public and bathing in the fountains. There is petty crime, but I did not hear of violent crime. We felt safer here than we do in U.S. cities of comparable size. People look out for each other.
For the severely disabled, there is free medical care via a second tier health care system. Waits are long, and not everything is available.
Perhaps one of the most initially disturbing sights to me were disabled children on the Malecon, begging throughout the day with the parents standing behind the wheelchair. Young children are also put to work to help support the family. The most visible example of that are the dozens of kids selling trinkets at the beach to tourists eating dinner. Those are things you don't often see in the U.S., but different is not necessarily worse.
There is urban sprawl here, especially to the north of the city--developments and gated properties catering to Americans and Canadians. Puerto Vallarta is getting to be more expensive with growing tourism and the influx of dollars. We come for the beauty at cheaper prices, and end up driving the prices up for everyone.
We are already planning our next trip to Mexico sometime in the next couple of years. While we loved Puerto Vallarta, we're going to explore a new destination and hopefully stay for a longer time (months instead of weeks).
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