Vallarta Blog

Vallarta Adventures has added a promotional code field to their online reservations!

If you book online (vallarta-adventures.com), you will get a 10% online discount on any adventure you choose, so the promotional code will probably go over the 10% already given online, and save you some extra money. Now it’s up to you to find these promotional codes online!

Cabo Adventures also has this new feature on their tour reservation system, so be sure to look out for any discount codes out there!

Besides Vallarta and Cabo Adventures, there are also many other ways to save at least 10% on food, lodging and activities. For example the yellow and white pages that are free in many places, have coupons with all kinds of discounts and promotions. Look out for any free magazines, they usually come with coupons too! And if you really have just too much time on your clock, you can get $300 usd if you qualify to share your time by sitting through a horrendous time share experience which can be worth the $300 usd or more some times!

$50 dollars or $50 pesos?

Another common thing where you can save money is to watch and talk correctly whenever you buy something. It has happened several times on my visit to Puerto Vallarta that I share a taxi with other tourists and they don’t ask how much the trip will cost until they arrive! THEN when the taxi driver answers $70, the tourist ask DOLLARS? And now guess what the taxi driver will answer? “YES”. You just payed 10 times what a normal taxi trip would cost because you tempted the taxi driver by asking a ridiculous question like “Dollars or Pesos”?

The majority of people that work down here in Vallarta make no more money than $5 usd a day! Some are lucky to get a lot of tips or to own a business, but when you dare to ask “dollars or pesos” they feel that you probably just have too much money if your logic can’t tell how much a product is or should be worth, so they will happily look into your eyes with a big fat smile and reply: “Dollars”.

Remember: Taxis, shouldn’t be more than $5 to $12 usd within the whole Puerto Vallarta area, which is from the airport down to Conchas Chinas, passing through Olas Altas (Los Muertos Beach)

Also, remember to ask how much $$$ it will cost you to go from A to B before you take a cab!

When prices are shown with a simple $ sign, many people get confused and don’t know if it’s dollars or pesos, so they ask. We encourage you to ask, but remember that asking might be a motivation for locals to cheat on you and take advantage. The best would be to just simply assume it is in pesos, since you ARE in México and there are more Mexicans down here in pv than tourists…

Anyways… good luck on saving some pesos here and there!!!

How many of you are seeing huge increases in your electric bill. Ours has more than doubled, as have those of friends that we’ve chatted with. We have had the dubious distinction of being placed in the DAC tariff category.

CFE, the Mexican Electric Company calls this the Domésticas de Alto Consumo. I call it the Domestico Alto de una Cueva, or Living Higher than in a cave.

We are pretty conscientious about turning off our lights, cook with gas, heat our water with gas, and we don’t use air-conditioning much at all since the rates were so high.

We do use our computer, and watch occasional TV, and, yes, we are guilty of converting from and ice chest to a refrigerator. (I did give up my electric razor though.) Oh, yea, we even use those energy-efficient light bulbs.

What does CFE expect from us? I’m thinking about buying hillside property. Perhaps remote enough, I can even get it cheap enough with a view of the city lights, a nice place to build our cave and enjoy looking at the skyscrapers lights go out one by one.

When the basic expenses of living become so high here, will the peso suffer another hit for inflation? In the meantime, I’m investing in hillside property.

source: Dan Russel