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Old Town was in the midst of transition. Torn alleys and narrow streets
were under reconstruction with commensurately small equipment and local
labor, promising a revival.
Timothy, a prominent real estate broker company in Puerto Vallarta.
Another single sign on a wall elsewhere in the Old Town advertised both
“Alexpa Massage Clinic” and “Real Estate Info” together.
In the Spanish Experience Center, you could take cooking classes as well
as learn Spanish. The Rivera Molino Plaza displayed the signs.
There were other services offered to foreigners in Puerto Vallarta. North
Americans have been coming here to buy cheaper medicine and the Farmacia
posted a list of its best selling medicine at the entrance; a new item,
Latisse, was just added in long-hand to the printed list.
The chef’s main readers, the expats of Puerto Vallarta, were in part to
blame for this. Basilio Badillo, the main street of their district, has
been nicknamed “Coffee Shop Street,” because of its unusual number of
such eateries. To be sure, one can still find not only vendors of diced fruit.
In still another gallery I was attracted to a reproduction of the Colima
Dancing Dogs. As the knowledgeable gallery owner, Alex, explained to me,
showing catalogues and pictures, these hollow ceramic joined-dogs are the
oldest canine figures found in North America. They were made in the period
from the time before Christ until several centuries later. The dog ceramics
were put in the shaft tombs next to the deceased so as to guide his soul
into the journey through the Underworld to the Upper World. “You see, our
The Archeological Museum divided he history of Puerto Vallarta into the
following periods: “600-1529 Precolumbian age; 1528-1800 Colonial Age;
1801-1917 Miner Age; 1918-1960 Agricultural Age; 1961-Today: Touristic Age.”
As an example of “the main products of Puerto Vallarta in its agricultural
age,” a Museum sign singled out tobacco. “Indigenous people used it for
medicinal and religious ceremonies purposes.”
At an art house on Badillo Street I found a collection of Wixarika handicrafts.
The owner explained that these were made by the Huichol people, who were the
direct descendants of the Aztecs, and still lived in isolated villages nestled
in the Sierra Madre near Puerto Vallarta. These handicrafts were colorful yarn
paintings and beaded designs. They depicted fantastic images based on such local
animals as deer, snakes, wolves, scorpions, iguanas, and frogs. “These images are
supernatural; they are reflections of visions the artists experienced during
In the pre-Columbian times, the most common garment for women was a wrap-around
and for men a small loincloth or pubic cover. Ornaments were more common among
men than women. “More than just decorative, they were markers of status or
ethnic identity or marital status.” These included necklaces, anklets, bracelets,
nose ornaments. Materials used were shells, bones, ceramics, obsidian, and jade.
Men also used “body paints and tattoos and ornamental scaring.”
Abundant petroglyphs in West Mexico dating from 900 to 1500 have been the
source of our understanding of the cultures of that period. These are rock
art on boulders or cliffs made by “percussion tools, flaking off the rock
surface to leave designs in relief.” The motifs in them are mostly “the spiral
and other geometric shapes; animal and human beings were less common.” Some of
these motifs “have been interpreted as elements of water and fertility cult;
others mark sacred spots in local mythologies; some were used as solstice and
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