Cultural Daytripping in Mexico

All photos by Josh Meister Photo.

Many visitors to the Riviera Nayarit, north of Puerto Vallarta on the west coast of Mexico, (read about our time there!) are so seduced by the beaches that they don’t venture far away from the cute ocean-front towns, but there’s a lot of great opportunities to explore neighboring areas including: Punta de Mita where all the uber-fancy hotels are located; Puerto Vallarta, which has its whole own city thing going on; and Bucerias, about 30 minutes north of PV. Bucerias has its fair share of beach vibes as well, but is also home to lots of locals and artists. An organization there called Human Connections offers cultural tours and community workshops in the area. We signed up for an artisan tour with pretty much no idea what to expect and wound up being so glad we did!

The day started with an introduction at HC’s HQ where we met a few other travelers that were part of our group for the day, a family from Australia and two solo women travelers from the US and Canada. Maya, our tour guide and interpreter, told us about the program and who we’d be visiting, since each tour group visits three different entrepreneurs out of the 12 or so with whom Human Connections works. After the intro, we piled into a van and headed to our first destination, Cristino’s home, where he and his wife Maria and some of their kids talked to us about his wood carving business and told us about his process.

It was fascinating to hear about the reasons they relocated to Riviera Nayarit, including better earning opportunities and way of life for the family, and the measures they have to go through to get permits to sell their products on the beaches. Turns out beach permits for different beaches cost different amounts. Sayulita, where Cristino sells, is more expensive than the one for Bucerias, where Cristino lives, since Sayulita is a more popular option for tourists and he can potentially make more money there.

Our next stop was to visit Rolando from Oaxaca who makes outstandingly beautiful rugs by hand. He told us his story, showed us how the dyes used by him and his family are made, and let us try out a few stitches on the loom. Rolando is so good at what he does that even with complicated patterns, it looks like he kind of wings it, with an easy understanding of how many stitches of a certain color need to be placed without any guidelines that we could see.

After ingesting a whole lot of new information, we were good and ready to ingest something that rhymes with slunch. Which led us to our last place on the itinerary, Nallely’s family restaurant Loncheria El Barco for lunch. Nallely greeted us with some of the best chips and salsa we’ve ever tasted, told us a little bit about herself and the food culture in the area, and then let us scarf down her delicious cooking. We also got to try agua de cebada, or barley water, for the first time, which was unexpectedly amazing.

We loved hearing the stories of all these entrepreneurs, getting a little insight into their background and lives, and seeing a different side of Riviera Nayarit that many visitors never get to experience. We hope to take another tour and meet some of the other artisans once we’re back in the area. If you want to take your own Human Connections tour, tell them we sent you, and they’ll hook you up with a discount! Because they’re awesome.

All images TM & © 2017 Josh Meister Photo and Shari Margolin (unless otherwise stated). Please don’t steal or “borrow” – just be cool, be cool.