Cost of our nomad living in Puerto Vallarta

After spending a wonderful summer in Quebec visiting both Montreal and Quebec City, we decided to look for a warm winter location and Mexico ended up being the winner. We started our visit of this large country by making a week long stop in the picturesque town of Puerto Vallarta which offers beaches lying between mountains and ocean. Let’s look into what we liked the most, what we recommend, as well as the details about our budget and how the two of us spent $34 per person per day. Let’s go explore Puerto Vallarta!

Overall, we gave Puerto Vallarta a 4 out of 5 stars rating. We removed one star for the fact that this city is pretty touristy for us. We like to explore places which are off the beaten path and PV is definitely too busy for us.

Where We Traveled Puerto Vallarta, México

Number of Days 1 week (from October 27, 2018 to November 3, 2018)

Type of Travel Married Couple, Slow Travel/Nomadic, Price Conscious

Total living cost $545 USD (for 2 people) or $34 per person and per day or $1022 for person per month

Before getting into the nitty-gritty details of our budget, we will take a moment to go over what we did during our trip with this budget. If you came here just for the numbers, check out our budget section below.  

What did we do/see and eat?

Here are our favorites places to eat, shop and get entertained:

Our Favorite Restaurants:

• Marisco El Guero – A great fish place. We’ve tried some grilled fish and some smoked marlin quesadillas. They have also some great octopus and overall a pretty good selection of fish at a very affordable price.
• Planeta Vegetariano – It’s pretty hard to find veggies when looking at a typical menu, so whether you are a vegetarian or like to have your daily serving of vegetables, this is a great place. They offer an all you can eat buffet that changes daily and includes some soups, appetizers, entrees, desserts and juices.  You don’t have to be a vegan/vegetarian to appreciate their food, so try it out!
• Makai Poke Bowls – Who doesn’t like raw fish that makes for a quick, delicious, healthy & affordable meal! As sushi lovers, we can’t resist, so we were pretty happy to have found this place. Their salmon mango bowl was my favorite as it’s the most quintessential poke bowl taste but we ordered different options and all tasted good!

Our Favorite Grocery Store:

• Ley SuperMarket – This is a pretty large grocery store that provided us with all the essentials we needed to cook some delicious food in our AirBnB!

Our Favorite Sights/Activities:

Puerto Vallarta is divided into three main areas: Zona Romantica, Old Town and the Hotel Zone. We did not really explore the Hotel Zone as it was quite remote from the center and we prefered to have our own accomodation that is walking distance from where the main action takes place.

• Old Town(El Centro) – This is where most of the action is taking place. Here are our favorite recommendations:
  • The Malecon – This is a large boardwalk along the ocean. It crossed many shops, restaurants and hotels, and often is the place where artists will perform. This is also where the Día De Muertos parade takes place. A great place to catch gorgeous sunsets

• Día De Muertos (10/31-11/2) – This is not to be missed! The city gets ready to celebrate Día De Muertos (Day of the Dead) starting on 10/31. By strolling down El Malécon (which is PV’s main boardwalk), you get a good introduction to this multi-day Mexican holiday that will last until Nov 2nd. The “altars” are meant to welcome spirits back of the loved ones that passed away. The “Calavera Catrina” (dapper skeleton) is the most representative icon of this event. Ernesto de la Cruz (from the movie Coco) made an appearance when we visited, which reminded us that this tradition is getting more popular/commercial in tourist places like PV! Nevertheless we were grateful to experience it.

• Zona Romantica – This is one of the hippest areas of PV, popular not only with tourists but also with locals.
  • Lost Muertos Pier – The has been renovated in 2013 and is probably one of the top recognizable landmarks in Puerto Vallarta. It’s perfect for a romantic walk, for catching the sunset while listening to the sound of the waves, and for viewing at night when it lights up Los Muertos Beach.
  • Playa Los Muertos / Los Muertos Beach – This was my favorite beach (even though it can be busy). It offers a long and clean stretch of sand beach with a backdrop of some impressive surrounding hills exuberant in lush vegetation.

• Sayulita. This is outside of PV but it is a lovely day trip that is a bus ride away from the city (20 miles | 1 hour). Sayulita is a small walkable town that seems to have become a tourist magnet (according to how crowded the beaches were)! We loved walking down the cute (& colorful) streets, checking out the local shops and enjoying some yummy Mexican food. A great change of scenery from Puerto Vallarta!

How much did we spend in Puerto Vallarta?

TL;DR; $35 per person and per day as a couple, or $1050 per month per person!

Like with our previous trips to Montreal and Quebec City, our average monthly spend per person was around $1,000. For this budget we explored the city, it’s surroundings, enjoyed some great food, had a great Día De Muertos and stayed in a really great apartment nested in the mountain with a  great view of the city! How did we manage to spend within this budget? Well let’s look into each main budget categories in more details.

Note: Unless specified otherwise, prices are in USD and were converted from MXN to USD using a 1:20 ratio. (so 1 MXN = 0.05 USD).

Accommodation: $23 / person / day

(Or $681 / person / month).

We stayed in a large 2 bedroom Airbnb apartment where the view can’t be beaten!

👉 You can check out our Airbnb rental listing here.

We woke up to the beautiful ocean and sat in the comforts of the apt and private balcony to enjoy it. We also had access to a nice rooftop to really appreciate the location. The kitchen was great and well stocked which was helpful as we enjoy cooking healthy and nutritious meals. The location was great, in a local neighborhood close to Centro, a grocery store, the Malecon and anything you would need.

⇒ In total, for the length of our say, the 2 of us spent $363 on this apartment.

Transportation: $0.63 / person / day

(Or $19 / person / month)

Since our AirBnB was walking distances from shops, restaurants, grocery stores and pretty much everything else in Puerto Vallarta, we mainly used transportation to go to Sayulita. Bus trips within the city limits cost around 6.50 MXN one-way (or 0.30 USD). You pay to the bus driver (so make sure you have cash!) when you get in and every ride is good for as long as you can stay on. Buses are easy to find. Just look for large numbers of people loitering on the sidewalk 🙂 If you wait a few minutes, a bus will stop as they run quite frequently. Look for your travel location on the bus windshield
⇒ In total, for the length of our say, the 2 of us spent $10 on transportation.

Groceries: $4.5 / person / day

(Or $135 / person / month)

We mostly went to a major grocery store (Ley SuperMarket) and did not have any issue finding produce.
⇒ In total, for the length of our say, the 2 of us spent $72 on groceries. This covered 15/21 meals (breakfast, lunch & dinner) which is about $2.40 / meal!

Eating Out: $5.5 / person / day

(Or $187 / person / month)

Puerto Vallarta has cheap to expensive restaurants and the restaurant scene is getting more and more accommodating to tourists with restaurant offering food outside of  Mexican cuisine (like poke bowls, sushi, pizzas…). You have plenty of option to choose from and feel free to review our favorites restaurants we listed above for some solid places that are affordable, yet tasty!
⇒ In total, for the length of our say, the 2 of us spent $90 on restaurant + $9 on snacks. Our restaurant budget covered 6/21 meals (mostly lunch or dinner). The average cost of our meals was $7.19 (including tax + tip) which is 2.6 times more expensive than eating at home (by doing the ratio between what a full day of eating out will cost vs a full day of eating at home as per our budget).

Activities: FREE!

Most of our activities included walking to the beach and enjoying the Día De Muertos festival which were entirely FREE. Puerto Vallarta has a TON of activities which are definitely not free (whale watching, sailing, kite surfing, jet skiing, fishing, surfing, scuba diving…) but since we were there for a relatively short amount of time, they did not make it to our list.

Our Slow Travelers Tips:

Slow travel is part of our philosophy. It gives us the opportunity to really connect with a place by not having to experience FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and getting unnecessarily stressed for being on a schedule. With slow travel, we can see all the iconic sights, and have time to spare to find the more offbeat spots that most tourists miss. Most of the time, those are the absolute gems. And as this blog post explains, we spend much less by leveraging “local” pricing and being able to leverage long stay discounts.

Here are some tips for anyone that plans to stay in Puerto Vallarta:

• Use Public transportation – Puerto Vallarta has very inexpensive buses that let you go around the city as well as outside of it. If you want to explore outside of the city, makes sure to research which connection to take and then enjoy the ride
• Visit during Día De Muertos – This was one of the main highlight of our stay and the city definitely transforms itself for this great celebration.
• Use AirBnB – AirBnB is a website that allows homeowners, in destinations all over the world, the ability to rent private spaces (or entire apartments) for a fee. As nomadic long term travelers, we like to call AirBnB our home as it has helped us save a lot of money and provided us with really great places managed by wonderful hosts! Pro tip: If you sign up for AirBnB using our referral link, you will get a 55 USD credit (or the equivalent in your local currency), which should give you a pretty nice discount on your first night.

How did we save money for this trip?

• We used travel credit cards with sign-on bonuses to maximize free miles that we then apply towards our trip to travel for (almost) free.
• We walked when we felt like it 🙂 This helped us reduce our public transportation footprint while increasing our exercise activity. Double win!

So that’s it folks! Would you be interested in going to Puerto Vallarta? Is it as affordable as you thought it was? Feel free to share your experience and ask questions by leaving a comment below.