Nuevo Vallarta at 10

People are like: "How up to date is it?"

Answer: No map fixed long enough on paper to study is going to be up to date with Nuevo Vallarta these days. I haven't thoroughly gotten a Jeep dirty and checked out the whole place since at least 2019.

It does not have the Cirque du Soleil complex fully drawn. I does have Chedraui!

But I'm proud to have surveyed and accurately logged not only the coastal enclave, with its Marina and many resorts cotos, but the entire Mexican inland community of Valle Dorado as well, all in the summer of 2012. 

In that respect it is a mere snapshot of a time. I have taken pains to graft Vidanta faithfully upon the southern tip in the years since, as it has ardened into an elaborate mini-walled-city and virtually swallowed old Jarretaderas like the crow snatches the hummingbird. 

I'm not sure I really even have the heart to draw the south shore of the Rio Ameca in the age of Vidanta. But it might be good for someone to know how the landscapes were laid out so that people later in history will have some idea what ruins they are looking at.

One day I will stop trying to update these places altogether, and print lots and lots of commemorative "remember the old times" maps of, say, Yelapa in 2005, and Puerto Vallarta in 2013. Signed, on quality paper, for loving presence in living rooms, on condo hallway walls, maybe in museums.

And they'll remain the most accurate snapshots of the area anyway, for years.

Nuevo I surveilled in the summer of 2012. I enjoyed exploring it more than I expected. I had a chance to draw it as I researched it because I was living in PV then.

The map emerged more or less whole in a few weeks, and I was very satisfied with the colors and style - it set the tone for much of what was to come during the rest of the decade, especially as it influenced the Puerto Vallarta Centro's color scheme with its deep green ocean and bright texts.

Just below is the coastal strip between Nuevo proper, the swampy Flamingos territory, and Bucerias at the left:

I drove every street in Valle Dorado  and presume most if not all those not yet paved then are paved now. Or, they're post-paved in places. Remember, roadside cave-ins are the more hazardous option than mere potholes. Some lanes run along ditches. 

One or two copies in a tube for $25 shipped here.