Puerto Vallarta
— the cobblestones still warm after the rain.
Not only on a wall.
“The town climbs up from the Malecón in cobblestone and bougainvillea, the crown on the Guadalupe church catching the last orange off the bay. Pangas come in past the pier with the day's catch. By evening the Zona Romántica fills with the smell of carnitas and the bay turns the colour the bay turns. The Sierra Madre keeps the weather honest.
Puerto Vallarta, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Puerto Vallarta sits on Mexico's Pacific coast at the mouth of Bahía de Banderas, one of the largest bays in the Americas at roughly 100 kilometres of shoreline. The town belongs to the state of Jalisco and rises from sea level into the western Sierra Madre. Founded as Las Peñas in 1851 and renamed in 1918 for the Jaliscan governor Ignacio Vallarta, the city now holds about 290,000 residents. The international airport sits ten minutes north of Old Town, and Highway 200 runs the coast south toward Mismaloya and Boca de Tomatlán.
Sunset on Banderas Bay lasts longer than most coasts allow. The Sierra Madre stands at the visitor's back as the sun drops west across open Pacific, throwing apricot and rose onto the wet sand at Playa Los Muertos. The Malecón fills in the half hour before dark, when the bronze sculptures along the seawall catch the last of it. The crown spire above the Parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe picks up the same colour, the brick crown holding light long after the bay has gone slate.
The town reads slowly on foot. Old Town, called the Zona Romántica, sits south of the Río Cuale and holds the densest concentration of small kitchens, mezcal bars, and galleries. The Malecón runs about a kilometre north along the seafront, anchored by the Friendship Fountain and the Rotunda of the Sea. Whale-watching season runs December through March, when humpbacks calve in the bay; turtle releases run July through November on the south beaches. Most visits land between November and April when the air dries out.