One of the issues those of us “cruisers” who must suffer to travel and live aboard without a megayacht (we simply have no space to store/tote along a land-based vehicle, nor crane to move it on and off the boat, etc.), is what to do about ground transportation. Fortunately in Mexico, bus transportation is plentiful, cheap, safe and reasonably user-friendly for even us gringos who have yet to master the local language. It’s not always the quickest way to get around but it is much more entertaining than driving yourself!
First off, many of the buses indicate their major destinations (WalMart, other grocery, town center, marina name, etc.) right on the front window to help us get onto the right bus. Secondly, there’s lots to see and hear while traveling. The Puerto Vallarta area in particular has quite a few troubadors who board buses in search of a few coins from passengers. Most of them are pretty bad and cause you to wonder how they ever get by. We have thought several times about paying someone to get OFF the bus so we wouldn’t have to listen to them! The guy in the photo below was actually pretty decent, worth giving him a few coins. One day we sat across from a puppy in a box, and we got a kick out of seeing the little donkey in the trailer along the busy hotel zone in P.V.
We tend to measure our day by getting one or two errands done rather than the 6, 8, 10 that one might do at home with a personal car. What we thought would be an easy trip to get a USB computer cable in Puerto Vallarta involved several different buses and stops at three different stores (finally Office Depot where we should have gone first!), taking at least three hours.
Mazatlan bus drivers seem to be the most decorative. The often have leather covers for their shifters, various decorations above the front window (often religious), and even one got creative with his coin organizer.
We tend to grocery shop frequently as we can only transport as much as we can carry on the bus; backpacks sure are handy. Plus, with only about 10 cubic feet of refrigeration aboard, we need to reload fresh foods more often than at home with our big SubZero. We try to spread out the “load” with each trip. After bouncing around in the heat for a few hours, we are strongly motivated to return to the boat for a cold cerveza to recover.