Bioluminescence in Puerto Vallarta: the Night Boat Out

The engine goes off somewhere south of the arches and the crew turn the deck lights out, and for a minute you think nothing is going to happen. Then somebody trails a hand over the side and the water underneath it lights up — not a glow, exactly, more a scatter of cold blue sparks that follow the fingers and go out. Everybody on the boat does it at once, like a class of eight-year-olds.

That is bioluminescence in Banderas Bay. It is smaller and stranger than the photographs, and better.

What it is not

Search for this and you will get pictures of entire beaches lit electric blue like a swimming pool with the lights on underneath. That is not what this bay does.

What you get is sparks where the water is disturbed. Off a paddle. Off the hull. Off your arm when you swim. In a dark enough stretch of water, from a boat with its lights off, after ten minutes of your eyes adjusting, it is one of the odd and lovely things, and it is worth going for on those terms rather than the other ones.

Where the boats go

Los Arcos — the granite arches standing out of the water off the south shore, about half an hour out of town. Every bioluminescence trip in our catalogue goes to the same place, and that is not a coincidence: it is dark out there, the water is deep and clean, and the rocks themselves are worth the evening.

If the glow does not show, you have still had the arches at sunset with the Sierra Madre going purple behind the town. That is the right way to think about this trip.

The shape of the evening

You leave in the late afternoon, with the light still on. The first hour is the bay doing what the bay does — pelicans, the town getting smaller, somebody handing round drinks. You reach the arches while there is enough light to see how big they are up close, and people swim.

Then the sun goes into the Pacific, which on this coast it does quickly, and the whole thing changes character. Lights off, engine off, and you wait. Children who have been noisy for two hours go completely silent, which is its own entertainment.

Which boat

The boat we point guests to is the bioluminescence and sunset boat to Los Arcos. It is the trip our own readers book more than any other on this coast.

The boats are small, which is the point — a hundred people with phones out is the opposite of what you want in the dark. If your group is six or more, ask the house manager about taking one privately instead. You choose when to leave, you stay out as long as the water is doing something, and nobody rings a bell at you.

When to go, and the honest part

Our catalogue runs these trips from June to November, which is the warm, green half of the year on this coast — the half with afternoon rain that clears by six and the best light of the year at seven.

Beyond that we are not going to tell you which week or which moon, because we could not source it and we are not going to invent it. What the house manager can do is ask the operator on the morning you want to go, which is the only forecast anybody here actually has.

If your week falls between mid-December and the end of March instead, the evening on the water is still the right idea — that is the whale months, and a sunset boat in February is a different and equally good trip.

Doing it from the house

Puerto Vallarta is the coast where the town is the point, and this is one of the evenings that makes the case. Something to eat at the house at four, out on the water at five, back by nine, and the chef has left something cold in the fridge for whoever is still hungry.

Casa Morada on the South Shore is eleven bedrooms for twenty-two, beachfront, with a chef for three meals and a house manager who will have the boat booked before you have unpacked. Of our fifty-four houses in Puerto Vallarta, forty-nine include the chef in the rate, which is why an evening out of the house is a decision rather than a relief.

Start with our fully staffed houses in Puerto Vallarta and ask Rocío to put the boat in on the first clear night of your week.