Five Romantic Ways to Propose in Puerto Vallarta

Say you have planned it for the Marietas. The boat captain will tell you, politely, that there is no champagne on the island, because it is a national park. So you ask at ten that night instead, on the terrace of the house, with the chef's dinner cleared away and the bay doing what it does. It is better.

That is the whole problem with proposing abroad: the place you have seen in a photograph is not always a place you are allowed to behave that way in, and the place you are already standing usually is. Here are five that exist, with what each one actually permits.

One. The Marietas, with the rules in front of you

Two islands off the end of the Punta Mita peninsula, Redonda and Larga. Islas Marietas has been a national park since 2005, a Ramsar wetland since 2004, a World Heritage site since 2005 and a UNESCO biosphere reserve since 2008, and CONANP runs it properly.

Which means: you go by boat, with an operator CONANP has licensed, from Sayulita, Punta de Mita, La Cruz, Nuevo Vallarta, Puerto Vallarta, Mismaloya or Yelapa. Inside the park you may swim, snorkel, dive or be on the beach, and nothing else. Alcohol is prohibited. Food and drink stay on the boat.

So no champagne picnic and no photographer setting up a tripod on the sand. What there is instead is an hour in water that is protected because somebody decided it should be, with seabirds nesting in their thousands overhead and, between the middle of December and the end of March, whales somewhere off the boat. Ask on the boat, on the way back, with the islands behind you. It is better than the version in the photograph, and it is allowed.

Two. The garden, thirty minutes south

The botanical garden is thirty minutes down the road towards Barra de Navidad, which puts it in the hills with the river running past it. It opened in 2005, covers forty-six acres, and in USA Today's 2022 readers' awards it came third among all botanical gardens in North America — a fact the tourism board is reasonably pleased about.

Inside there is a cactus garden, a tropical fruit orchard and a conservatory of orchids and native plants, trails that go up into the forest, a hanging bridge, and a stretch of river you can swim in. It is open Tuesday to Sunday and shut on Mondays.

The reason it works is that it is not a view, it is a walk. You are both moving, nobody is waiting for a moment, and when you stop it is because you have arrived somewhere rather than because the sun is at the right height.

Three. The lookout, early or late

The Cerro de la Cruz is the hill behind the old town with the cross on it, and the view from the top is the whole of Puerto Vallarta and the bay behind it.

The board's own directions are the useful part: go downtown to the boardwalk, and where Alejandro Colunga's famous chairs stand at the Rotonda del Mar, turn up Abasolo towards the mountains. It also says, in its own words, to wear comfortable clothes and proper shoes and carry plenty to drink, because the climb is longer than it looks. Go in the morning, when the first light comes over the mountains and it is still cool, or at sunset.

This is the one for people who do not want a production. You are already going up a hill; you stop at the top; there is nobody there at seven in the morning.

Four. The water, with a boat of your own

Past Mismaloya the road runs out at Boca de Tomatlán and the coast beyond it has never had one. The boat-only villages — Colomitos, Las Ánimas, Quimixto, Yelapa — are reachable by water taxi and nothing else.

Take a boat to yourselves rather than a seat on somebody else's. Go in the afternoon, when the day boats have turned back. Have the captain stop at Colomitos, which is a cove rather than a beach, and quieter once the day boats have gone. The point of this one is not the scenery, it is that there is nobody else in it.

We do not book a shared departure for this and would rather you did not either — every evening boat in our catalogue is a shared departure, which is the opposite of the afternoon you want.

Five. The terrace of the house you are already in

This is the one that works most often and the one nobody plans, which is why it is last and not first.

If you are in a staffed house, everything is already there. At Casa Karma in Conchas Chinas the chef is in the kitchen — the listing names him, Chef Javier — and the table can be laid on the terrace above the water without a word said to anybody at eight o'clock. At Casa Mare out on the Punta Mita headland the infinity pool faces straight down the bay and the sun goes into it. At Villa Verde on the Vallarta side you walk down to the sand from the house, which is where the photograph at the top of this page was taken.

Tell the house manager the hour and nothing else. Do not tell the group. The staff on a house like this have done it before and will not look at you once.

Afterwards

Two things, and only two, because this is not a wedding.

Somebody has to tell the family, and the time difference is usually unkind, so decide in advance whether that happens tonight or tomorrow. And dinner afterwards should be booked before you leave home — Café des Artistes has been doing this for twenty-five years under Thierry Blouet, and Trio, which has been Bernhard's for years, is still the table people ask for. Say why when you book.

Getting between all of this is simple; how you get around is a solved problem here, and on a staffed house a car comes to the door.

Start with our fully staffed houses in Puerto Vallarta and tell Rocío the date you have in mind, and whether anyone else is supposed to know.