David Sim­monds, Spe­cial to SFGate.com
Wednes­day, Decem­ber 30, 2009

The year was 1970, and I was about to turn 21. The Chicago Seven Trial was wind­ing down, the Viet­nam War was in full rage, Nixon had low­ered the vot­ing age to 18, and the Bea­t­les had released their final album, “Let It Be.” The mes­sage to my gen­er­a­tion was “Keep on Truckin’.” So nat­u­rally, I fig­ured it was a good time to take a Mex­ico road trip.

I called an old boy­hood friend, regal­ing him about a place in the jun­gle called Puerto Val­larta. The first paved road there from Tepic had just been com­pleted. Using advanced cal­cu­lus, with gas cost­ing 15 cents a gal­lon and sleep­ing on the beach cost­ing noth­ing, I esti­mated we could do a two-week trip from San Diego for about $100 each. So off we went in my 1966 VW van with no jack, a case of beer, and four bald tires. I had no idea then that this trip would come to define my life.

This was long before all of the freeway-like toll roads in Mex­ico, so we drove through every town and vil­lage along High­way 15 head­ing south. The term hadn’t been invented yet, but this was “rural tourism.”

Beyond Puerto Val­larta: Cabo Corrientes

That first trip I took to Puerto Val­larta spurred a life-long fas­ci­na­tion with Mex­ico that endures today. I recently went back to Puerto Val­larta for about the hun­dredth time, explor­ing an area a short dis­tance south of town called Cabo Cor­ri­entes. You may know it as home to the town of Yelapa, which was once pri­mar­ily acces­si­ble only by boat. Today, the entire region can be reached by auto, although most of the roads are dirt.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/12/30/mexicomix123009.DTL#ixzz0bF6CD8Od