Photo: MutantE AZUL (CC BY-SA 3.0)
A self-guided audio walking tour of old Puerto Vallarta. Cruise ships berth at Marina Vallarta, several kilometres north, and the old town is a taxi or bus ride away, so allow for the ride back. The walk runs south along the Malecón past its bronzes: Alejandro Colunga's sculpture thrones of La Rotonda del Mar, Nostalgia of 1984, Sergio Bustamante's nine-metre En Busca de la Razón, Tritón y Sirena and El Caballito, the boy on the seahorse that started the collection in 1976. Then Los Arcos, rebuilt after Hurricane Kenna in 2002, the Plaza de Armas and the statue of Ignacio L. Vallarta, for whom Las Peñas was renamed in 1918, and the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe with its crown held up by eight angels. Up into Gringo Gulch, to the bridge between the houses of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who came with John Huston's The Night of the Iguana in 1963; down to the island in the Río Cuale; and across into the Zona Romántica to the Los Muertos pier.
11 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 48 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 2 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
La Rotonda del Mar, Nostalgia.
En Busca de la Razón, Tritón y Sirena, El Caballito, Los Arcos, Plaza de Armas, Parroquia de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.
Gringo Gulch and Casa Kimberly, Isla del Río Cuale, Los Muertos Pier.
Alejandro Colunga's circle of bronze thrones, made to be sat on and polished smooth where visitors sit.
The boy on the seahorse, placed in 1976 to begin the Malecón's sculptures; a larger replica of an original swept away by a storm.
Four stone arches brought from a hacienda near Guadalajara in 1970, destroyed by Hurricane Kenna in 2002 and replaced by a replica donated by Zapopan.
The parish church begun from 1915, its dome built in 1939 and its tower crown held up by eight angels.
The pink arched bridge between the villas of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, modelled on the Bridge of Sighs in Venice.
A sandbank island in the river, a park since the 1970s, with a bronze of John Huston and the small Museo del Cuale at its seaward end.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 11 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 11 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Puerto Vallarta — the Malecón, the Crown Church and the Río Cuale, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
11 narration points, including La Rotonda del Mar, Nostalgia, En Busca de la Razón, Tritón y Sirena and El Caballito. That is about 14 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 11 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.