A travel writer in Mexico has a confession: she stopped riding her motorcycle for months because the outings didn't feel long enough to be worth it. Charlotte Smith, who writes the 'Throttle Therapy' column for Mexico News Daily, had fallen into the trap of thinking a ride only counted if it filled the whole day. Heat gave her a good excuse, but the real problem was an all-or-nothing habit — a couple of hours on the bike seemed pointless compared to an epic six-hour run.
She finally broke the streak with a short loop along Highway 200 between Mismaloya and Boca de Tomatlán, south of Puerto Vallarta. It's a stretch she's ridden countless times, and it still delivers: bougainvillea spilling over walls, colourful houses and small shops, roadside shrines, then a sudden reveal where the jungle parts and the Pacific opens up all the way to the horizon. The whole outing took under two hours.
They parked the bike, walked down to a beach with music playing and boats offshore, and bought grilled shrimp on a stick from a vendor — salt, hot sauce, lime, feet in the sand. No new destination, no mountain village discovered, nothing monumental. Just a change of headspace. That, Smith realised, was the point: the value of a ride was never the mileage, it was the forced attention a motorcycle demands. On a bike there's no bandwidth for unanswered emails or laundry. You watch the road, the bends, the traffic, the view.
Her broader takeaway is one most travellers will recognise: waiting for the perfect window — when work calms down, when the weather's better, when you have a full weekend — means a lot of good moments never happen. Sometimes you don't need to go somewhere; you just need to go.
Why should a holidaymaker care? Because the Puerto Vallarta coast is tailor-made for exactly this kind of half-day outing. The road south from Mismaloya towards Boca de Tomatlán is one of the area's most scenic drives, and Boca itself is a launching point for boat trips to the beaches of the Cabo Corrientes coastline. You don't need a motorcycle to replicate it — a rental car, a colectivo bus, or even the water taxis from Boca de Tomatlán will get you to a quiet stretch of sand with a shrimp vendor nearby. And you don't need a full day, either. The story is a nudge against the idea that travel only counts when it's ambitious, which is a useful reminder in a destination where the postcard moments tend to show up unannounced in the middle of an ordinary afternoon.
For anyone visiting Jalisco's coast during the hot months, the piece also carries a practical caveat: midday heat is real, and shorter, earlier outings are the smarter play until things cool down. Then the longer rides — and the longer beaches — are still waiting.