Overview

We were visiting Puerto Vallarta for a week and decided to add some dives around Banderas Bay to our time there. We spent the first three days exploring town and enjoying the beaches and restaurants within walking distance of our hotel. We initially stayed at Chic by Pinnacle 179 in the Romantic Zone of PV. After a few days of exploring, we moved hotels to the Holiday Inn and Suites near the airport. We made the move because we had five free nights, and decided to save money on hotels (so we could spend it on diving). The Holiday Inn was also a little closer to where we met with Vallarta Adventures (Puerto Magico cruise ship port).

Dive Operator & Experience

As mentioned above, we went diving with Vallarta Adventures for our first time diving in Puerto Vallarta. This was mostly because they had a site schedule that worked best with the rest of our activities. Their website makes it very easy to see their trip schedule and pick the specific trips you want to go on. I was able to pick a site schedule that worked for us, and gave us a chance to see a few of the top sites for diving.

Vallarta Adventures was a bit of a mixed experience.

First and most important: the crew and dive masters were absolutely perfect. Friendly, knowledgeable, skilled, and well-versed with all the sites.

Unfortunately, Vallarta Adventures operates all of their stuff (they do land based things too) out of “Puerto Magico” the cruise ship terminal. This meant walking through a mall of shops to get checked in for the day, then having to go through the port police and x-ray security checks every day to board the boats. My advice here would be to try to join them from their Nuevo Nayarit location—which is technically the next town up from PV, but still close. There were folks on our boat who boarded up there and didn’t have to deal with the cruise port like we did. The other downside is that the boats seem to be set up for “cruiser people” without their own gear. All the tanks are in a tight group in the back of the boat and you can’t set up your own gear. This resulted in tank-bands that weren’t fully attached (which you’ll see in a few places in the video below). I had to re-do my BP&W in a rush before getting kitted up and splashing a couple times because it wasn’t set up how I like it. There was also no time allotted for a proper buddy check which I like to do for every dive. It was sort of like lining up along the side, they pull your tank with bcd/reg attached out of the pack, and have you go back to put it on and be ready to go.

While I genuinely loved the staff, I’m not sure I’d dive with Vallarta Adventures again. I’d probably pick a different operation like PVOcean Tours or something. I will definitely come back to Puerto Vallarta for more diving though, because the sites we dove were really awesome.

Dive Sites & Conditions

There are several small islands in Banderas Bay which are perfect for snorkeling and diving. On this trip we were able to dive on three different sites.

Tuesday, 2025-07-29
- Marietas Islands (2-tanks)
Wednesday, 2025-07-30
- Los Arcos Islands (2-tanks)
Thursday, 2025-07-31
- El Morro & Los Anegados Pinnacles (1-tank at each location)

Water temps at all sites was 85-88 ° F. I was a bit too warm in a 3mm suit.

I’ll start by saying that the diving was a really nice surprise. I have heard people say that the diving in PV isn’t that good, but I found it to be top-notch at all three locations. All told, I was super impressed with the diving throughout all three sites around Banderas Bay.

Dive Site Map:

dive site map

Dive Log

Day 1: Marietas Islands

Marietas Islands had decent visibility at about 50 feet. There was a lot of fish life, and the sites were an interesting mix of rocky outcrops broken up by sandy-bottom channels. We spotted several variations of Guinea fowl puffer, a ton of really big balloon fish and porcupine fish, and a spotted sharptail eel along with several morays. We also saw the absolute biggest scorpion fish I’ve ever seen. I didn’t know that go so big. It had to be pushing 28 inches. The highlight was seeing a whitetip shark.

Day 2: Los Arcos

Los Arcos had pretty poor visibility at 15-20 feet, but it was absolutely packed with life! I couldn’t go more than a minute without seeing a moray eel. We also found 6 octopus and a few nudibranchs as well. We also saw a green turtle and a couple of eagle rays which kept their distance. There were so many morays that I stopped taking pictures of them all. And there were all they types as well: we saw zebra morays, green morays, jeweled morays, and a tiger moray.

Day 3: El Morro & Los Anegados

The last day of diving was the best. It was a doubleheader starting at El Morro, with the second dive at a site called Los Anegados. The visibility at both sites was 100+ feet. El Morro was just gorgeous. We did a swim through of the chimney, which is a cavern that starts with a huge opening at 100 feet and curves and ascends with a beautiful exit at 55 feet. The topography was stunning, and amount of life on the rocks rivaled any tropical reef (though it was not all corals). There was all sorts of encrusting sponges, some hard coral heads, yellow cup coral, and lots of soft coral and fans. Los Anegados was an aquarium. I saw schools of snapper and grunts that were so big and thick you could loose your buddy between them. There were also lots of angel and butterfly fish with some really dazzling juveniles.