Years ago, the rule throughout Mexico was, don t drink the water. We moved into our Puerto Vallarta real estate market in 1997 and one of the selling features of our beautiful new, Puerto Vallarta home was an in-house water purification system. It is not common to see water purification systems in the Mexico real estate market but the one in our Mexican home had dual cartridges, one charcoal, the other chemically treated paper, and dual ultra violet lamps for additional treatment. We also had filtration units below the kitchen sink as well as in the refrigerator.
Even with the household treatment, purification, and filtration systems, we were told to thoroughly rinse all vegetables and fruit in water treated with Microdyn, a chemical used for killing bacteria, etc. For additional protection, we were instructed to take a three day treatment of pills every six months in order to prevent becoming ill from amoeba or bacteria. With all the aforementioned filtration, purification, and medication, we still used bottled water to brush our teeth and were suspect of ice cubes! Of course, when dining in restaurants, we would have only bottled drinks and would rely on our semi-annual drug treatment to protect us from getting sick.
Approximately seven years ago, our Puerto Vallarta real estate region, known as Vallarta or PV by the locals, constructed new water treatment and purification systems throughout the city. During the past seven years, we have become more and more lax when it comes to maintaining our in-house purification system. In fact, we haven t changed the ultraviolet lamps for more than five years and the charcoal/paper cartridges for two years. The ultraviolet lamps have been dead for at least three of those years; however we did rinse the paper filter cartridge a year ago. The sale of Microdyn in Vallarta has probably dropped to almost zero, since all fruit, vegetables, etc. are purchased in large, modern, and clean supermarkets, comparable to Safeway and Kroger in the US. The bottled water truck that used to pass our villa, ringing its bell on a daily basis, hasn t been seen in five years.
Ten years ago, the local grocery stores were filthy, non-air-conditioned, and with flies everywhere as one might expect in Mexico. The situation was dramatically changed when Sam s Club and Walmart moved to PV five years ago. In order to compete and survive, all new grocery stores had to be large, clean, air-conditioned, and ultra modern. The existing stores either remodeled or closed the doors.
Ten years ago, only a handful of restaurants were air-conditioned and their kitchens were all totally unregulated as was their source of foods. Today, they are all inspected on a regular basis and if they don t meet the strict standards, they are red tagged, locked up, and sometimes put out of business. The last thing the restaurateurs can afford is to have tourists return home sick. During the ten years we ve lived here, we ve met many visitors, mainly on the golf course. Only a handful of them complained of stomach pains or head aches and in every case, they admitted that their problems were brought on by an over-consumption of margaritas or cervezas during the previous evening, and it wasn t the cubed or crushed ice! There are hundreds of fine restaurants in Vallarta offering every type of cuisine imaginable and there should be no fear of food poisoning in any of them.
Today, the risk of becoming ill in Vallarta from drinking the water, eating in restaurants, or shopping at the local supermarket is about the same as in Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles. Of course the corner taco stand could be suspect and water taken from some village in the hills twenty miles out of PV could create problems, however, the thought ofdon t drink the water never occurs to us anymore in Vallarta.
Author Jim Scherrer has bought and sold real estate in Puerto Vallarta for almost a quarter a century and has made Vallarta his permanent residence for over ten years. a retired entrepreneur from Houston with an engineering degree and business background. He was a co-founder of a Houston based manufacturers’ representative firm almost 30 years ago. Current member of (REBAC) real estate buyers agent counsel and (NABEA) national association of buyers exclusive agent. He is the owner broker of Puerto Vallarta Real Estate Buyers Agents. For more information (512)-879-6546 www.TOPmexicorealestate.com NETWORK
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