We got back to Banderas Bay (La Cruz / Puerto Vallarta area) a little sooner than expected so we decided to do some land day trips. One we have heard is good is a land day trip to a little town called San Sebastian. Included in the trip was a tequila tasting and walking tour of the town. Perfect.
San Sebastian is about two hours from Puerto Vallarta by car. To understand how small and remote San Sebastian is consider this: The town of San Sebastian is the largest town in the municipality of San Sebastian which encompasses about 1100 square miles. The municipality has a total population of around 5100 people. The town of San Sebastian has about 700 people living in it and is the largest town in the municipality. By comparison Puerto Vallarta has about 300,000 people. San Sebastian is truly a tiny place in a nearly empty jungle in the mountains at about 5000 feet.
Originally founded as an ore processing site for silver mines, San Sebastian has gotten smaller over the years as the mines closed. The European Spanish families that originally settled there tried hard to avoid inter-marrying with the native population and consequently have an extremely condensed family tree (yes, most are married to their relatives).
There’s still a tiny hotel with no power and telephone service that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and other movie cast members used to escape the press while Richard Burton filmed The Night of the Iguana in Puerto Vallarta. (This 1964 movie put Puerto Vallarta on the map for a tourist destination). Elizabeth Taylor was not in the movie but she came along to keep an eye on Richard Burton.
Now San Sebastian is a small destination in its own right for small scale guided eco-tourist tours and trips to the top of the nearby Sierra Madre mountains from which Banderas Bay and the sprawl of Puerto Vallarta can be seen in the distance.
Because of the somewhat cooler temperature nearly a mile up in the mountains, the area is good for growing almost anything, from fruit to coffee. One of the exports from the area is gourmet shade grown organic coffee. Pictured above are freshly picked coffee beans before they are set out in the sun to dry. Situated in the state of Jalisco the area is also prime for growing the blue agave used for Tequila. We passed many blue and green Agave fields. Along with the cultivated blue Agave, the green Agave grows wild and is used in the production of traditional and only recently legal Raicilla.
On the way back we stopped at a small Tequila and Raicilla distillery and sampled artisanal Tequila and Raicilla. What a great way to end the day!
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