During my Puerto Vallarta trip I went on my first ATV ride!

The red ones are the ones we rode. The blue one is a RZR

What’s probably amazing was that it was free– we booked our vacation via Flight Center and they were having a 20th Anniversary deal where you get a free ATV trip with your package if you booked during a certain time. I’m pretty sure we booked before that, but our Flight Center associate emailed us a few days after we had booked to offer these free vouchers to us anyway! We had originally wanted to pay for these ourselves since we thought it’d be cool. I guess it all worked out!

What to know before ATV-ing:

• You turn using your arms, so get ready to have sore arms
• Dress appropriately. We were provided bandanas and goggles to wear because the mountainside gets pretty dusty. Being in an exposed vehicle means the dust can get into your eyes/nose while driving, which may cause you to drive off the mountain
• They will get you to drive through puddles if there’s any. It looks super cool as the muddy water splashes eveywhere, but when the water passes through the engines under your legs and basically becomes the temperature of hell itself, it’ll hurt. Both my boyfriend and my legs were a little red afterwards from these “burns”. They’re not severe or anything, but it does sting a little
• You can probably opt to drive around the puddles. I did mostly because I was wearing white and the burning water hurt after a while! But definitely do drive through one or two. It’s fun 🙂
• Driving isn’t hard. Push down on a lever and gas will be pumped through. What’s hard while driving along the countryside is the bumpy roads. Since you’re the one who gets the vehicle to turn, you’ll have to be diligent to steer your ATV back onto track after bumping and rolling through potholes
• You will get tired, especially if you’re not using to using the muscles that ATV-ing requires. These are the muscles around your shoulders/biceps, and for me, my palms because of braking/accelerating.

It was no easy feat going on a four hour excursion under Mexico’s scorching heat, but it was well worth it! Easily one of the funnest things I did while there.

Wild Trek Adventures ran the ATVs that we went with, and they were pretty great. One of our guides spoke perfect english, while the others spoke enough that we could understand. We definitely felt well taken care of. They also help you take photos. They insisted we touched these wild bananas and pose for photos.

Wild Trek also ran this cool little cafe/bistro thing in the mountains, where we stopped for a 40 minute break. We could order food, drinks, and even take a dip in some clean pools! We were told to bring bathing suits for this, but in the end, we decided not to go in the pools because we were sweaty and changing would be a chore.

They also included a tequila tasting! The milky coconut concoction was amazing— but it costed about $60 USD, so we held back.

All in all, loads of fun, and a different way to see Mexico’s countryside. I’m looking forward to trying this out again in the future, but maybe somewhere where I’m not sweating buckets!