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items seen in town are less expensive in an area outside of town.

If you are not a walker or an adventurous shopper, you can shop in Puerto Vallarta from your beach chair, pool-side, in some cases in your hotel. The beaches in Mexico belong to the people and they have the right if licensed to sell products on the beach. If you are on the beach for a quiet relaxing snooze or a good read, the practice of approaching you with product can be annoying. I look at it as the rent I pay to sit on their beach. I've found that if you don't look up and don't look at the product they won't want to waste their time on you.

However, some very fine crafts are peddled on the beaches in Puerto Vallarta and it is hard not to glance at them with curiosity. In most cases the quality is no different than the same item in a shop. But while the shop offers a product at a set price, the beach vendor will start out asking a price he or she has no expectation of getting. He has to pay for the product and make something for himself. Naturally, he wants that something to be the most he can get. Probably several times a day a tourist will pay the first price he quotes, so it is worth the gamble to start out high, but he does expect the customer to bargain and most enjoy the game. If you see products you like from lace table cloths to carved ironwood sculptures to silver jewelry, you can be sure that you will get it for a fair price if you are willing to engage in the game.

Most hotels and restaurants discourage vendors entering their premises to sell, but that does not prevent them from offering their product just outside. Some hotels sponsor indigenous artisans on their premises at certain times, for the pleasure of their guests and passersby. An example of this is the hotel Los Arcos on Olas Altas, where a Huichol artists from the remote mountains of neighboring state Nayarit, has been displaying the traditional beaded and yarn art work of his people on a certain evening of the week for a number of years now. In these cases you will see authentic high-quality crafts at reasonable prices.

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