La Cruz is small and very charming. All buildings are one or two stories high, streets are clean and paved with cobblestones. There is no bank, no movie theatre, no permanent municipal market. There are, however, a number of restaurants, ranging from purely gringo-oriented rib joints to tiny taco places with tables set right in the street, in the space of one or two parking spots. There are also numerous fairly well stocked little grocery stores, several cafes, an art gallery and a music school. There is live music somewhere in La Cruz almost every night. One of the places we have learned to frequent is the ice-cream parlor by the main plaza. It turns out it is hard to leave this little town. Unfortunately, the town will be eventually cut off from its waterfront by the construction of condominiums and hotels planned conveniently to ring the marina. There is an architectural model on display in the marina office that shows the glory of the new development in painstaking detail, and that completely fails to show a single existing building or illustrate in any way the context of the town.

Banderas Bay is large, probably as large as central San Francisco Bay. There are several towns hugging the water's edge and nearly reaching the base of the surrounding mountains. Of the more notable municipalities there is Punta Mita, La Cruz, Bucerias, Nuevo Vallarta, Puerto Vallarta, and Mismaloya. They are all linked by a highway, and one can easily manage to get from town to town on frequent buses. It takes about an hour and a quarter to ride from La Cruz to the old town of Puerto Vallarta, and with one transfer the whole excursion costs a person 19.50 pesos (or about $1.20 at current rates). La Cruz is in the state of Nayarit while Puerto Vallarta is in Jalisco. There is one hour time difference between the two, which causes no little confusion to people who are just visiting.