El Rio, Sylvie and the Zippers - Eric

Last spring when we first visited Puerto Vallarta, our tour guide mentioned she had a second gig playing in a band on Wednesdays at a local bar from 4-6 p.m. Not exactly a headliner slot.
We figured it would be nice of us to go see her perform when we moved to town. Give her a little moral support.
It turns out the bar isn't just some downtown dive or a hole-in-the-wall hidden in some obscure neighborhood. You might call El Rio BBQ and River Beach Club a Mexican entertainment complex.
Getting to El Rio certainly  adds to the experience. Turn east off the downtown Puerto Vallarta bypass highway and head three kilometers over a very bumpy, dusty road until you reach the ramshackle hamlet of Paso Ancho. You're there. Park along the road or if your vehicle has high enough clearance underneath, park in El Rio's lot. Two more kilometers up the road is where the tour buses take zip-line enthusiasts.
I told Marge that, naturally, if we take visitors up river along the narrow road we should stage whisper that we've been paid to "disappear" our guests in the hills. Pretty funny. Marge replied that wasn't her first thought. Her mind works kind of strangely. Maybe just a faulty sense of humor.
El Rio, itself, features an upper bar area, middle performance/dancing space and below is the Rio (River) Cuale backed by a shear canyon wall. Kids of all ages climb as high as they dare on the rocks and swing out on a rope before dropping into the river.
As for the Zippers, they were terrific. Definitely, headliners to me. Slyvie, our tour guide, is the lead singer and she definitely knew how to get the enthusiastic Wednesday afternoon crowd up and dancing.
What really impressed me was the classic-rock song selection. Everything from 1950s Roy Orbison, through the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Eagles to disco with Gloria Gaynor.
Two guys do oldies on Friday afternoons and El Rio just wrapped up a series of tribute concerts featuring the music of Tina Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis and Garth Brooks, among others.
El Rio and the Zippers--yet another pleasant surprise in Mexico. We hope to entice our upcoming visitors to go up river with us to see El Rio and the Zippers.