I really don’t like beaches. I can’t say I hate them, exactly, but as someone primarily from Northern European stock with skin that sunburns from merely thinking about noon in Rome, much of the charm of the beach is lost on me. Which raises the obvious question: what the hell am I doing in a Mexican resort town?

Well, six weeks ago I was in India, thoroughly sick and worried about spending another month, alone in a strange country, just as sick. And I thought — hey, why don’t you find someplace swanky, where if you’re going to be lying around feeling queasy you can do it someplace beautiful, where people will bring you juice and toast on demand, where the air isn’t poisonous and there’s even a hot tub if you’re trying to recover in the evening. I did some searching.

My initial thought was that I wanted one of those all-inclusive resort deals. It turns out those places are fairly expensive,¹ I had some concerns about the vegetarian options at some of those places,² and some back-of-the-napkin calculations revealed I probably didn’t want to drink enough to make up for the difference. So I found a non-inclusive place that looked nice, booked it for a week, and here I am.

I chose the Grand Miramar.³ It’s built in the neighborhood on the hills just to the south of the city, in a cluster of other resorts on the highest point in the area. It’s very nice. It reminds me of a Disney resort, maybe a mix between the Contemporary and the Polynesian resorts.⁴ It’s built into the hillside — the lobby is on the 5^th floor — and consists of a set of rooms with white, wavy balconies kind of overflowing with red and purple flowers. It’s got a few nice touches, like having the lobby open to the elements and decorated with funky chandeliers, although the effect is a little too calculated to my eye to feel exactly whimsical.

If you like to swim, there’s three swimming pools. If you like to do other things, well, there’s three swimming pools. I was expecting other options, bingo nights or trivia events or shuffleboard or something. Even the restaurants are a little limited; they claim three, but really there’s one open for breakfast, one open for dinner, and the snack bar by the pool which closes at 7pm. Combine with a single vegetarian entrée at the one dinner restaurant and I’m not all that thrilled. Luckily breakfast is free, open until 11am, and consists of a small but outstanding buffet. I’ve been making do with a rather shameless helping of chilaquiles every morning, topped with green sauce and a properly spicy salsa.⁵ It takes the edge off.

I’m not complaining, mind you. I don’t know what this place really needs besides a warm place to drink a frothy rum-and-pineapple-and-coconut cocktail while gazing across the Pacific Ocean at sailboats and scenic hills and the sun setting. That’s what I’m here for. There’s a tour desk if you’re in for paragliding or snorkeling. I’ve spent the week reading and working on a couple projects on my laptop.⁶ And swimming. And napping. What more is there?

Okay, so I did make it into the city twice, largely by forcing myself to do so. Puerto Vallarta is kind of odd, in that it became a tourist destination almost accidentally. Basically, in the ’60s Richard Burton was filming a movie nearby⁷ and Elizabeth Taylor was carrying on a well-documented affair with him, resulting in a lot of coverage of the city by the American press. That incentivized investment by the government, which encouraged more tourism, and so on, and so on.

The second big push happened in the ’80s, when the peso was devalued. Cheap costs drove American tourists, which caused a building boom, which in turn drove a huge migration to the city by unemployed workers from elsewhere in the country. This has resulted in the current situation, where you’ve basically got four cities here. There’s the resorts, scattered through the hills, small enclaves unto themselves. There’s the Old Town, now lots of restaurants and beach bars and boardwalks and clubs and farmacia⁸ and cute little tchotchke shops.⁹ The bigger town, now home to most of those working in the tourist industry, both less touristy and less interesting in equal measures. And, sadly, a scattering of outlying areas which still lack running water or sanitation or paved roads. Way more workers arrived in the ’80s than jobs materialized, and the government hasn’t done especially well by them.

I was closest to the Old Town, so that’s where I ended up. Both days I wandered around a bit until the sun got to me, then found a bar with WiFi and drank most of the afternoon while programming.¹⁰ The Old Town, sadly, didn’t feel all that much different than other resort towns in Mexico, or Puerto Rico, or even Hilton Head.¹¹ It did give me a chance to eat dinner away from the resort, and the drinks cost about half as much. But I guess sitting by a beach is sitting by a beach.

I’m waiting for a cab to take me to the airport, so technically I’m still within sight of that view. And it really is a stunning view. It’s very easy to understand why people would want to be somewhere like here, with warm temperatures and fresh air and an army of staff to bring you a chocolate every night at bedtime.¹²

But it’s not really real. It’s surreal, in that way that Disney resorts are, where it clearly designed, rather than happenstance. This place wasn’t somebody’s labor of love. Even most of the bars down the beach don’t have that vibe; there’s a sameness to the Rum Runners and guacamole they offer.¹³ I’m not knocking the experience — hell, I’ll probably book in to a similar place in a month or three when I’m equally exhausted and just want to sit somewhere and think — but I’m under no illusions. You don’t go to Frontierland to figure out what the frontier was like.¹⁴

So, yeah, it’s nice. I sat around for a week. Watched at least four sunsets. Could have stood some company, but got a lot done online without it. But what am I going to remember? When I was in town on Monday, I found a hole-in-the-wall vegan restaurant. Planeta Vegetariano. Dinner was $6, buffet, cash-only, all-you-can-eat, cooked as far as I can tell by the same lady who owns it and runs the register.

If I end up back here, I’ll try a different resort. But I’m definitely going back to that restaurant.

Next: Mexico City (MEX) to Cancún (CUN)
Prev: Mexico City (MEX) to Puerto Vallarta (PVR)

Footnotes

¹ Nearly twice the cost of my current location, which itself isn’t really cheap. I mean, even at that it’s still probably half the cost of a comparable place in the United States. Everything’s relative.

² In all honesty, Mexico has been overall dismal for vegetarian food. Street vendors are inevitably grilling chicken or shrimp, taco stands will offer you carnitas and nothing else, beachfront restaurants with a 100-item menu will have literally one option on it that doesn’t have meat. Spoiler: it’s the guacamole.

Sure, you can seek out Italian places or vegetarian restaurants, but it’s still disappointing.

³ No, I have no idea how they come up with these names.

⁴ This is probably not an coincidence. A lot of the principles Disney distilled into his architecture have filtered down into the basic DNA of these kind of buildings.

⁵ I’m not kidding about the salsa. It’s legit.

⁶ The WiFi is strong, consistent, and reaches both the pool and the rooftop bar. My Kindle is waterproof. Truly, the future is now.

⁷ Night of the Iguana

⁸ Medications like Xanax and Viagra don’t require a doctor’s prescription in Mexico, so there’s a ton of places catering to tourists.

⁹ There’s one whose logo is two cherubs wearing luchador masks. It’s adorbs.

¹⁰ I really hope the Ballmer Peak is a thing.

¹¹ My family owns a time share on Hilton Head, so I’ve been multiple times. It’s been instructive comparing that to here. The similarities are greater than the differences.

¹² Seriously, the chocolate is a nice touch.

¹³ Always made tableside, always in a basalt molcajete, always by someone who looks like they missed their calling at a Benihana

¹⁴ Remember when Disney was planning on opening “Disney’s America?” Man, what a shitshow that would have been.