Puerto Vallarta

Our little family took a quick trip down to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico — meeting my inlaws there for some fun in the sun.

We stayed at the Hyatt Ziva. We actually “won” the trip a few years back at a live auction/benefit for the Boys & Girls Club of Bend, so it felt nice to make use of it and get down there finally.

The Hyatt Ziva is geographically lovely. The vegetation here is rather dense, unlike Cabo where we recently were which is much dryer.

The Hyatt Ziva is an “All Inclusive” resort. So, theoretically, since you’ve already paid to be there, you don’t need to spend another dollar. The feeling I got was that many people literally do not. They remind you to tip the airport transportation staff, as they aren’t part of the resort crew, but after that, anyone we tipped (everyone) seemed very pleased and slightly surprised. They offer you a bracelet to wear which gets you into your room which I resisted at first thinking I’d always have my wallet, but (Miranda was right) that is dumb and the bracelet is way better.

It felt very weird to say “I’ll have a beer” and then not pay anything or sign a slip or anything. They just hand you it. You could walk down to the bar in the morning, order tequila shots one after another until you black out face down in a beach chair only to be shaken awake by a guy wearing 25 straw hats trying to sell you one. Hypothetically. Since we’re in our 40’s now and our kid was with us, we kept it to margaritas and Dos Equis and merrily made it to dinner just fine. Except that one time, don’t even worry about it.

Meals: you get seated, you order whatever you want, you eat it, you leave.

Again, it’s weird not to get a check. We were there five days and I didn’t get used to it. It’s almost worth it to buy a bottle of wine (extra) so you have something to sign at the end.

I hate to bitch about it, but the food was just so average. Some of it reminded me of hot lunch in middle school. They have very little incentive to make it great. Their incentive is to make it just good enough that they don’t get negative reviews about it and cost them as little money as possible. Mission accomplished, I suppose, except this blogger schmuck ruining it all. I took 200 photos and not one of them was a meal, which is a shorter review of what I just said.

---

I love going to Mexico because:

1. warmth
2. tequila
3. tortillas

I’m sure the best tortilla (or tequila) in the world could be made anywhere, but there is a psychological component at play that can’t be replicated. This stuff just hits different when you’re at ground zero.

The best meal of the trip was when we left and went into town. I can’t remember the name of the spot, but I got the Huevos Rancheros which were extra loaded with some fresh juicy cheese. See, I was pretty loaded. We stopped at some street vendor spot to buy a bunch of cute little wooden carvings for Ruby’s classmates. The vendor was really trying to land the deal and he kept pouring me tequila shots (did I tell you that I love Mexico?). Except the misogynistic part. My wife was the one doing the deal with the guy, but the shots came my way.

Anyway, that went well.

The town is kinda cool. Certainly more of a “city” than Cabo was (is). There are rainbow flags. My understanding is there isn’t quite the same level of gay acceptance in Mexico the U.S. I knew this, as I have some gay friends who visit Puerto Vallarta somewhat regularly. One of them even got married there. Was that a flex? Sorry. I have black friends, too.

We visited Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe while in town, which is important, I think, but admittedly I find it hard to engage with religious tourism. I’m glad I saw it though.

The first night we were there, there was a wedding which happened to be right outside our window. The decibel level was “loud as fuck” not to mention they totally took over the one nice pool area with a hot tub. If there are wedding at the resort you’re going to, what it means for you is reduced services and trouble sleeping. Especially not great with a 6 year old, but fortunately she was “tired as fuck” that first night so she zonked out well. There were two other weddings, both on the same night, later that week, but by that time we knew better than to even attempt going to bed while it was still going on. Instead, we went to a dance party they threw just for kids. Ruby was literally the only kid (and we were the only adults). It was extremely weird and gave me not-great flashbacks to that time my dad took me to ride the bumper cars at the county fair and the line worked out such that when it was my turn I was the only kid on the bumper cars and just drove the car around not bumping into anything. But Ruby danced her heart out and we joined her and it ended up pretty fun for the like 20 minutes we stayed.

Also, apologies to Harrison and Fabiola. You don’t know us, but we totally crashed and took some family photos in your wedding setup after y’all left. And thanks for the fireworks y’all launched off that was cool. Oh and the Mariachi band you hired was rad too.

The big activity is swimming. There are loads of pools. Several of which are adults-only, and I don’t blame them! This place was friggin single-and-ready-to-mingle. It’s been a while, but I believe I was hit on at the (free) coffeeshop one morning. I think it skewed pretty hetero (stay in town if you are otherwise) but I enjoyed seeing horny young people position themselves.

The pools were almost too warm. I don’t know if cooling pools is a thing though, so it’s fine. You could also swim in the ocean. I’ve swam in the ocean before, but somehow I was just learning for the first time there is a whole system of flags for this. There were definitely some red flags out during the week, but mostly yellow. The couple of times I waded out past most of the breaking waves I had little internal panics and was like I better get back to shore like extremely soon. Not a super strong swimmer, me.

Mexico is also a place where there are people selling things on the beach. I’d watch a documentary about it, honestly. Here, they were even all dressed the same, like they worked for the same outfit somehow? I tried to resist feeling bad for them (I never saw them make sale), but I did anyway. I hope it’s a decent gig, but it’s probably not. Is there some kingpin of it? Do they really work for the resort? What are the laws around it? One of them tried to sell me a pipe full of weed, that’s not legal, right?! Do they iterate on what they sell? Is there Venmo in Mexico? They should look into that because nobody has their wallet on them at an All Inclusive resort.

I managed to get up and go to the gym each day. They had a “CrossFit” program, which nobody showed up for but me so I pretended not to know about it and just did my own thing. I do like keeping up with the sweating while on trips. Just makes me feel normal in a good way.

Perhaps one of the weirdest aspects of the trip is that we were walking to dinner one evening. At the twilight hour as it were, which is apparently when they dispatch out resort-worker photographers. They snapped some of us, and we were all about it. Every time we’ve had a professional photographer shoot us on a trip we’ve had great results. So we got some that night and planned to do more the next day. I usually find that the experience is a little awkward, then the results are great. This is what it seemed like it was going to be, but then we got the photos back and they were WEIRD. Like the flash was super strong, making the people in the photos super bright and the backgrounds, despite it being very bright outside, dark.

Then it looked like the bodies were cut out and somehow moved or placed onto slightly different backgrounds???? See how otherworldly we look standing on that carpet? Some of them were even worse where the area between legs wasn’t cut out “properly” and looks super off. We have no idea why they would have done that. I’m sure the originals were fine (which we did ultimately request).

I’d totally go back to Puerto Vallarta but I think I’d find a way to stay in town or a resort that’s essentially in town. 9/10.