Almost as soon as we got back from our March trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mr. Brooks started talking about when we could go back. He floated the idea of New Year’s, but prices jump precipitously over the winter holidays—up to three times as much as typical rates. But as I started researching possible dates, I found a welcome dip during the period after Thanksgiving but before Christmas. After discussing the idea of also inviting our friend Jennifer, we pulled the trigger and decided to book flights and a place.
On this trip, there would be four travelers: Mr. Brooks and I, who’d been to Puerto Vallarta before, and his husband and Jennifer, who would be first-time visitors. I booked our stay at Casa Dorothy, a three-bedroom, three-bathroom vacation rental on the top floor of the Playa Bonita condo complex. I’ve stayed at Playa Bonita previously—in this very unit once before, and in a few other units throughout the years—but this time, as the person who found and booked the condo, I scored the master suite, with its own private balcony. Playa Bonita is across the street from the beach, so the view is hard to beat, and Casa Dorothy has not only a rooftop patio but also a small private pool as well.
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Right away, we knew we wanted to get in front of the queue at Pancho’s Takos, a PV staple that the TripAdvisor White People Crowd has discovered and now commands 30-plus-minute waits for a table pretty much all day, especially weekends. When Mr. Brooks and were in PV earlier in March, I refused to wait in line for street tacos, but this time around, with three people who’d never had the opportunity to try Pancho’s, I caved. We arrived on the sidewalk about 10 minutes before the restaurant was scheduled to open for the day on Thursday, and were able to grab a four-top table in the first seating. Although the al pastor tacos are a huge draw at Pancho’s, the mushroom quesadilla was actually the biggest winner of our order.
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I took several forms of sunscreen for the trip, because I have a dermatologist appointment this Monday and didn’t want to show up freshly bronzed and get a lecture. The weather was a little cloudier than I’d expected, which made for excellent sunsets (see featured photo at top of post) and the humidity didn’t hinder our lounginess under the umbrellas at the beach clubs either.
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I’d made dinner reservations for a few nights, including return trips to The Iguana at Casa Kimberly (which used to be Elizabeth Taylor’s house) and to Hacienda San Angel (which used to be Richard Burton’s place, and was a bit of a relative letdown after the former). But there’s only so much dress-code formal dining you should be expected to endure on vacation, so one night we just went wandering for street tacos en route to the bars.
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Mr. Brooks had very much enjoyed his March trip so he was keen to try to re-create that vibe and those experiences … which proved to be a challenge logistically, because our fellow travelers weren’t the sort who would be excited to, or in Jennifer’s case allowed to, enter a guys-only strip club. “She can stay in the bar across the street while we go in,” he tried to suggest, but I didn’t feel comfortable abandoning Jennifer in a bar in a city she was visiting for the first time, so I stayed with her while Mr. Brooks and his husband decamped for Wet Dreams. (Much to his chagrin, they did not stay long, either; while Mr. Brooks wanted to be there, his husband very much did not.)
The trip you take with a bunch of outgoing gay guys who are regular visitors to a city is different from the trip you can take with your husband and straight female friend who’ve never been there before. Instead of strip clubs, you go to chocolate-making classes. (While Mr. Brooks was disappointed by the latter, which he did not attend, I very much looked forward to the class, which Jennifer had found at Choco Museo. More on that in a future post.)
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In between, there was a lot of walking. We got up early one day to check out a farmers market where I picked up some souvenir soaps and some snacks; we walked down to the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe to check out one of the 12 nights of pilgrimages that happen in early December; and walked up and down the Malecón boardwalks and shorelines at Los Muertos Beach. One day when Mr. Brooks and Jennifer were out browsing the shops, they were startled by a loud bang that turned out to be a giant iguana that had fallen out of a tree and onto the roof of a car!
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And there were a few murals to capture, of course.
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On our last night in town, I’d booked tickets to the new show by Miss Conception, “Canada’s national treasure and live singing queen” who’s been performing in PV for years. In “Tooned Out,” she switches costumes to transform into some of animation’s most recognizable characters, including Wilma Flintstone, Jessica Rabbit and Velma from “Scooby-Doo.”
At one point she called up an audience volunteer and when she had him remove his baseball cap, I was shocked to realize he had a luscious head of hair underneath. (At my age, most men are using caps as camouflage.) And then when she had him also doff his shirt, I was like, “How rude for him to be in such great shape too!”
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Mr. Brooks is already talking about our next return to Puerto Vallarta, but I suspect that a Spring Break 2024 adventure is not in the cards: His husband would chafe at a third trip in 12 months—especially if that trip were timed so that the husband couldn’t/wouldn’t go. (Which, let’s face it, is the only way Mr. Brooks is going to have as much of a blast as he did on his first trip. That’s not being shady—that’s speaking facts. You can’t plan a long weekend of club-hopping with someone who doesn’t like to stay out past 9:30 p.m. and who refers to the strip club as “sex trafficking.”)
SAMMITT 