Remembering Puerto Vallarta

Less than 2 hours after we’d landed in Puerto Vallarta we had already checked into the Casa Andrea B&B (pictured) in old Vallarta. Alta had had a margarita and I finished off a Pacifico. We didn’t even unpack our bags. We’d met three other guests at Andrea’s outdoor bar, a couple from New Jersey and an affable retired nurse from Canada.

Now we were standing in the line outside the Café de Olla, recommended by Andrea (and, obviously, a lot of others in PV) as one of the best "autenico" Mexican restaurants in town. After nearly an hour, we and several other couples became aware that parties of 4-to-6 were being seated ahead of us. Part of the problem was there were two lines, one for people with reservations who also seemed to be good friends with the always-smiling maitre d', and another line for those willing to stand for an hour.

We were standing with two other couples. After noticing that larger groups were getting the tables, we agreed to band together. As it turned out the next table was for four, so we teamed up with a couple from Racine, Wisconsin, Todd and Robin. It was nice to have the company. Todd’s a big guy who looks like he might have played football and now is a youth league soccer coach who works in highway and bridge construction. Robin works in commercial banking for a family-owned bank in Racine.

As we ate tacos and tostadas, we talked about Racine (historically a manufacturing center now hurting from the economy), why Todd thinks the U.S. shouldn’t build more highways (save the land and expense while seeking alternative energy and transportation), and why we like Mexico and Mexicans (Mexicans are friendly, hard-working and always waiting for something better. As a Mexican friend once remarked, “Esperar means both ‘to wait’ and ‘to hope’”).

We don’t remember how many times we’ve been to Puerto Vallarta, our favorite Mexican resort. Our first time wasn’t in 1973, when we drove 4,000 miles across the country in our first big Mexican trip. The only resort we hit then, with Brent and Phil and our schnoodle, Misty, in the back of the pick-up, was San Blas. At that time San Blas was very much a resort for Mexicans who could put up with the swarms of vicious, almost microscopic jujenes that came out at dusk and devoured any flesh in their path. The last time we were in San Blas, in the 1990s, the jujenes were gone, undone by government DDT spraying (who knows what else was gone).

We’ve been to PV many times, though, and each time it seems less foreign. Foreign implies strangeness, so no wonder places you keep going to become less foreign. Of course, gringos in PV really don’t have to speak Spanish. There are so many Americans and Canadians here you don’t quite feel you’re in a different culture. Drinking agua purificada, not brushing your teeth with tap water, and treating vegetables with Microdyn becomes habitual.

The year we lived in Durango, Mexico, didn’t feel that way, even though we got to know the city and some of its residents quite well. The only Americans or Canadians we knew there all were a small cadre of teachers. Very few people outside the collegio spoke English. That made a huge difference, even though our Spanish became good enough to get by.

But Puerto Vallarta seems familiar now. We’ve stayed all over, from old Vallarta up to Nuevo Vallarta in the north. It’s been 4 years since we’ve been here (we thought it was more recent until we looked it up). Some things have changed, especially the construction of hotels and condos. There are more Americans and Canadians than ever before, even in our “non-touristy” Zona Romantica area south of the Rio Cuale. Lots of Italian restaurants and American-run diners or cafes. Even the cement walkway along the Malecon next to downtown Vallarta’s beachfront has been extended. But the cars still shake and rattle on the city’s cobblestone streets (walking on the cobblestones feels like you’re in a stream). The plaza principal is unchanged, surrounded by government offices on one side and the Banamex bank on the other. Christmas decorations hang from a phony pine tree in the plaza and along some of the streets.

And some of the lines still are long.