Into Mesoamerica

I’ve been spending time in
Puerto Vallarta, an easy-going resort on Mexico's Pacific Coast. It keeps drawing me back to its mellow charm. It isn't "The Heart of Mexico," if there is such a thing, but a prosperous city of a million on a great bay beautiful, bountiful and prone to ravishing sunsets.

Great food, hours on the beach, romance and lust fulfillment are the towns prime features. Physically, it has a white-washed unity, red tile roofs and palapas on the rooftops as well as the beaches. The zones I enjoy, Zona Romantica foremost, and the Old Town, are big enough to hold mysteries after much exploring, and small enough to enjoy by foot. A half dozen neighborhoods define the hills, slopes, and narrow flatland rich with accommodations, relaxing cafes, engaging visitors, and pleasant Vallartans.

Puerto Vallarta is a middle ground between San Francisco and Mexico. So many Canadians and West Coast refugees find time here among the local shop owners, club people, snowbirds and tourists.
Even within Mexico, Puerto Vallarta is a remote construction built from the kernal of a small village by Hollywood's John Huston in the middle of the twentieth century. It has grown into a cosmopolitan beach resort attracting gay travelers, commercial contemporary artists, Mexican sun seekers and even transgender folks who work the legendary cabarets that dot the southern district, Zona Romantica.

There is an imaginary circle drawn around it by the Sierra Madre Occidental, cut by the Rio Cuale as it flows into Bahia Banderas. The circle is one part water, one part inhabited land, and one part jungle bedecked mountains. A free zone exists on a crescent piece of the city south of Rio Cuale at the southern edge of town.

You can see it clearly in the photo above, there at the base of the mountains on the northerly slope. In the foreground is the Harbor and Nueva Vallarta, home of mega resorts, all-inclusive bubbles of leisure, sand. In the middle widest part of the city at the middle where a plain spreads from a river is the main town that leads to the old town. The island in the middle of Rio Cuale hosts a beautiful square presided over by a bronze Huston in his director's chair among iguanas, palms and craft sellers.