By Tom Carter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Decem­ber 9, 2006

MISMALOYA, Mex­ico — When my out­doorsy daugh­ter, who goes snow­board­ing, rock climb­ing and row­ing for recre­ation, heard we were con­sid­er­ing Puerto Val­larta for vaca­tion, she groaned with dis­ap­point­ment. “That’s a resort,” she said dismissively.

But after a morn­ing of snor­kel­ing in the crys­tal blue waters off Los Arcos islands among thou­sands of bril­liantly col­ored trop­i­cal fish, fol­lowed by an after­noon of seri­ous hik­ing from the fish­ing vil­lage of nearby Boca de Tomat­lan through the jun­gle to a hid­den white-sand beach where she watched a lizard snatch a but­ter­fly from the air, she was hooked.

“This is bet­ter than I thought it was going to be,” she said before slip­ping into a deep, con­tented sleep.

Lin­ing the beaches of Ban­deras Bay, Puerto Val­larta is rightly famous for its spec­tac­u­lar resorts — where thou­sands of vis­i­tors flock and are cocooned in lux­u­ri­ous trop­i­cal sur­round­ings; where sump­tu­ous meals are stan­dard; and the only deci­sions to be made are whether to play a round of golf, go to the spa, order a mar­garita or take a dip in the pool.

For a price, Puerto Val­larta has Jet Skis to rent, para­sail­ing, swim­ming with dol­phins, and jun­gle zip lines. As with any resort, T-shirt and trin­ket stores line the streets, and there are dozens of bars and night­clubs where Jalisco tequila and Paci­fico beer with a wedge of lime flow freely and cheaply.

For the adven­tur­ous, there are other sides to Puerto Vallarta.It has become an artists’ colony and col­lec­tors’ des­ti­na­tion, with dozens of gal­leries on the old cob­ble­stone streets fea­tur­ing a sur­pris­ing vari­ety of medi­ums and styles.

On the weekly Art Walk link­ing 17 gal­leries, I found the tra­di­tional pot­tery of Mata Ortiz arrest­ing, but a friend with a crit­i­cal eye who buys art for a liv­ing was par­tic­u­larly impressed with the Omar Alonso Gallery, across the street from the Cafe des Artists restaurant.

“There were sev­eral world-class artists there that even a novice art col­lec­tor would appre­ci­ate,” she said.

Puerto Val­larta is also a fast-growing retire­ment des­ti­na­tion for Cana­dian and U.S. cit­i­zens, who live in gleam­ing water­front con­do­mini­ums at about one-third of the cost of liv­ing in the United States.

It also is home to an aston­ish­ing array of restau­rants — from street stalls sell­ing tacos and enchi­ladas to the River Cafe, where I had the best fried cala­mari I have ever tasted.

The Cafe des Artists has a menu that would not be out of place along­side the best in New York or San Fran­cisco. Le Cliff, over­look­ing the bay, is about a 20-minute drive from down­town and is one of the most beau­ti­fully sit­u­ated restau­rants in the area — per­fect for a mar­riage pro­posal such as the one the entire restau­rant wit­nessed while we were there.

She said,“Yes.”

For those will­ing, Puerto Val­larta is a great start­ing point for excel­lent surfing.

We made our base the Casa Iguana, a fam­ily hotel in Mis­maloya, about 15 min­utes from old-town Puerto Val­larta and 150 yards from the beach that John Hus­ton, Ava Gard­ner, Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor and Richard Bur­ton put on the map when film­ing the “Night of the Iguana” in 1964.

Before “Iguana,” Puerto Val­larta was a sleepy fish­ing village.

The Casa Iguana is a com­fort­able but sim­ple hotel with 43 two– and three-bedroom suites, each with a kitch­enette and din­ing area. The cost is about $100 a night, depend­ing on the season.

We reserved a car for air­port pickup for $20 a day. Dri­ving was sur­pris­ingly easy. Puerto Val­larta dri­vers were unfail­ingly polite, read­ily yield­ing right of way, and rarely went above 35 mph.

Just out­side the air­port, we bought gro­ceries at Wal-Mart. Then, after pok­ing along Puerto Vallarta’s ocean­front Male­con, or prom­e­nade, and then along the wind­ing coastal high­way, we arrived in Mismaloya.

Most tourists at the down­town resorts pay $45 for boat trans­porta­tion, equip­ment rental and an hour of snor­kel­ing off Los Arcos, but we walked the cob­ble­stone street from our hotel, past the sun­ning igua­nas and taco stands to the Mis­maloya beach, where Mex­i­can fam­i­lies were swim­ming. At least a dozen local boat oper­a­tors offer snor­kel­ing gear and trans­porta­tion to Los Arcos for $15 to $20 a person.

Roberto and his son, Dante Aron, took us out early to avoid the tourist rush. A 10-minute boat ride, a splash in the warm, clear water, and we were amid thou­sands of yel­low, blue, black and green trop­i­cal fish. By the time the cat­tle boats — those loaded with resort snorkel­ers crowded onboard — arrived from Puerto Val­larta an hour later, we were tired and returned to the beach, where for 80 cents each, we lunched on tacos made from shrimp and mar­lin, drenched in lime and spicy salsa.

The next day, we decided to drive back around the bay, past the air­port to Sayulita, where we had heard there were waves, plus surf­boards avail­able for rent.

Sayulita is about 20 miles north of Puerto Val­larta. At Bucherias, the road goes over a moun­tain and through a Sierra Madre for­est to reach the Pacific Ocean. On some stretches of the two-lane high­way, the road was cov­ered by a canopy of trees, and hun­dreds — maybe thou­sands — of white and yel­low but­ter­flies danced above the road, remind­ing us of a mag­i­cal snow­fall or the cherry blos­soms falling from the trees at the Tidal Basin.

Sayulita beach has a half-dozen surf shops, each rent­ing surf­boards for $20 a day and offer­ing pri­vate lessons for $40 a hour. Depend­ing on tide, wind and Pacific storms, the break can go left or right, over sand or coral reef. Beware of the sea urchins’ spines.

Sayulita has a per­fect beginner’s wave, small enough that it is not intim­i­dat­ing but large enough to give a thrill. For bet­ter surfers, about three miles north is San Fran­cisco — known locally as San Pan­cho — where a near per­fect 5-foot bar­rel breaks when it is firing.

At Sayulita, when the tide and wind con­spired to give the break some power, depth and shape, dozens of local surfers — includ­ing sev­eral retired grin­gos — sud­denly appeared on large and small boards and put on a daz­zling dis­play of surf­ing skills. And what surf­ing com­mu­nity would be com­plete with­out a surf­ing dog?

My wife and I sunned on the beach, drink­ing strong Mex­i­can espres­sos, eat­ing grilled shrimp with lime (five shrimp for $2) or chili-and-cheese enchi­ladas and occa­sion­ally walk­ing out to bob in the warm Pacific surf.

We also took a short walk, past Villa Amour, a water­front lux­ury hotel fea­tured recently in Conde Nast Trav­eler, over the hill and through the local ceme­tery to a secluded cove and deserted white-sand beach right out of “Robin­son Cru­soe” — but with icy Corona beer within a 10-minute walk.

By the end of the sec­ond day, we were worn out, but my chil­dren had got­ten the hang of surf­ing after hav­ing caught and rid­den their first waves. My daugh­ter already was plot­ting to return with her friends to attend the all-girls surf camp next year.

Exhausted from a week of phys­i­cally demand­ing activ­ity, we decided to spend a day in Puerto Val­larta, doing what tourists do: buy­ing bracelets, trin­kets and a bot­tle of 100 per­cent agave sip­ping tequila.

We passed on the T-shirts but met a friendly Amer­i­can retiree who, after rant­ing about U.S. pol­i­tics and Iraq, pointed us to Viejo Val­larta and what he described as the best Mex­i­can food for the best price in Puerto Vallarta.

We were skep­ti­cal, as it was located in the heart of the tourists’ Puerto Val­larta. I don’t know if it actu­ally was the best, but the seafood soup, fresh red snap­per and the flan for dessert were excel­lent, and the ser­vice, as in every place we ate in Puerto Val­larta, was friendly and atten­tive, all for about $15 per person.

The view from the third-floor restau­rant, watch­ing the sun set over the water, the nightly fire­works and then a trop­i­cal down­pour, was priceless.

Back home, I ran into a friend who went to Puerto Val­larta last win­ter on his hon­ey­moon. He said that though it was nice, and per­fect for a hon­ey­moon, he didn’t think he would return.

Too bad. He might have enjoyed it more had he vaca­tioned out­side the resort box.

We’re going back in a month or so — and we’re going to stay longer.

Through Christie’s Great Estates, We Put Our Clients In Touch With Afflu­ent Buy­ers and Sell­ers Worldwide

As exclu­sive affil­i­ate of Christie’s Great Estates in Puerto Val­larta, Punta de Mita, Costa Careyes, Costa Ale­gre and Costa Nayarit, La Punta Realty offers our clients the extra­or­di­nary reach and strength of the world’s largest and most pres­ti­gious net­work spe­cial­iz­ing in the sale of lux­ury real estate.

A sub­sidiary of the renowned firm of fine art auc­tion­eers, Christie’s Great Estates puts at the dis­posal of its affil­i­ates the mar­ket­ing power of 15,000 agents in 600 offices in 17 coun­tries, includ­ing 7,000 agents in 145 offices in the United States.

As spe­cial­ists in the sale of impor­tant prop­er­ties, they pro­vide a unique abil­ity to bring together buy­ers and sell­ers of high-end real estate through­out the world. Only those bro­ker­age firms that have met the uncom­pro­mis­ing stan­dards of Christie’s Great Estates for excel­lent ser­vice, con­sis­tent achieve­ment, con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­al­ism and dis­cre­tion are awarded affil­i­ate status.

A potent sales tool avail­able to La Punta Realty clients, where appro­pri­ate, is the dis­tinc­tive show­case mag­a­zine, Christie’s Great Estates, which enjoys a read­er­ship of more than 200,000 clients and prospec­tive buy­ers and sell­ers. It is read by some of the world’s most afflu­ent, includ­ing many of the highest-salaried exec­u­tives and heads of major cor­po­ra­tions, celebri­ties, sports fig­ures and other high net-worth indi­vid­u­als. Copies are mailed to a strate­gi­cally tar­geted list of the wealth­i­est home­own­ers in more than 100 major cities and towns. It is also avail­able at Christie’s offices, and at news­stands and book­stores in afflu­ent com­mu­ni­ties through­out the world, as well as in many fine hotels and inns.

Another exclu­sive mar­ket­ing vehi­cle is a Christie’s Great Estates prop­erty brochure, a high qual­ity, four-color piece which is mailed to a select audi­ence of influ­en­tial home buy­ers and other prime prospects for lux­ury real estate.Your home may also be dis­played in Christie’s Great Estates offices and Christie’s salesrooms through­out the world, as well as in Christie’s Mag­a­zine and on the Christie’s Great Estates web site. Christie’s, the world’s old­est fine art auc­tion house, was founded in Lon­don in 1766 by James Christie and today con­ducts many of the most impor­tant auc­tions in the world in more than 80 cat­e­gories. It has an inter­na­tional net­work of 90 offices in 35 countries.

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* Christie’s, the world’s lead­ing fine arts auc­tion­eer, was estab­lished in Lon­don in 1766 by James Christie. Today, Christie’s con­ducts some of the most impor­tant auc­tions in the world, sell­ing paint­ings, fur­nish­ings, and other dec­o­ra­tive arts.

* Over the course of more than two cen­turies, Christie’s has grown into an inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tion of 84 offices in 35 coun­tries and employs approx­i­mately 1,700 peo­ple around the world.

* Christie’s auc­tions items in more than 80 cat­e­gories, includ­ing sil­ver, jew­elry, pho­tog­ra­phy, wine, fur­ni­ture, ceram­ics, porce­lain, sil­ver, auto­mo­biles, stamps, comic books and mem­o­ra­bilia, and other col­lectibles as well as fine paint­ings and sculpture.

* Christie’s holds many world auc­tion records. Vin­cent van Gogh’s Por­trait of Dr. Gachet, which sold in May 1990 for $82,500,000, is one of the highest-priced works of art ever sold at auc­tion.
* Christie’s pub­lishes Christie’s Mag­a­zine, read by more than 100,000 indi­vid­u­als world­wide, as well as 600 sales cat­a­logues that reach a world­wide audi­ence for col­lec­tors and scholars.

* Christie’s offers courses in the fine and dec­o­ra­tive arts in Glas­gow, Lon­don, Los Ange­les, Mel­bourne, New York, and Paris.

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Christie’s Great Estates — La Punta Realty

Explore the cov­eted coast­line around Ban­deras Bay. Our area cov­ers from San Blas along Costa Nayarit, to Punta de Mita, Puerto Val­larta, South to Costa Ale­gre, Costa Careyes to Barra de Navidad.

The well kept secrets of Pacific Mexico’s dra­matic cliffs, coves and sand have long attracted the Blue blooded and Hol­ly­wood set look­ing for a quiet escape at secret hide­aways like Costa Careyes.

Since open­ing up to for­eign invest­ment, Mex­ico has seen an explo­sion in lux­ury res­i­den­tial resort devel­op­ment, par­tic­u­larly North Shore Puerto Val­larta and Punta de Mita the boom has brought world-class resort hotels, Mexico’s famed archi­tects, a com­mu­nity of celebrity CEOs, and a mas­sive out­lay of gov­ern­ment infrastructure.

Mex­i­can Pres­i­dent Vicente Fox recently inau­gu­rated the Nayarit Tourist Cor­ri­dor, a coastal infra­struc­ture mega-project north of Puerto Val­larta. This plan is financed by state, fed­eral and pri­vate inter­ests. It is part of a plan pro­posed in the early ‘90s for appro­pri­ate sus­tain­able devel­op­ment of the region.

The gov­ern­ment hopes to keep the infra­struc­ture grow­ing to accom­mo­date the increas­ing num­ber of new home­own­ers. Ser­vices like elec­tric­ity, water treat­ment, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, air­ports and high­ways are com­pleted by a major hos­pi­tal, schools, com­mer­cial cen­ters, an aero­drome, a 150 slip marina and a marine park sim­i­lar to that of Xcaret. The idea is to dot the coast­line with smaller, taste­ful estab­lish­ments, in the lux­ury bou­tique market.

The Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment has also changed some of the real estate laws. Now it is eas­ier for for­eign­ers to buy and develop prop­erty in Mex­ico. Many Amer­i­cans have watched the val­ues of their Mex­i­can prop­er­ties appre­ci­ate 10% a year the past five years.

The devel­op­ment of North Shore Puerto Val­larta, Punta de Mita and the Nayarit coast is a spe­cial phe­nom­e­non for Mex­ico. Low den­sity devel­op­ments pre­serve the envi­ron­ment and cre­ate a bal­ance that is essen­tial for the high end coastal lifestyle that peo­ple dream about. It is truly amaz­ing what is hap­pen­ing. There are many active devel­op­ments to choose from along the North coast and the prop­er­ties are sell­ing well.

The most exclu­sive lux­ury invest­ments are tak­ing place in the areas around Punta de Mita which Andrew Harper’s Hide­away Report, a bible for lux­ury trav­el­ers, high­lighted the Four Sea­sons, Punta Mita in its 25th annual read­ers’ sur­vey as the Best Inter­na­tional Resort.

Pre­miere hotel branded devel­op­ments include the world renowned Four Sea­sons Resort, the St. Regis Resort , a Deepak Chopra branded res­i­den­tial spir­i­tual retreat. All have their own spe­cial­ized high end res­i­den­tial vil­las and condo projects.

The real estate has a restricted occu­pancy rate. It can be as lit­tle as nine bed­rooms per 2.5 acres. This keeps the num­ber of landown­ers down and encour­ages devel­op­ment of high-end liv­ing. La Punta Realty, for exam­ple, offers pri­vate beach­front home site lots priced from $600,000 — $7 mil­lion USD. Unique and lux­u­ri­ous beach vil­las range from 2 to 20 mil­lion USD.

Con­struc­tion is in full swing, as Punta de Mita ended 2005 with record closed sale fig­ures of just under $160 mil­lion USD, 60% more 2004 sales (by com­par­i­son, total Puerto Val­larta Mul­ti­ple List­ing Ser­vice sales for the same 2005 period came to $70 million.)

Adja­cent to Punta Mita, other lux­ury hotel groups like the Ritz, Banyan Tree, The Omni, Hilton, One and Only Resorts and other hope to com­pete with sim­i­lar offerings.

Christie’s Great Estates — La Punta Realty’s flag­ship devel­op­ment, El Banco (http://www.elbancomexico.com) will surely be among the most unique and exclu­sive lux­ury resorts in Mex­ico. Devel­oped by for­mer Yahoo Corp. CEO Tim Koogle , the vision is to exceed the qual­ity and archi­tec­tural sig­nif­i­cance of the Punta Mita Resort bring­ing grand colo­nial hacien­das San Miguel de Allende to the seascapes and jun­gles of North Shore Puerto Vallarta..

The first phase of beach­front home sites sold at full ask­ing price in the pri­vate reser­va­tion period. The sec­ond phase of lux­ury bou­tique hotel man­aged beach vil­las will be archi­tec­ture as fine art by famous Mex­i­can arti­sans Juan Munguia, Juan Pablo Stone and the star out­fit from Guadala­jara Elias & Elias.

La Punta Realty has the most com­plete and inti­mate knowl­edge of the diverse and expan­sive coast­line of Nayarit and Jalisco. Please visit our booth to ask about the Mex­ico Land Cat­a­log of beaches and coves best suited for res­i­den­tial, hotel resort, or home site lots..
http://www.mexicolandcatalog.com

The Future of Ban­deras Bay and beyond…

Mexico’s push to stim­u­late tourism and attract pri­vate investors began to take shape in 1974 with the cre­ation of the National Trust Fund for Tourism Devel­op­ment (Fonatur). Since its incep­tion, Fonatur has been respon­si­ble for plan­ning and devel­op­ing five sea­side des­ti­na­tions — Can­cun, Los Cabos, Ixtapa, Loreto and Huat­ulco — that gen­er­ate about 54% of Mexico’s for­eign tourism spending.

Earn­ing its rep­u­ta­tion as a pre­mier golfers’ des­ti­na­tion with Travel and Leisure hon­or­ing Punta Mita as third best golf resort in Mex­ico and Latin Amer­ica. The area has seven spec­tac­u­lar golf courses, designed by some of the world’s top archi­tects, includ­ing Jack Nick­laus, Greg Nor­man and Tom Weiskopf. Planned are 7 more golf courses around Puerto Val­larta Punta de Mita alone.

The goal now is to ele­vate the qual­ity and quan­tity of the tourism prod­uct while diver­si­fy­ing the prod­uct in an effort to attract even more invest­ment. At the same time, tourism offi­cials want to focus on attract­ing sus­tain­able devel­op­ment with rig­or­ous envi­ron­men­tal safeguards.

The Bay of Ban­deras has grown nat­u­rally, organ­i­cally, pri­vately, and cur­rently attracts over 3-million tourists per year and has a pop­u­la­tion of about 325,000. Accord­ing to Fonatur the Mex­i­can tourist devel­op­ment bank, and the Ban­deras tourism board, the num­ber of tourists in the next 20 years will exceed 6 mil­lion per year and the pop­u­la­tion will more than dou­ble. In the South is a con­do­minium explo­sion, pri­mar­ily in Nuevo Val­larta, Marina Val­larta and along the hill­sides of the Sierra Madres over­look­ing the town and the bay.

Accord­ing to the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment, with for­eign invest­ment in Mex­ico on track to hit $20 bil­lion this year, up from $17.6 bil­lion in 2005, the mar­ket has just become pro­lific in Mex­ico, with about 1.5 mil­lion Amer­i­cans now own­ing prop­erty there. Val­ues in some mar­kets have tripled in five years — far exceed­ing the rates of return you find in the United States.

The Bay of Ban­deras serves as the fore­ground for lush, trop­i­cal jun­gle, while the rugged Sierra Madre moun­tain range pro­vides the back­drop. This is the vista that plan­ners want to preserve.

Lux­ury home buy­ers are grav­i­tat­ing toward eco­log­i­cally sound and conservation-friendly com­mu­ni­ties in the North of the bay, only a short dis­tance away from the sophis­ti­cated din­ing, gal­leries, shop­ping, and night life of Puerto Vallarta.

By M.L. Lyke
Spe­cial to The Wash­ing­ton Post
Sun­day, Decem­ber 3, 2006; Page P01

It takes a day or two in La Man­zanilla to spot the symp­toms. There’s the flat tire on the rental
car that has gone nowhere in seven days, the book buried in the sand face­down, the gringo who
can’t remem­ber what day it is, the old local wav­ing hola from his hammock.

Expats call the phe­nom­e­non “the great sand suck.”

Extreme cases become the stuff of leg­end, like the Ore­gon tourist plopped in a beach chair who couldn’t decide whether to go bare­foot or wear san­dals. He started mulling the ques­tion in the morn­ing. At 5 p.m. he was still in the same spot. Same chair, one san­dal on, one off. “I meant to go some­place,” he said with a shrug.

Even the roost­ers seem afflicted in this dusty lit­tle Mex­i­can fish­ing vil­lage, a hushed-up spot
that’s still off the clock and, for a while yet, off the tourist track. The scrawny birds go off
at all hours — mid­night, 2 a.m., break­fast time, lunchtime, mar­garita time — their hoarse,
half­hearted cock-a-doodle-doos sig­ni­fy­ing noth­ing in particular.

“Noth­ing” may have a bad name north of the bor­der, but down here on Mexico’s west coast, some four hours south of Puerto Val­larta along the Costa Ale­gre (the Happy Coast), find­ing the dada of nada is a fine pas­time. “I’m lis­ten­ing to the space between the waves,” a music-teacher friend told me, planted in her chair on Day 4 of vaca­tion, eyes closed, face to the sea, lis­ten­ing to the gen­tle surf that rises, sighs and foams across a long, low-slope beach.

La Man­zanilla isn’t fancy, not even close, despite a grow­ing num­ber of hand­some architect-designed rentals and a smat­ter­ing of new gale­rias. There are no resorts, no sports bars, no sou­venir shops, no time-share pitches, no prepack­aged spe­cial deals. Reg­u­lars, who urge oth­ers to keep this pretty hide­out secret, pack pesos: There are no banks, no bank machines, no plas­tic, no traveler’s checks.

What you get for those pesos — and you won’t need many — are friendly towns­folk used to min­gling with grin­gos, a dreamy sweep of beach backed up to trop­i­cal jun­gle, and time, the kind of soak-in time that untan­gles thoughts, unknots mus­cles and trans­forms foot-tapping Type A’s into Type Z’s,
full on empty.

Angling for Nothing

Laid-back La Man­zanilla is often con­fused with the busy port of Man­zanillo, less than an hour to
the south. That “a” at the end makes all the dif­fer­ence. Big Man­zanillo has a pop­u­la­tion of more
than 100,000. Lit­tle “La Manz” may have 3,500 in peak sea­son, includ­ing win­ter res­i­dents, native locals and the Mex­i­cans who come from inland, their trucks packed with inflat­able water toys, kids and grand­par­ents rid­ing over­stuffed chairs in the pickup bed.

The town lies cupped in the pro­tected south­east­ern reach of the Bay of Tenacatita, and even water-sissies like me can spend hours boogie-boarding the soft, rolling wavelets, rid­ing right up onto the beach, with a bathing suit full of sand and the kind of silly grin you see on a 6-year-old, sure of her safe deliv­ery to shore.

I’ve been com­ing to La Man­zanilla three years run­ning, stay­ing in beau­ti­ful beach­front suites for less than $100 a night in high sea­son. Get off the beach and you can eas­ily halve that. If you hit
the street taque­rios for $1.50 tacos or cook up a nice pot of refrieds with ser­rano chilis to put
inside the fresh tor­tillas made steps down the street, you can enjoy slacker par­adise on a comfy
bud­get.

Pen­cil in at least a cou­ple nights out, though. The town has a good, eclec­tic mix of restau­rants
serv­ing tra­di­tional Mex­i­can dishes, super-fresh seafood and chef cre­ations such as shrimp and
spinach crepes, Thai cur­ries and octo­pus salad.

The first year, I came to La Man­zanilla because I’d heard about the fish­ing. The waters off­shore
teem with tuna, mar­lin, sail­fish, snap­per and dorado, gor­geous pescado that leap neon yel­low and green and blue from the warm Pacific. Fish­er­men cast small, weighted seine nets, or pole-fish with line and jig to bring in roost­er­fish right off the beach. Locals also offer guided fish­ing trips in open boats.

That first year, I didn’t catch any­thing. Then I caught noth­ing, the Big Noth­ing. I’ve been com­ing back for it ever since.

It won’t last. It can’t. Reg­u­lars who’ve been snow­bird­ing here for years pre­dict that, within a decade, La Man­zanilla will be another inter­na­tional tourist des­ti­na­tion like Puerto Val­larta. “But it will take 10 years at least,” said one baked Cana­dian, a week into his stay.

For­eign­ers are mov­ing in, import­ing the norte amer­i­cano ideas that have trans­formed town after town along a mel­low coast some devel­op­ers now call “the Mex­i­can Riviera.”

Already, a new cyber cafe is up and run­ning. Bul­letin boards adver­tise per­sonal growth work­shops and well­ness spas, and Web sites describe the vil­lage where La Man­zanil­lan men still bond while mend­ing nets in an old fish­ing coop­er­a­tive as “an artist colony.” Indeed, expats have built a new non­profit mul­ti­cul­tural cen­ter where locals and vis­i­tors take classes in pot­tery, paint­ing, lan­guage, dance, yoga.

Even at siesta, real estate offices are buzzing with grin­gos, and new con­struc­tion is crawl­ing and sprawl­ing up the jun­gled hill behind the town. “It’s just gone crazy,” says Jane Gorby, a rental agent and colum­nist who writes for the Guadala­jara Reporter about the town.

When she first vis­ited, in 1995, the typ­i­cal truck cruis­ing the main drag had no roof, no hood and a plas­tic jug of gaso­line in the back with a tube going into the man­i­fold. Now locals drive spiffy cars and big trucks. Gorby’s not bemoan­ing the changes. “The charm of this town is that it com­bines Old Mex­ico with mod­ern conveniences.”

Some in town urge cau­tion, how­ever. A hand-painted sign placed con­spic­u­ously in the cen­ter of town sev­eral years ago bears an old Amer­i­can Indian warn­ing, admon­ish­ing, in part, that only after the last tree has been cut, only after the last hill is sold, only after the last fish caught, will
peo­ple real­ize that “money can­not be eaten.”

Still, the old and new seem to coex­ist com­fort­ably in a slow seven-minute stroll down the main dirt drag — hosed down each noon­time for dust control.

At the vil­lage plaza, gig­gling Mex­i­can girls stroll arm in arm past awk­ward town boys, while grin­gos watch from an out­door bistro, sip­ping shade-grown organic cof­fee. Down the street from local mom-and-pop gro­ceries, past the new gale­rias, a white-haired Mex­i­can woman falls deep asleep in her plas­tic chair at noon, her big legs held in the time­less spread of a flow­ered house­dress.
Ready for Action?

Walk a minute more, and you come to the town’s end — and its unex­pected edge: a mosquito-humming man­grove lagoon that’s home to an esti­mated 75 to 100 Amer­i­can croc­o­diles, Croc­o­dy­lus acu­tus, some 12 feet in length. The species is said to eat almost any­thing that moves, and over the years the crocs have devel­oped a taste for mon­grel perro — dead dogs, tossed into the lagoon by locals, and live ones that wan­der into the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve spent hours swat­ting skeeters at the view­ing plat­form above this eco­log­i­cal pre­serve, watch­ing crocs snake through the swampy water with their horny hides and pre­his­toric scales, cold
God­fa­ther eyes half-shuttered, ter­ri­ble jaws open­ing to reveal jagged rows of razor teeth.
It’s one of my pre­ferred breaks from nothing.

I’ve also spent hours snor­kel­ing in the rock reefs at beach end, see­ing tur­tles and wrasses, baby stingrays and schools of silver-sided needle­fish. And I always take the long hike down the smooth, curv­ing beach to Boca de Igua­nas (Mouth of the Igua­nas), past camp­sites with embed­ded hip­pie buses, a sand ceme­tery with plastic-flower wreaths on grave­stones, and the crum­bling remains of a lux­ury hotel, never com­pleted, that was report­edly blown up in a mys­te­ri­ous propane explo­sion tied to shady drug deal­ings.

If I’m really ready for some action, I call on Davi­son Collins, a high-energy nature guru,
pro­fes­sional white­wa­ter kayaker and ded­i­cated con­ser­va­tion­ist who guides bird­ing and snor­kel­ing eco-tours, whip­ping out a juice-swollen pineap­ple and an umbrella to sit under mid­day as he tells tales of shoot­ing Class V rapids or kayak­ing the croc lagoon in the dark of night.

On the open kayaks he calls “sit-on Cadil­lacs,” I’ve fol­lowed him down a river that ran to the
Pacific, nav­i­gat­ing rapids and sand­bars as we tracked birds — white ibis, gray hawks, wood
storks, roseate spoon­bills, ringed king­fish­ers. We lis­tened to the girly screeches of yel­low
kiskadees and the pre­his­toric squawks of herons, and saw vul­tures gather in dense black packs,
hold­ing their wings out for air­ing, like dark angels.

I’ve also kayak-surfed with Collins into a lagoon choked with red man­grove. The veg­e­ta­tion was so thick, the gnarled roots so entwined, that only soli­tary sun rays peeked through to light the
milk-chocolate water. It was spooky-silent, a des­per­ate, decom­pos­ing, dreamy water­scape that
sug­gested the begin­nings of time.

What­ever that was.

I’ve lost track of it after every one of these mad exer­tions, return­ing to La Man­zanilla to set­tle
back in my beach­side chair and stare for hours at the mini-curl of surf, ice cubes melt­ing in my
Cuba Libre, skin glow­ing, mind blank, sys­tem on zero.

“Nice,” I said to my musi­cian friend at day’s end. She nod­ded. We’d gone from com­plex sen­tence struc­tures to sim­ple, one-syllable words. In front of us, the sun went yel­low to orange, and bloated as it touched the hori­zon. Fish­er­men waded chest-deep into the water with their nets, teens rolled soc­cer balls up their legs and off their heads, and sail­ing dinghies came in on a shush of swell. Near us, a girl spread her arms and kicked at the water, throw­ing orange dia­monds in the air. A thick woman — her mother? — sat at the tide line, her wet dress frilling and unfrilling around her in the surge of sea foam. Her face was blank, not a mus­cle stir­ring.
I knew that feel­ing. It was the feel­ing of doing absolutely nothing.

Noth­ing never looked so good.

“A toast?” I asked my friend as the sun finally slid beneath the blue divide. We air-clinked our
glasses in salute. It was sim­ply too much effort to get up and reach across the table. We were two grown girls in slo-mo, going nowhere, totally sand-sucked.