Villa Mirador

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mex­ico — Ninety-nine per­cent of the time, unem­ploy­ment sucks. Wel­come to my one percent.

I’m sit­ting on a white-cushioned chaise lounge at the St. Regis Punta Mita in a scene from a travel mag­a­zine. The infin­ity pool is behind me, the Pacific Ocean is in front of me, and Car­los, one of the many atten­dants here, has just put up an umbrella so I could relax in the shade.

At this moment, the only prob­lems I have are sun­burned ankles and minia­ture ants that keep run­ning in and out of the keys on my lap­top. I’m about to sum­mon Car­los for a can of Raid.

In March, I was stay­ing at Super 8s on my last road trip for the P-I, to and from spring train­ing in Phoenix. Now I’m at the St. Regis in a room that costs $985 a night.

How can an unem­ployed jour­nal­ist afford that? I can’t. It’s a free trip, paid for by really nice peo­ple from the Riv­iera Nayarit area of Puerto Val­larta. Everything’s free — the flight, the lodg­ing, the golf, the meals and best of all, the beers from the bev­er­age cart.

They asked six golf writ­ers from the U.S. and Mex­ico to come here and write about the beauty of this place to gen­er­ate pos­i­tive pub­lic­ity to revive the lag­ging tourism industry.

When I worked at the P-I, reporters could never take a trip like this because it was a news­pa­per no-no — if some­one else paid, it would affect our objec­tiv­ity and neg­a­tively impact our cred­i­bil­ity with readers.

Nat­u­rally I never liked this rule — it pre­vented me from self­ishly par­tak­ing of free stuff, and since when was the Go 2 Guy objec­tive and cred­i­ble any­way? Even if I’m on the take, I’ll give it to you straight, from start to finish.

THURSDAY: I can’t remem­ber the last time this hap­pened — get­ting on a plane that’s half-full and hav­ing a row to myself. Such is the con­cern about swine flu in Mexico.

As far as I can tell, it’s a mis­per­cep­tion, a media cre­ation (those damn reporters!). I look around and all I see are healthy peo­ple and healthy pel­i­cans and dead ants — yeah, I squished most of ‘em.

But I was con­cerned, too, to the point that I almost bailed. Talk about a “non-essential trip,” the kind of which the U.S. Health Depart­ment told us not to take to Mexico.

I pic­tured mourn­ers and non-mourners at my funeral whis­per­ing to each other: “Jesus, what an idiot, he got swine flu in Mex­ico and croaked.”

At the Puerto Val­larta air­port, they had a guy with a cam­era who took a read­ing on all incom­ing pas­sen­gers to check their body tem­per­a­ture to see if they had a fever or not.

Appar­ently I was OK because I wasn’t stopped. But it didn’t take long for some­one to sin­gle me out for some­thing else — a sucker. I had been told to look for a per­son hold­ing up a “Tukari” sign.

And when I told a group of Mex­i­cans that I was look­ing for “Tukari,” they pointed me to an attrac­tive woman. I thought Tukari was her name, and I thought she was just being nice when in real­ity, she wasn’t Tukari, and all she was try­ing to do was sell me a time-share.

Tukari, as it turned out, was the name of the man­age­ment com­pany that was there to give me a ride to the Grand Mayan Resort.

Like the St. Regis, that place was unbe­liev­able, too. Before you get to the lobby, you walk through a dark­ened room with eerie music and six Mayan dudes that are six sto­ries tall. It’s quite impres­sive, a don’t-miss if you have kids because it will scare the heck out of them.

They gave me a ninth-floor suite with a sweep­ing view of the Pacific and the hotel grounds below — six pools with water slides and foun­tains and one of those swim-up-to bars that was shout­ing for me to swim up to it, so I did.

This is where I became el stu­pido. The bar­tender poured what must have been a quadru­ple mar­garita, and I glee­fully gulped it down.

Later that night we were taken on a tour of the hotel and given cham­pagne and a mar­garita fol­lowed by wine at din­ner and a Paci­fico before bed.

In Pull­man in the 1975, this would have been called “just get­ting started.” In Puerto Val­larta in 2009, it was a disaster.

FRIDAY: I woke up that morn­ing and started to feel queasy on the shut­tle ride to El Tigre, the course we were sched­uled to play.

Once we got there, it hit me hard, Tatupu hard, and I was so down for the count that I wouldn’t have heard the ref­eree. An hour later, I pried myself from the bath­room and got a ride back to the Grand Mayan from Mat­teo the Tukari guy, miss­ing my tee time.

I slept until 1 o’clock and sheep­ishly arrived at the Grand Mayan resort course for the next tee time at 4. The other writ­ers greeted me with a bar­rage of deserved abuse.

At the Grand Mayan course, our three­some had a forecad­die named Ronaldo, who pointed out a croc­o­dile in the pond next to the sec­ond hole.

“If I got in the water, would he come after me?” I asked.

“Si,” Ronaldo said, politely answer­ing the dumb question.

The bev­er­age cart drove by twice, and still reel­ing, I let it go by both times. I’m start­ing to learn the lan­guage — bev­er­age cart is carro bar in Spanish.

SATURDAY: On the long drive to the St. Regis Punta Mita, I’m in the back­seat of the shut­tle van think­ing, “Ohmigod this is tak­ing for­ever, and I get motion sick­ness and there sure are a lot of bumps and curves, and it sure is stuffy in here, and my palms are start­ing to sweat, but if I heave on these guys, I’ll really never hear the end of it.”

We got there just in time, Dis­as­ter No. 2 suc­cess­fully avoided. At the St. Regis Punta Mita, even schmoes like us were treated roy­ally. They called me Mr. Moore there, giv­ing me unearned respect and, yes, Mr. Moore would like another cup of cof­fee while check­ing in, muchas gracias.

My room did not in any way resem­ble my room at the Yreka Super 8. This one had an indoor and out­door shower. The air con­di­tion­ing went off when you opened the door and came back on when you closed it. A remote con­trol low­ered and raised the shade on the windows.

But that’s noth­ing com­pared to the room’s best fea­ture — every guest got a per­sonal but­ler, and mine was Joaquin. When I met him on Sat­ur­day, he showed me the room and told me he would tend to my every need.

I didn’t ask him to do much ini­tially because I felt weird about hav­ing a per­sonal but­ler. That feel­ing passed. I would get into the swing of things later.

We golfed that day at Bahia, the newest of two Jack Nicklaus-designed courses at Punta Mita. I played with two begin­ners and Melanie Schnei­der, St. Regis’ direc­tor of sales and marketing.

I’m guess­ing that the begin­ners, Richard and Diego, took at least 10 strokes a hole, and Schnei­der had a 114, which meant that I wit­nessed my play­ing part­ners take a total of 474 shots dur­ing our six-hours of divot taking.

At one point, Schnei­der asked: “Do you know what all of that white stuff is on the island?”

I looked out at the lit­tle land mass in the back­drop of the 15th green, think­ing she was going to tell me it was a spe­cial white coral that is only found at Punta Mita or another rare geo­log­i­cal for­ma­tion. Nope.

“It’s bird crap,” Schnei­der said.

Later that day I found out that beverage-cart girl is nina de la carro bar in Span­ish, which isn’t all that cool, but the fact that she kept show­ing up with free cervezas was. Instead of Paci­fi­cos, I’ve taken a lik­ing to Mod­e­los here, but I won­dered if some­body was try­ing to tell me some­thing when I checked my voice mails that night.

The only one who left a mes­sage was Pat O’Day.

Explore Punta de Mita and beyond from the air

SUNDAY: We played Paci­fico, the sec­ond Nick­laus course that is best known for its third hole, which has the only nat­ural island green in the world. It’s spec­tac­u­lar, play­ing 185 yards from the blue tee box. The hole is called “Tail of the Whale” because that’s what the island resembles.

At low tide, you can drive your cart to the green over a bumpy path. At medium tide, you have to take a big-wheeled rig through the water. At high tide, you can’t play the hole; you have to play an alter­nate par-3, which pre­cedes the island hole.

I’d like to say that I parred the hole or even bogeyed it, but I took an 11, deposit­ing four balls in the Pacific before find­ing the fringe with my fifth tee shot.

That night the golf writ­ers got together for their fourth din­ner in a row, and these aren’t just any old din­ners. We are wined and dined, and most peo­ple would show restraint, but I strug­gle with that.

There are appe­tiz­ers and main courses and desserts and dif­fer­ent wines, and if you want some of the country’s finest tequila, they’ll pour a shot of that for you too. Finally learn­ing, I declined all of those offers.

It’s insane, really, because if they were try­ing to impress me, all it would take is a visit to their Mex­i­can ver­sion of Dick’s.

MONDAY: We were told that per­sonal but­lers would pack for us when we checked out, and I didn’t want to bother Joaquin with that, but then I thought, why not?

My bag arrived at the nearby Four Sea­sons, where I am now writ­ing from a dif­fer­ent chaise lounge on a dif­fer­ent beach under a grass hut with a sim­i­lar view of the Pacific. Joaquin was a per­fect packer, fold­ing every shirt and wrap­ping my shoes with tis­sue paper.

The Four Sea­sons Punta Mita is another posh joint, which means the Go 2 Guy has no busi­ness being here either. After lunch, Clau­dia Silva, the Four Sea­sons PR and mar­ket­ing direc­tor, took us on a tour that fea­tured a stop at the Coral suite, a pri­vate five-bedroom ocean­front bun­ga­low with its own infin­ity pool and dual ham­mocks. Among other celebri­ties, John Tra­volta has stayed here.

If you want to stay in the Coral suite, bring many pesos — it goes for $16,000 U.S. a night, and most Christ­mases, the ten­ant stays for 15 nights, a tab of $240,000.

We golfed that morn­ing at Flamin­gos, the old­est course in Puerto Val­larta, and I hacked it up again, play­ing poorly for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive day. I noticed that one of my play­ing part­ners, Fer­nando, was also hav­ing a tough time and grow­ing increas­ingly mad.

Fer­nando lives in a Mex­ico City and is a well-known golf writer in this coun­try. He’s a lik­able guy who enjoys his tequila. He speaks Eng­lish very well, but there were two words he had yet to learn, and it was time to teach him.

I tried to calm him down by telling him what I do to feel bet­ter. “Hey, Fer­nando, you gotta say ‘Go Cougs,’ ” I said.

“Go Cougs?” he said.

“Yeah, Go Cougs,” I said, and I went on to explain the whole Wash­ing­ton State thing to him. A few holes later, I made a good putt.

“Jeem,” Fer­nando said. “Go Cougs.”

My new friend was catch­ing on.

TUESDAY: Greg Nor­man found enough time to pull him­self away from Chris Evert to design a new course here, and we played 12 of the 18 holes Tues­day morn­ing. He was paid a reported $2.5 mil­lion. The course, in nearby Litibu, won’t open until next year. It’s a top-notch track that will cost in the neigh­bor­hood of $200 for greens fees.

That wrapped up six days in a coun­try I’d never really seen before. Until now, Juarez and Tijuana were the only towns I’d vis­ited. I’ll return to Seat­tle on Wednes­day night with a dif­fer­ent view of Mexico.

And a vow to never swim up to a bar again.