Aficionados consider Puerto Vallarta, unspoiled by the recent sweep of development that has changed so much of Mexico's traditional tempo and appearance, the purest of its popular resorts.
And by far the most exotic.A favorite location of Hollywood filmmakers, Puerto Vallarta frequently serves as the sultry backdrop for mysteries and romances alike.
It was John Huston's "Night of the Iguana" that is generally credited with putting Puerto Vallarta on the map. La Jolla de Mismaloya, the spectacular hotel and convention center built on the isolated peninsula of Mismaloya, where the film was shot, recently opened the Night of the Iguana Set Restaurant (Noche de la Iguana), utilizing the set that served as Maxine Faulk's (Ava Gardner) hotel in the film. Photographic stills showing the stars in action on the site, part of a collection belonging to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, are on display along with photos of Puerto Vallarta in days gone by.
One of seven restaurants at the posh all-suite resort, it also features film clips of the making of the movie. Huston's former home at Mismaloya serves as one of the resort's more casual restaurants.
Through his films, "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," "Under the Volcano," as well as "Night of the Iguana," the director created a relentlessly beautiful tapestry of Mexico even at its seamiest.
Indeed, it's part history and part Hollywood legend that makes Puerto Vallarta more than just another pretty string of beaches and discos. Pirates and explorers came to Puerto Vallarta as early as the 1500s; later Sir Francis Drake and treasure ships from the Orient came. Popular night spots like Christine's, Carlos O'Brien's and Friday Lopez could be anywhere. The fact that they're located beachside in the shadow of legends makes them that much more appealing.
Ava Gardner cavorting with brown-skinned beach boys; Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, each married to someone else at the time, scandalizing everybody; Huston, pouring another Herradura tequila; all wove a kind of forbidden magic, a scintillating decadence that remains today.
The city's main focal point is the Church of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The ornate crown on its steeple is Puerto Vallarta's best known landmark, a replica of the one worn by the Virgin of Guadalupe in the Mexico City basilica. Its comparison by local wags to the Corona beer logo, also a crown, is sacrilegious.
Framed by a combination of mountains, terraces and fast-shifting cloud masses, Puerto Vallarta's latitude is precisely that of Hawaii' s. In the lush outlying foothills, terraced gardens suggest Bali.
Everywhere, the air is heavy with a faded sense of intrigue and mystery.
Swiss-born Chris Schlittler, former general manager of the Fiesta America, one of Puerto Vallarta' s two premier hotels (the other is the Krystal Vallarta), spent three years as managing director of the Holiday Inn in Tibet before being assigned to Puerto Vallarta. He finds an odd, almost mystical similarity between the two places, particularly in the unhurried gentleness of the people.
The same naivete is evident in the work of Puerto Vallarta's best known painter, the late Manuel Lepe. He won international fame through his whimsical paintings of Puerto Vallarta children.
Hundreds of little round-faced boys and girls, angels mostly, people his work. They pilot planes, climb trees, drive buses and bakery trucks, float in the air or peek happily out of windows at the world. Lepe's oil paintings cost thousands of dollars, but prints and silk screen posters are available and affordable, a find for collectors and a keepsake of the magic of Mexico.
"Look around you," the self taught artist would say, he himself born into a family of 12 children. "Puerto Vallarta is filled with children. They are everywhere, and they are beautiful."
A large Lepe mural can be seen inside the Municipal City Hall, near the bay. Lepe began the mural in 1982, but it was completed by another artist when death claimed the talented painter in 1983. He was 46.
Located in the state of Jalisco (Guadalajara is the capital), Puerto Vallarta was named after Ignacio Luis Vallarta, governor of the state in 1918 when the town became a municipality. It's situated in the curve of a perfectly projected bay called Bahia de Banderos, the Bay of Flags.
The first thing visitors see when they arrive at the airport in Puerto Vallarta is a sign "Bienvenidos a este alegre lugar," it says.
"Welcome to this happy place."
Long-time visitors are inevitably surprised. The more Puerto Vallarta grows, the more it stays the same. The once-drowsy seaside village now has a population of nearly 250,000. It's hardly a village anymore.
Yet donkey carts still clip-clop along cobblestone roads. Many downtown streets are still unpaved. Women wash their clothes as they've done forever, on the banks of the Rio Cuale, drying them on flat stones in the shade of hastily erected palm-thatched ramadas.
By law, all homes must be painted white. Most are topped with red clay tiled roofs. Even the local supermarket, Gigante, has a cobblestone parking lot, preserving the primitive flavor of the seaside jungle setting. All the cobblestones come from local riverbeds. Everywhere, brilliant clusters of bougainvillea tumble over patio walls and along hotel walkways.
In the late afternoon, a few of the local gentry still meet downtown over a cup of good dark Mexican coffee or an icy bottle of Carta Blanca beer in the lobby lounge of the Oceanic Hotel, one of the oldest in town. At one time it was the place where everyone in town came to collect messages or pick up mail.
Nearby, a traffic light, designed in the shape of a small lighthouse that used to blink stop and go, stands abandoned on the side of the road. Cars traveling along the waterfront drive rarely paid much attention to it anyway.
Hemmed in by thickly forested mountains, Puerto Vallarta's urge to develop inland is kept in check. Instead, it sprawls out, up and down the coast, resulting in a well-defined downtown area and two distinct residential districts.
The sea horse is Puerto Vallarta's official symbol. The large sculpture of a sea horse on the malecon, the beachside walkway, was a 1960s gift from the governor. The nearby dolphin sculpture was a gift from the town's classy sister city, Santa Barbara.
Never far away anywhere in Puerto Vallarta is a beach, with the ocean drawn in close and cool sea breezes moving across the land.
As at coastal resorts everywhere, it is the temperament of the sea that sets the tone of each individual day.
Visit the Web at http://mexico-travel.com or call 1-800-44-MEXICO.