Why Six Months
in Puerto Vallarta
"Why six months in the Banderas Bay area? Doug and I spent years wintering in Arizona as well as Florida before settling on Mexico. We tried Puerto Vallarta, Cancun and Cabo. In the end Nuevo Vallarta was the best fit for us. Here is what we found."
- Charlotte
Spending a season somewhere is not a longer holiday. It is a different decision, made on different information, and the things that decide whether it works are not the things that sell a holiday.
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This page is about that shift. The practical side comes later.
Doug and Charlotte did not arrive at this bay. They ended up here, after thirty winters somewhere else and two other places that did not stick.
That story is more useful than a list of reasons, because each place they left failed on something different, and those somethings are the things worth checking before you commit to anywhere.
Why six months in Puerto Vallarta rather than Arizona or Cabo
The Journey Home
Thirty Winters to Find One Home
Thirty winters in Arizona.
Doug loved it, largely for the golf, which was before he discovered pickleball. Charlotte loved the desert, which she still thinks is one of the more beautiful places on earth.
What she never loved was the weather, and that is the part people get wrong about Arizona. The shoulder seasons are lovely. December, January and February were consistently too cold for her, which is an awkward thing to discover about the three months you went there for. The last winter was colder than usual and that was the end of it.
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Thirty winters is a long time to spend somewhere before admitting the main thing is not working. That is worth saying out loud, because most people who find this site have been somewhere a while and are not sure whether their reservations are reasonable.
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Cancun.
Beautiful, and the weather was too unpredictable. That is the whole entry. Sometimes a place rules itself out on one thing.
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Cabo.
Cabo came closer than anywhere, and Charlotte still loves it.
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It is stunning, and the water is beautiful. It was also hard to find somewhere to actually swim, which turned out to be the thing she minded most and which she has now found out about herself twice. There were plenty of Canadians and Americans there that they already knew, so the community was not the problem.
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What decided it was the flights. No direct route to get there quickly, and when you are coming and going for half of every year, that is not a small inconvenience. It is a thing you pay four or five times a season, every season.
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The drive down the Baja is one of the prettiest Charlotte has ever done and she would do it again tomorrow. A beautiful drive is not a reason to live somewhere.
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And they kept coming back here.
Not decisively, at first. They kept ending up in Puerto Vallarta between the other trips, and eventually noticed they had stopped looking.
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Three things hold it: the weather behaves, getting here is easy, and the people. The rest of this page is what sits underneath those three.
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They eventually noticed they had stopped looking.
Community Rhythm
The Season Everyone Shares
Most people who come for part of the year are here between November and April. The weather is the obvious reason, but it is not the only one, and after a season or two the others start to matter more.
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The people you meet are on the same schedule. Friendships build up over a few months and then everyone scatters for the summer, which is either a rhythm that suits you or one that does not. Tennis, golf, pickleball, cards, walking groups, the things that fill a week, all run to that same calendar.
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It is worth knowing this before you choose a neighbourhood. A place that hums between January and March can be very quiet in May, and the difference between those two versions of a street is not something a February visit will tell you
The Reality Check
Month Two
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A two-week visit shows you the best version of a place. Month two shows you the rest, and the rest is mostly small.
How long anything takes when it involves an appointment. What the internet does on a bad day. Which errands can be walked, and which need a car. Whether the noise you thought was a one-off is a Tuesday thing.
None of these would put anyone off a holiday. All of them shape how a season feels. People rarely regret the country. They regret the street, the building, or the twenty minute drive they do four times a week without having meant to.
The question Doug asks first
It is not about budget, and it catches people off guard.
What does a good ordinary Tuesday look like for you here?
Not a good holiday. A good Tuesday in month four, when nothing special is happening and nobody is visiting. It helps to answer it in actual hours. What time you get up, what the morning is for, where lunch happens, whether you go out in the evening.
Then look at what your answer requires. A Tuesday with golf in it needs a course nearby. A Tuesday that involves walking somewhere for coffee needs a somewhere, within walking distance. A Tuesday that is mostly quiet and at home needs a place you actually want to be inside of, which is a different search entirely.
Most unhappy decisions on this coast come from somebody choosing a place that suits their holidays and not their Tuesdays. Doug would rather someone worked that out on the first phone call than on the fifth viewing.
There are eight questions like this one, and together they take you from a dozen towns down to two or three. They are the whole of the next page.
