Way Down West in Mexico

At that time--20 years ago--the west coast of Mexico had not yet become the Las Vegas and Miami Beach of Mexico. The villages were still predominantly primitive Indian villages, and the still-water morning beach of Puerto Barrio and the rain forests above it were among the world's wildest and loveliest populated places.

--Tennessee Williams, The Night of the Iguana, 1961

The boot-heel sweep between Mazatlán and Manzanillo is 460 miles of pirate-movie coast line--empty bays, little beaches, groves of coco palms, mountains and jungle plunging straight into the sea. Just 17 years ago, it was almost as remote, and stretches of it certainly as pristine, as the Puerto Barrio remembered by Tennessee Williams. Some of it still is. But back then, it barely existed for tourists. The only way to see it was in your own yacht or, if you were a mere yachtless wretch, by sitting for hours in a dusty mustard courtyard in Durango or Tepic or Guadalajara, waiting for a bus to the coast. If it wasn't the rainy season and the rivers weren't overflowing the road in too many places. The buses were, and sometimes still are, sad old school buses that look like they've been strapped down and subjected again and again to merciless electroshock therapy, without revealing the truth--legally dead but still hard at work. The ride in them is hour after hour with squawking chickens in crates and goats on ropes and people holding fat babies and baskets of produce. An Aztec pyramid of cardboard luggage and more livestock in wooden cages is piled on top outside. Hula skirts of fringe swish around the frame of the windshield, a small replica of the Virgin in the center. The bus is named for a patron saint with a romantic Spanish name, a woman. Loaded yet again beyond suffering, it strains through the mountains in a grinding gear-one roar that's palpable, like a cloud around the bus; but on even the slightest downward grade, it again becomes the old hot stuff, careening through Grand Prix turns, sailing flat-out down straightaways through tall drooping tunnels of trees, brimming with faith that those cows munching and looming there ahead on the road will stroll off before they're, uh, airborne carne asada y hamburguesa. ...

It was a little too colorful for most tourists, no matter how terrific the coast line, and chiefly attracted students in hot pursuit of the ghost of Ambrose Bierce.

Then, in 1963, John Huston decided to direct a film version of The Night of the Iguana--a story set in a seedy hotel cut out of the jungle on a hill above the ocean. The play features Williams' usual symbolic crowd, falling apart this time in paradise. The location Huston picked was Mismaloya, a few miles down the coast from Puerto Vallarta, where a clear cold stream crashes down rough granite notches strewn with great boulders and meets the ocean.

The filming provided some of the best gossip of the year and put peaceful, nowhere Puerto Vallarta forever on the map. The cast Huston assembled included Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Lolita herself, Sue Lyon. Elizabeth Taylor wasn't in the movie but went along for obvious reasons. This was back during the first melodramatic blush of the LizzenDick Epoch, when every headache and belch was news--and, better yet, Liz was watchdogging Dick, trying to keep him in a house in town while most everyone else was roughing it in cottages on location in Mismaloya; but still there were times when it was just ginger man Burton and all those fabulous women out there in the jungle, doing God knows what to whom in tropical combinations lush as the scenery. It was a mirror in a mirror, life once more imitating art--a new Williams play unfolding as they filmed the old one. That's the way the press sold newspapers and magazines with it, anyway.

On release, the movie proved to be a knockout, and still nearly survives the Late, Late Show shredder. But more important to the fate of Puerto Vallarta, it gave millions of Americans a look at the landscape, if only in black and white. Maybe the lack of color was also part of the attraction, sweet scent of absence, implying the explorer's reward of rare visual perfumes if ever you managed to transport yourself there. In any case, and almost exclusively because of The Night of the Iguana, Puerto Vallarta and environs were suddenly added to the stations of the chic travel cross in Mexico--even if at first it meant doing penance on a third-class bus.

Today, frequent and sometimes daily flights go from Mexico City to Manzanillo, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán and La Paz, across the Gulf of California near the southern tip of Baja. With a rental car and/or a chartered yacht, you can put together all sorts of itineraries. Playboy's long-suffering photo crew, for instance, to get the pictures you see on these pages, flew first from Mexico City to La Paz, drove south to Cabo San Lucas, took an overnight ferry from there to Puerto Vallarta, and then drifted down the coast as far as Manzanillo. Since there are so many ways to carve the time, not to mention the money, on such a trip, what follows is a sampling of what you'll encounter along these various paths--focusing on Puerto Vallarta, since it's the usual center for short-term vacations. There's also a chart on pages 168 and 169 with additional information on accommodations, restaurants, shopping, fishing, boogieing, etc.

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Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco are related in an intriguing way. Both are on a long bay shaped like an early moon, green mountains behind. But Acapulco has been worked over for many more years. It was a busy port by 1600, Colonial Spain's watering spot for plunder expeditions up and down the coast and its main jumping-off point for the spices and profits of Asia. Lately, of course, Acapulco Bay has been so planted with white high-rise hotels that from the distant air, it looks like the lower jawbone, with a few missing teeth, of some paleological Titan washed up on shore--dentalwork of the gods.

Not that Puerto Vallarta isn't trying. It has already cut a few high-rise teeth and its resident population has jumped to 24,000. But it's more like the ghost of Acapulco Past, the way it might have been 30 years ago. Yes, you can eat a pizza at an Italian restaurant on the town plaza or snap up a snazzy condo in the hills in a subdivision known locally as Gringo Gulch, and there are discos where you can bump the night away. But it's still enough like it was before the jets started landing that you don't forget you're in Mexico.

The streets are all cobblestone, searounded pebbles of many igneous colors taken from a beach like the one stretching below the main street; and at frequent intervals, the Indian road crew has arranged the stones by size or color in artistic patterns and designs, something you don't normally get from the boys tooling around on I-65 in their asphalt trucks.

In the center of town, near the river dividing Puerto Vallarta in lopsided two, the streets rise in intersected tiers, stopped by the mountains after half a dozen steps. Most of the buildings are low white stucco, two and three stories, with red roofs of curved ceramic tile. Over these old buildings, there's a light frosting of boutiques and silver shops and restaurants with clever names and menus in English. At the intersection of Calle Agustin Rodriguez and Calle Hidalgo, the latter named for the priest who first led the natives in revolution against Spanish rule, there is even a place called Restaurant Pago Pago, which was unmistakably constructed some years ago as a perfect replica of the original McDonald's burger stands, including twin plastic golden arches--a fact that even the addition of a roofed-in patio with brick pillars and thatched wooden grillwork can't hide. But that's about as bad, or as silly, as it's likely to get for a while.

The savior of the town--or the villain, if you're in real estate--is the river. During the rainy season, it dumps a bunch of mud into the bay. Most of it is nice clean mud from the mountains, but some of it isn't, and for sure it dulls the translucent turquoise shimmer that hotel owners like to see lapping at the edges of their expensive beaches. So they're leaving the older part of Puerto Vallarta alone; the nouveau sprawl is going up a few miles north and south of town, away from this unfortunate water that sometimes turns brown.

Altogether, Puerto Vallarta is a great place for a first trip to Mexico. Nearly the whole town can be seen in a single afternoon of walking. The people are used to us gringos but haven't been at it so long they wear the ruthless smiles you see elsewhere in the tourist world; it's probably a friendlier, safer place than where you live. And while you can sleep in air conditioning and sip French wine with lunch by the pool, practically in spitting distance is wild, luxuriant countryside that's never been civilized by anyone or anything.

The two preferred hotels at the moment are the high-rise Camino Real, built in a spectacular setting against the cliffs south of town, and the Spanishstyle Posada Vallarta, on the best beach, two or three miles to the north. The Camino Real offers rooms with a view that won't quit, and the ocean there generally shows those invisible shadings of warm Caribbean green, just the way it's supposed to. Few rooms at the Posada face the bay and, after a heavy rain, the currents sometimes send through the perfect green ocean murky sheets of ex--rain water, sweeping in dread brown phalanxes right off the beach. Still, we'll take the Posada. Its traditional Spanish Colonial style, with floors of handmade the, brick arches and stairways of polished tropical wood are somehow more restful than the idea of standing in bathing trunks on the 20th floor, waiting for the express elevator to the beach. Also, the scene is more engaging around the Posada. For some reason, it attracts a more international crowd, fewer of the people you're there to get away from and more of the ones you've been looking for. The beach on a good day is alive with the sound of on-the-hoof sociology--some of it actually on the hoof. Bony horses clomp up and down the wet sand, for hire to anyone who wants to work on that fantasy; beach vendors make their long, hot rounds as well, offering blouses and T-shirts and jewelry and more, some of it very nice stuff, and a bargain if you're not afraid to haggle a little. Under two parallel rows of umbrellas shaped like palm-thatched mushrooms (palapas), people work on rum punches and watch the parade, endlessly passing; pelicans cruise low along the edges of waves, looking for lunch; and up there in the sunny sky, another pilgrim is 200 feet in the air, dangling from an enormous red-white-and-blue parachute that's being hauled around the bay by a powerful speedboat, ten dollars a pop and they hardly ever put you down in the palm trees.

If that sounds a little too ... busy for you, the Garza Blanca Club de Playa on (continued on page 166)Mexico(continued from page 122) the road to Mismaloya may suit you better. With barely 50 rooms and suites--the Posada has 250 or so--it's quieter and more intimate, though no less luxurious.

There are also several pleasant and inexpensive small hotels in central Puerto Vallarta. The dowager is the Rosita, built in the late Forties on a small beach next to a fishing pier on the north end of Avenida Diaz Ordaz, the main drag. There's a tiny pool, a good serious bar and even a few rooms with air conditioning. El Mirador down the street, Oceano near the plaza and the Rio, cleverly enough, by the river are three other golden oldies. Their clientele is usually vacationing Mexicans and impoverished student types, which can be good fun. The traffic rolling by at night over those teeth-rattling cobblestones isn't always part of it, but watching a Cecil B. De Mille sunset from the balcony of your $12 room definitely is. Before we leave the wonderful world of lodging, I should add that for those of you who want to visit Mexico and suffer none of those nasty surprises and psychic jolts that often accompany foreign travel--that is to say, visit Mexico without being forced actually to set foot in it--for you, there is a Holiday Inn.

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There are so many good restaurants in Puerto Vallarta that in a week's time you can easily eat yourself into a new division. Have as few meals as you can manage at your hotel. A few menus offer iguana, variously prepared, but seafood in splendid varieties is the real specialty--red snapper and oysters and dolphin (the fish), and such esoterica as green sea-turtle soup (made from a tasty vanishing species) and pulpo en tinta (octopus stewed in its own ink, which seems rather like living to rue the day, or some such epigram). Langostino, a huge saltwater crawfish, passes for lobster in these parts, and in winter months is just as good; from May through October, the warmer water tends to make the flesh mushy and they're not worth the increasingly stiff prices they fetch.

The present napkins-down favorite restaurant among visitors is Carlos O'Brian's, facing the quay on Avenida Diaz Ordaz; it's so popular that every third or fourth person you see on the street seems to be wearing a Carlos O'Brian's T-shirt. It's decorated junk-shop manic--Dadaist clusters of phonograph records suspended on wires from the ceiling; poster-sized stats of vintage photographs, odd nostalgic signs and antique doodads all over the walls; a shotgun blast from the past. The service tends also to be slightly speedy, of the fill-'em-up-move-'em-out-rawhide school, no matter how warm the toothy California smiles of the waiters. It's considerably more like being in Sausalito than in Puerto Vallarta. House specialty, in fact, is barbecued chicken, beef and ribs. But the food, if aimed toward American tastes, is worth the inevitable wait and the feeling you're in a scene from Revenge of the Living Attic.

Casablanca down the street is more true to its laid-back Northern California school. It looks at first like a slice of Sausalito, with natural woods and hanging ferns and canvas director's chairs. Except a couple of ocelot pelts are nailed up spread-eagled on rough-cut beams, just so no one will think Casablanca insufficiently macho, like those fey vegetarian joints up in Marin County. If you suffer from sound-system withdrawal on such trips (I do), Casablanca has one that will help and a record collection of the Eagles and electric Miles Davis persuasion. And the service won't remind you of rush hour. With a two-for-one cocktail hour in the bar downstairs, it's my pick hit in town for viewing the daily extravaganza of sunset. Its restaurant upstairs is easily equal to Carlos O'Brian's, and you can linger over dinner at tables overlooking the quay.

Another of the most popular restaurants, El Set, on the highway to Mismaloya, is so justifiably smug about its location that the slogan on its T-shirts is Another Lousy sunset in paradise. Built at the top of a cliff a couple of hundred feet above the beach, El Set commands a great CinemaScope pan of the entire rugged peninsula to the south, its vast dinosaur backbone diminishing over miles to a dark skeletal tail pointing out to sea. Narrow spaces between the wooden floor boards afford a novel view of the beach below; those leaves fluttering at eye-level just beyond your table are the tops of tall trees. El Set even serves food.

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Done eating? Then it must be time to shop. If you travel to acquire elegant objets d'art, you should go somewhere other than the jungle--but there are any number of ways to part with your money in the stores of Puerto Vallarta. My own taste runs toward rare, authentic native artifacts, so I brought home several dear-acrylic Puerto Vallarta key chains with actual dead scorpions inside and a stuffed (Text continues on page 170. A handy guide to the area is on pages 168 and 169.) Puerto Vallarta iguana. I was tempted by some basketwork woven locally in Taiwan but decided against it in favor of the va-va-voom Day-Glo nude painted on black velvet, in the genuine white molded Styrofoam frame. She looks terrific under my black light.

Shop after shop is filled with jewelry of silver and turquoise. It's probably cheaper in Taxco, where much of it is made, but, again, bargaining is built into the price. At a stall by the Rio Caule, on three successive days, I was quoted three different prices for the same silver ring, 50, 70 and 90 pesos. We finally bought it for 45.

Other objects worth coveting in Puerto Vallarta are hand-carved stonework. Two or three stores deal in it exclusively, coffee-table tops of fused polished onyx in Indian art nouveau checkerboard patterns, carved stone-god chess sets, fat happy turtles three feet long sliced beautifully through by undulating layers of color distinct as parfait, their heads turned up inquiringly. Some of the boutiques carry skirts and blouses with the strong primary colors and shapes of Guatemalan embroidery; it's reminiscent of Haitian primitive painting and, remarkably, is even still hip in New York.

At 500 Avenida Juárez, Arte Taurino has a store called íOlé! that's piled high and hung with serapes, sweaters, handwoven blankets and rugs. He imports this handwork from nearly every state in Mexico, much of it done by Indians. His walls are a museum, Aztec and Mayan symbols and gods brought once more back to life--impassive abstracted lizards; a two-headed Rorschach toucan, straining cell-like to divide; stony-faced square-headed fellows wearing as headdresses stylized fountains of feathers, rendered with simple warmth, like pre-Columbian Disney cartoons. Another place worth checking out, if only for its museum quality (should you not have $1500 or so in pocket change to drop on trifles), is the Studio Zoo on the corner of Ignacio Vallarta and Francisco Madero. It features large one-of-a-kind metal sculptures of jungle birds and animals, dreamy rhinos and parrots and plump scaled armadillos, all of them, too, with an attracting cartoonlike feel to them. They'd look great in your living room and put you only a couple of hundred pounds over your weight limit on the flight home.

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No matter how strong your devotion to Consumption and The Material Way, after a while, all the silver jewelry begins to look the same, coalescing in your brain into an alien metallic blob with a single bulging turquoise eye. And the prospect of another, urp, great meal conjures one more blob in your gut, a round, heavy accrescence, pearl of enchilada. That's when it's time to go day-tripping into the boonies, solid and liquid.

Two hours by boat down the coast from Puerto Vallarta, there's an outpost called Yelapa, claimed from the jungle. Excursion boats leave for there each morning and return late in the afternoon. If anything is a "must" during a trip to Puerto Vallarta, a visit to Yelapa is it. Yelapa so reminds everyone who goes there of the archetypal tropical retreat that it's almost universally described as looking more like Tahiti than Tahiti itself--even by people who've seen the real thing. That idyllic waterfall in our opening photos is in Yelapa. There is also a thatched open-air restaurant called Lagunita that's as good as the scenery, featuring fresh broiled fish and iguana, and a semihotel of the same name consisting of about 20 basic but pleasant hut-style cottages built up the hillside. (It's so popular, reservations should be made well in advance.) Except for a small Indian village nearby, that's it. Thrills and chills in Yelapa consist mainly of improving your tan and having another of whatever you're drinking. Most people find that one day there is terrific but plenty, though it is one of those places that tempt some to stop and do some serious loafing. For, say, six or eight months. ...

A slow boat to Baja: On Tuesdays and Saturdays at four P.M., a ferry leaves Puerto Vallarta for Cabo San Lucas on the southern tip of Baja. The trip across the Sea of Cortés (now dismally called the Gulf of California) takes 18 hours. The ferry is German-made and just a few years old, more like a cruise ship than a car-carrying tub. There's a bar and dining room, and if you rent one of the luxury cabins (500 pesos--about $25) and the company's right, well ... how time flies. If you can't cram such leisurely pursuits into a small vacation, you can fly to La Paz from Mexico City, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Mazatlán.

Cortes was first lured to Baja by tales of beautiful women there who dived for pearls. The stories were about half true. There were pearls. For the next four centuries, the oyster beds produced prized specimens, especially "black" pearls. Then suddenly, during the Forties, they shriveled up and died.

Lately, they have begun to come back, but even without the pearls, there are good reasons for the schlep--as you can see from our opening photos. With little fresh water, Baja is sparse and sparsely settled, the desert opposite of the wet jungle along the mainland coast, like a bit of Utah or Arizona floating in gleaming warm ocean. The ocean, in fact, is a greater attraction here than elsewhere; like Bimini in the Bahamas, the waters off lower Baja are so rich with record-breaking fish--dorado, snook, yellowtail, sailfish, marlin and more--that they attract big-league game fishermen with visions of Guinness listings dancing in their heads. With quite a few charters available, little leaguers may also apply (in La Paz, try the Jack Valez Marlin Fleet in the Hotel El Presidente).

These days, there's no need to rough it. La Paz, a city of 46,000, is a free port, which is to say, a magnet for cruise ships. To accommodate them, there are shops up the gazinga, with low-priced goods and bads from the world over, and restaurants ready to take on anyone from vegetarians (Fernando's) to pizza lovers (Pizzeria La Tavola). Maybe because of all the day-tripping cruise-ship traffic, which retreats back on board at night, there aren't any really hot-shot hotels in La Paz, though several are very good. The A-prime wonders are down around smaller Cabo San Lucas. All have access to the Hotel Cabo San Lucas airstrip and free parking for your Learjet. The Hotel Cabo San Lucas, 11 miles out of town, is a $1,000,000 baby that's the favorite with fishermen. Hyatt Baja, the Hacienda and Solmar are all right in there, as is Finisterra, at the end of the land mass, among rock formations carved strange by currents and wind, near a beach named Sunset. From there in the right season--February and March are the best months--you can watch the playful majestic migration of gray whales as they round the horn into the Sea of Cortés on their way to mate.

On the road to Manzanillo (Where the spider monkeys play): Another trip worth taking is a drive south from Puerto Vallarta nearly 200 miles through the mountains to Manzanillo. Volkswagen Safari "Things" are available for rent at several places in Puerto Vallarta, convertible 48-horsepower Quonset huts that roar and creep up the steep parts, so you have to slow down and see things whether you want to or not.

The drive is magnificent; no less. From sea level at Puerto Vallarta, you climb on long switchbacks, following the twisting course of a river backward to its beginning, and beyond, through thick lavish jungle that's barely inhabited--by people, at any rate. Eventually, the air dries and cools, as if you've driven from August into October, the foliage changes, from jungle snarl to cedars and oaks, and the road straightens out through high tramontane vaileys occupied by extensive haciendas and federal agricultural projects; and then down again into the tropics, through a small dusty town or two, over wide shining rivers that flow in lazy oxbows toward the ocean, and on into Manzanillo.

The road is unblemished two-lane blacktop the entire way. Well, the asphalt itself is unblemished. During rainy season, when I drove it last, from the surface on up things were fairly lively. Parts of the highway are carved like a toy shell into sheer rising rock faces, like the Southern Pacific Railroad through the California Sierras, and where the cliffs have been shaved, when it rains, these, uh, boulders tend sometimes to cleave from the bosom of mother earth and plunge to the road with a splat! worthy of Wiley dropping one on the Roadrunner. Like flying the friendly skies, odds are considerably against getting one in the occipital lobe; but they do make for creative driving, say, when you round a downhill corner and find a meteorite waiting in your lane and a semi smoking upward in the other.

The kinetic mineral life is only part of it. Cattle in varieties from sway-back hulks to sleek regal Brahmas browse along the roadside, and seem to enjoy digesting their meals standing in the traffic, as do the goats and horses and pigs and chickens and burros. In the seeming emptiness of the jungle, they are suddenly there, sometimes tended by a boy of 12 or so on horseback, but often completely on their own, with no evidence of any people living within miles of the spot. The highway doubles as a barnyard and is also a short cut for some wilder cousins. On my last nip, I saw a couple of ocelots, a spider monkey and a fat dead snake as long as my Volkswagen flattened to two dimensions by passing buses and trucks--which is where the ravens and vultures come in, scattering reluctantly as you drive over their buffet table. For a highway with few settlements strung along it, there are plenty of diversions--so many, in fact, that it's a good idea to do all your driving in daylight.

Finally getting to Manzanillo is something of an anticlimax. It's on a bay of such proportions that the Mexican navy has a base there, right next to the center of town, and offshore, giant tankers congregate at anchor. No glitter here. Manzanillo doesn't attract so many tourists that it mainly exists for them, as do Puerto Vallarta and La Paz.

Some visitors to the area never get as far as town. The airport is a few miles to the north and their destination, Club Med, is an hour's drive north of that. Another in the world-wide chain of X-rated summer camps for consenting adults, this one's like the rest. If you decide to play, it captivates your attention. Especially engaging is watching two pasty busloads from Bayonne being greeted by lean, tanned Frenchies amid cries of "Mon dieu! Fresh meat! New blood!"

The true killer resort is Las Hadas. Like Club Med, but in more various ways, it will absorb you if you don't watch out. Spun along a curving bay and up acres of hillside, five miles north of Manzanillo, it is architectural hubris and then some, many separate buildings on several levels, all sculpted of white stucco, like sweet frangipane. Towers topped by stylized Mediterranean arabesques, a squarish futuristic row of condos like tomorrow's shoe boxes, a sugary Moorish muffin on a red-tile plate ... it's quite a sight, like a refugee from the Riviera hiding out in the back country of Mexico. It's certainly a good place to do basic training for the real thing.

Well on down the line from such splendor is the Hotel Colonial in central Manzanillo; but there you're in Mexico again, not France. Built in the massive old Colonial style, more years ago than anyone's admitting, with an interior courtyard enclosed by stout pillars and fancy carved wooden lattices between, it's the best-looking building in town and serves the best lunch and dinner. Rooms are fairly basic, cooled by a single ceiling fan, and don't expect a towel or a shower curtain, but for 95 pesos a head (less than five dollars), it's hard to complain--even about the pillows apparently stuffed with goats' feet. Two other good places at the more down-home end of things are La Posada at Playa Azul and the Miramar motel. La Posada is near the end of a strip of bungalows and motels along the beach near town (including one painted brazen orange and named Motel New York). It's run by Americans and generally attracts the same; the bar is do-it-yourself. The Miramar is a mile or so north. It defines the word modest, but the owner's charming and the beach is nice, with a view of town to the south and palatial Las Hadas across the bay.

Down and out and slaphappy in san blas: If you're not brave or crazy, you can skip this part. By normal American tour-book standards, San Blas may be one of the most miserable inhabited places in North America. The daylong drive there north from Puerto Vallarta is another gorgeous trip through mountains and back down to the coast; but the meager, moldering collection of buildings and people that awaits at the end, slowly melting back into the jungle surrounding them, makes Manzanillo look like Paris. San Blas is so seedy, even that connoisseur of tropical hellholes, Joseph Conrad himself, would probably put it in his top ten if he were still around. Unlike Puerto Vallarta, where the mountains fall quickly into the sea, the jungle around San Blas meets the ocean in an extended low-lying soggy plain, even soggier during rainy season, with vast puddles and bogs among the coco palms between town and the beach. All that standing fresh water, kept incubator warm by the sun, breeds mosquitoes and kin at a furious rate. Actually, the mosquitoes are the least of it. The bug that made San Blas famous is a variety of gnat, which, on windless days and always after sunset, swarms in clouds and will get you for sure if you're wearing anything less substantial than a diving suit. Because of the gnats, which breed chiefly in the puddles between the town and the beach, standard real-estate values are reversed and the poorest precincts of San Blas are nearest to the beach, open thatched houses, where the gnats are such a way of life that people in the evening burn smudge pots on their swept dirt stoops and sit around them, chatting in the smoke; and those who walk along the rutted roads carry rags about the size of dish towels, which they wave about themselves in individual complex patterns, unconsciously, the way a horse instinctively flicks its tail, so habitual it might be genetic. Bars in town at that time of night burn low blue light bulbs of barely measurable wattage, hiding out from marauding gnats, and poker games go on in the dark.

You might well wonder why anyone would go there voluntarily. I first did so 15 years ago, during a bohemian student summer bumming around Mexico with two friends. We were nearly broke, but wanted some sun, and heard that San Bias was what it still is, a cheap beach. Our third-class bus got in after dark, and we found a "rooming house" just off the town square. Three cots in a room barely big enough to hold them, for a little under a dollar and a half a night. It seemed like a bargain, at least until dawn, when Carol or Jeff or I, I forget which, woke up screaming and pointing at the roof of our room--which in first gray light proved to be chicken wire shaded from the stars by a palm tree; and standing on it, talons clutching for balance, wings flapping, was a grizzled old rooster, announcing the day right over our heads for all he was worth.

We moved to a fancier room, with a ceiling, in a small old hotel called Los Flamingos, which is still in business and not much changed. It's on a street leading to the river, near the forbidding remains of a Colonial Spanish customhouse, dank rotting pillars and walls, varieties of moss and climbing plants lapping at them like steady green flames. Los Flamingos is in slightly better shape. It is maybe a dozen high-ceilinged rooms arranged around an open interior courtyard that once was, many mañanas ago, a carefully planted decorative garden. Fifteen years ago, it was already well on its way toward riotous neglect, and it looks like no one has tampered with it since--when I was there a few months ago, it had taken over, berserk, the jungle replicated inside the hotel walls. Going with the flow, entropy in particular, appears to be a watchword of Los Flamingos. As the owner led us to our room on this last visit, he explained that the lock on the door had been broken for quite some time and that the latch didn't work too well, either. Then, as we opened the beds to air them, we flushed a fat gray mouse that had been snoozing beneath a pillow. In its alarm and confusion, it couldn't find the escape hatch gnawed cartoonlike in the base of one wall, and went zipping frantically around the room until we managed to herd it homeward bound and barricade the hole with books to discourage a return visit. A History of Zen Buddhism in hardback did the trick. Los Flamingos is, admittedly, a place that would probably scare Aunt Effie, who likes Hawaii, right out of her polyester suit; but for three of us this time overnight, the room cost 120 pesos, about six dollars.

There isn't what could be called a decent hotel in San Blas, so if anything less comfortable than a Holiday Inn makes you tremble, you really should stay away. The Posada del Bucanero down the street from Los Flamingos may be the "best" place to stay, a C minus to Los Flamingos' D plus. In very dry seasons, when the gnats are absent (it does happen, usually in winter), the Playa Hermosa on the beach probably isn't terrible. Built 20 or so years ago as an attempted blast of Miami Beach, it's about the only "modern"-looking building in San Blas. It, too, is lazily going down the tubes of terminal neglect, though with dignity, and might be passable in dry months. But during rainy season, like a sad castle, it is nearly surrounded by a moat of bogs and puddles. You get to the ocean through a swamp and buzzing gauntlets of bugs. Fairly depressing. But when I was there last, about seven in the morning, I stood inside the screened-in lobby swatting off mosquitoes, working on the first of many therapeutic cervezas frias, talking to a young New York couple who were on their way back from a drive down into darkest Central America; and they assured me, as we scratched and swigged and swatted, that this looked quite nice compared with some of the sights farther south.

Because paradise is funkier here than elsewhere, and living the good life not quite as comfortable, San Blas remains one of the cheapest places to stay along the coast. For that reason, it still attracts a larger proportion of young Americans, particularly Californians, than most. The grubbier and more adventurous end of the surfing kingdom passes through San Bias, in vans coated gray with mud and dust; the current crop of bohemian students, many these days wearing an illegal smile; leftover hippies and social fugitives of all sorts who want to duck and hide and quit for a while. Stop. San Blas has a strangely appealing end-of-the-world quality to it, last stop on the last road through the last jungle. The End. You walk into plain bars half expecting to find Bogey in a white ice-cream suit, brooding at a back table; or Rita Hay-worth as Sadie Thompson, sitting on a barstool beneath a South Pacific fan, legs crossed high and head thrown back, laughing at some bitter private joke. It's true Conrad country. San Blas, I suspect, is one of those "power places" that Castaneda's Don Juan talks about, a spot on earth with a stronger spiritual pull than others, for no knowable reason, maybe no reason at all. Something like that must be happening with San Blas. It ought to be awful, and I guess in many ways it is (so if you go and hate it, please remember that I warned you, and you really shouldn't mail me those spiders as revenge). But if I am able, I'll go back again.

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What about the enterprise that started it all? The Night of the Iguana set south of Puerto Vallarta, at Mismaloya? In the United States, as tribute to beginning the economic boom in these parts, the set would have been turned into a museum or some such, courtesy of the grateful Jaycees. But not in Mexico. These days, you can drive to the beach from Puerto Vallarta. It's not in the same league with San Blas, but it's fairly authentic. An encampment of gypsies had temporarily taken over much of the stony field behind the beach on my last visit--many vans and trucks and vehicles beyond description, laundry draped over cables tethering power poles, dogs and pigs everywhere--and had set up a small open-air movie theater using wide bolts of cloth and folding chairs: I leave to your imagination what sort of art films they might have been showing. Three days later, when I drove by, they were gone, vanished. There are two open-air beach restaurants at Mismaloya, and I suggest the one across the small river, even though--yes--you have to wade through cold mountain water to get to it. The one on the main part of the beach is popular with scrawny begging cats, rib-sprung dogs and your occasional snuffling pig. There's less traffic across the way. And the real El Set is directly above, up a steep hillside. You have to skinny through some barbed wire and take on a few barking dogs to get up to it. And when you do: The former movie hotel is still standing, pretty much intact. But most of the other buildings, not built as well, look worse than the Colonial ruins in San Blas, like they've been hit by a bomb of time instead of slow decay, walls and ceilings fallen back to nothing, jagged white support beams sticking up among the greenery like bleached broken bones, tattoos of graffiti on what's left standing. It's hardly a national monument. In fact, a farmer and his family are living in the hotel part and using whatever else they can. Before we got chased off by his dogs, I saw this: Attached to the hotel and also still pretty much intact are the stars' cottages, the very same where Sue Lyon pouted and the Burtons-to-be fought it out, hallowed turf of sorts, if you believe in Hollywood. The farmer has put them to good use. Each one houses an individual guest--a pig. Somehow, that they have come to be tailor-made pigpens seemed just right, a perfect Tennessee Williams finale.

"There are so many good restaurants in Puerto Vallarta you can easily eat yourself into a new division."

Playboy's Capsule Guide to the Mexican Riviera

Puerto Vallarta

A relative newcomer to the high-toned tourist scene, P.V. has made up for lost time without turning to plastic. Much fun to be had here, from discos to deep-sea fishing, in a variety of ways. Note that prices can vary and that the peso has been fluctuating between 20 and 26 per dollar.

Where to stay:

Posada Vallarta: A largish, active complex in tasteful Spanish Colonial style, on the best beach. Complete travel service, car rental, etc. Free afternoon movies. Fine poolside lunch, but the mediocre (and expensive) dining room can safely be avoided. It's our top-end pick hit in P.V. Double rooms $33--$36 out of season and $50--$53 during high season (December 15 to May 2, European plan--no meals included).

Camino Real: High-rise beauty south of town that's well-liked by Americans. Spectacular setting, perfect clear water. Double rooms in season are $57.75; out of season, they're $38.90.

Garza Blanca Club de Playa: On the highway near Camino Real but smaller and more exclusive than it or the Posada. Modest beach and pool, but muy bonito surroundings. Doubles are $45--$53 out of season, $53--$63 in. Chalets also available.

Rosita: Right in town on the main drag, it caters mainly to vacationing Mexicans. Small bar, tiny pool and beach. Great if you like the real thing. And inexpensive. Doubles start at $7.

Oceano: Ditto the Rosita, except hold the beach. Right in town, with an airy downstairs bar and a boutique called Demian's featuring some nice leatherwork. Doubles are $9 or $12, depending on the season.

Holiday Inn: For those who want to get away from it all without getting away from much. The orange-plastic coffee shop could be in Dayton, but the pool may be the biggest and best in the area. Doubles in season are $32, out of season, $28.

Where to Eat:

Puerto Vallarta has more good restaurants than you can sample in two weeks.

Carlos O'Brian's is the runaway favorite with Americans; barbecue ribs, chicken and beef are specialties; the Mexican dishes tend to be safely nonspicy, but there's a caramel dessert too good to be true.

Casablanca down the street also attracts Americans but has none of the frenetic atmosphere of O'Brian's; and the food, in our opinion, is better.

El Set, south of town, is a cliffside eyrie in a setting so gorgeously boggling that you won't notice whether you liked the food or not. Back in town, the Mismaloya Beach offers the most extensive seafood menu and perhaps the best; try the pulpo en tinta if you dare. The Posada Río Cuale, south of the river, is a little restaurant/hotel (with a pool the size of a Buick) that serves some of the best lobster in town.

What to Do:

Apart from the regular water sports (snorkeling is especially good in the marine preserve around Los Arcos, huge seagoing boulders, south of town), shopping tops most lists. There are silver shops and boutiques in abundance. Several carry Guatemalan embroidery that's a knockout. Handmade stonework is also a specialty in these parts, as are ceramic tiles (which can be found very inexpensively in ferreterias--hardware stores).

íOlé! on Avenida Juárez has an impressive selection of handwoven blankets, rugs and sweaters in Indian designs. Studio Zoo on Ignacio Vallarta features terrific animal sculpture of brass and beautifully painted papier-mâché. When you're done consuming, be sure to take a stroll along the quay at sunset.

Night Life:

Consists mostly of loving the one you're with, but the bars and restaurants go late and there are several discos. Hottest and latest open these days is the City Dump. There's another called Cuckoo's Nest in the Casablanca, and the Holiday Inn has one called Leonardo's.

Manzanillo

A hundred and 50 miles or so down the coast from Puerto Vallarta, the best part about Manzanillo is getting there--on a daylong drive through jungle mountains wild as your dreams. Watch out for falling rocks and livestock on the highway and definitely don't do it at night. Unlike P.V., Manzanillo isn't geared for tourists, so don't expect any flash in town.

Where to Stay:

Las Hadas: Here's the flash: Superior digs over a hillside that could be on the Riviera. Poolside bars, a marina, water-skiing, a fabulous nine-hole golf course, several dining rooms, etc., etc. Easily the fanciest place north of Acapulco. Doubles in season are $46--$85, plus $16 per person for two meals a day.

Hotel Plaza Careyes: At Costa de Careyes, an hour or so north of Manzanillo. In another isolated, perfect setting, it's run by an Italian family that owns a goodly chunk of coast line and provides a gracious, friendly experience for guests. Doubles in season are offered only on the American plan at $72 per day.

Club Méditerranée: Sixty miles north of Manzanillo at Playa Blanca. Let your libido roar and toss away your inhibitions with your bathing suit. Doubles are $300--$425 per week.

Hotel Colonial: An old hotel in the center of town that's very basic but clean and inexpensive. In any season, a double room is about $7. Also serves some of the best food in Manzanillo.

La Posada: At Playa Azul near the end of a strip of bungalows, on the bay, it's run by young Americans and usually attracts the same. Modest but comfortable. Bar is do-it-yourself. Doubles in all seasons are $7.

Miramar: On the highway north of town. A real motel and definitely quite modest, but the owner's charming and for the price, the beach is fine, with a view of town and sumptuous Las Hadas across the bay. Rooms in season are about $7.

Where to Eat:

Many fewer choices in Manzanillo than in P.V. Las Hadas probably offers the grandest fare. Hotel Colonial in town is recommended for an inexpensive lunch and La Chiripa is the place for seafood.

What to Do:

Truth be told, not much. Walk about town in the evening, when everybody's out, buy some sandals and head for your hotel. Manzanillo is extremely thin on shopping and night life--the drive to and from P.V. is the real treat.

San Blas

Since there is virtually nowhere to stay, no place to eat, no shopping and nothing to do there, San Blas is not for your average tourist crowd. But if you consider yourself either mentally deranged or extremely hardy, we suggest you check out the section on San Blas in the accompanying article.

Baja California Sur: Cabo San Lucas

At the very tip of the Baja peninsula, Cabo San Lucas is fast becoming the St.-Tropez of the Americas. Direct jet air travel from Los Angeles was inaugurated last July, and the World Bank and the Mexican government are pouring $84,000,000 into Baja for tourist support systems. Hotels and condominiums are beginning to spring up like frogs in a dynamite pond. So, to get a real taste of the place, go soon.

Where to Stay:

The new Hyatt Baja in Cabo San Lucas is the nicest hotel in the area. Designed by award-winning architect Guillermo Hume, its spacious suites, tennis courts and restaurant all seem to blend naturally with its environment. One of the striking features is the hotel's pool design: three pools at different levels that pour into one another. All afford an unobstructed view of the Gulf of California. Doubles in season are $55, out of season, $38--$50. Hotel Cabo San Lucas (American plan, doubles in season are $110, out of season, $60.40), one of the oldest resorts, offers a wide range of activities: white-winged-dove hunting, a fleet of fishing boats, tennis courts and horseback riding. Both it and the Hyatt are situated several miles out of town. If you want to get closer, the Hacienda (American plan, doubles in season are $80.40, out of season, $60.40) is located right on the San Lucas harbor with a large stretch of private beach. It also has tennis courts, two swimming pools and a glass-bottom boat for fish watching.

Where to Eat:

All the hotels in the area have their own restaurants; some are very good, such as the Hyatt's Guaycura Restaurant and the Hotel Pamilla's restaurant in nearby San Jose del Cabo. Some are merely overpriced. In town, the Mar de Cortez, a sort of tattered hotel, has a terrific and inexpensive restaurant; also try the Pizza Parlor, which is run by a former illustrator for the Italian edition of Playboy. Balandra is another restaurant in town that serves good, inexpensive Mexican food.

What to Do:

Cabo San Lucas has been called the sport-fishing capital of the world. Charter a boat with some friends and you're almost guaranteed to pull in lots of dorado, marlin and other sailfish. There are some awesome beaches, too, especially the Playa Santa Maria, where you can snorkel to your lungs' delight. Visit the Japanese shipwreck (just ask anyone). A word of caution: Do not try to swim in the surf on the Pacific side. The rip tide is so fierce that no matter how good a swimmer you are, it's too rough. Even on a relatively calm day, the surf sounds like the World Trade Center falling over. Have your hotel pack a lunch for you and charter a boat to take you to the secluded Playa del Amor. But don't pay the boatman until he picks you up. There is a tourist office in town that will supply you with maps and direct you to other points of interest. One thing not to be missed is the only disco in town: Raphael's. During the season, it's not too rowdy. Your girlfriend might get felt up a little by the natives, but it's still a gas.