If you have seen the show, you know the premise: a family moves to a new country and with a local realtor as their guide, tour a few properties they can choose from. We wanted to participate in our own untelevised version of that. We rented an Airbnb and intentionally came to Mexico at the hottest time of the year (the lowest of the low season) so competition for rentals would be minimized. Armed with the names of a few recommended realtors, we started reaching out to find our perfect home.
Some realtors didn’t respond to messages at all. Some took multiple days and even then expressed no interest in helping. I had to work harder than expected to reach a woman who has been a realtor in Puerto Vallarta for 26 years. She asked me which part of town we wanted to live in (the Romantic Zone, Cinco de Diciembre, anywhere with easy walkability to family-owned restaurants, cafes, and small shops) and what features we wanted (availability of fast internet, pool, view of the bay, 3 bedrooms/2baths, off-street parking). She then asked about our budget. We thought we had done our due diligence. We had been looking at rental listings on various websites and thought we had a reasonable idea of what places cost. As soon as she heard the answer, she said that it was way too low and we couldn’t find anything that would meet our expectations. I was shocked.
The same day I spoke to another realtor and provided them the same wishlist and budget and was told our budget was right in the mid-range for properties and we shouldn’t have any problems getting everything we wanted. He was wrong.
Hobbes and I drove all over Puerto Vallarta looking at neighborhoods, touring condos, and eating ice cream. We could get a good location with our requested amenities if we were willing to give up the ability to all fit in the same room at one time. We could get a larger place with our requested amenities if we were willing to give up parking and being able to walk. The more places we looked at the higher our tension levels rose.
What we thought was going to be easy became a slog. Early on, it felt like we just had to keep digging to find the right location. We were halfway convinced there was a secret gem of a neighborhood (or even a block) that we just had to uncover. The more places we drove through and toured, the more apparent it came that wasn’t true. Puerto Vallarta, while a truly lovely historic tourist destination for real reasons, is a constant chaos factory. Chelsea kept talking about how sensorily overwhelmed she was. We were both concerned about the risk to Hobbes and our dog while walking around the city and crossing the cobblestone streets because drivers treat them like race tracks. You just have to hope you’ve identified a real gap and do your best to maintain solid footing as you sprint across. After a particularly harrowing, humid night trying to safely walk from the Malecón (a family-friendly version of Bourbon Street along a beach) back up the hills in Cinco de Diciembre, we finally admitted defeat. Puerto Vallarta isn’t going to be the shelter and springboard we’d imagined. We agreed to shift our search 45 minutes north to Bucerias, the sleepy little town we have been staying in and visited numerous times over the years.
The compromises that accompany that shift are many. Compared to PV, Bucerias’ number of restaurants and cafes (especially this time of year when so many are closed for the low season) is very small. The diversity of cuisines and open serving hours aren’t comparable. There is no UberEats or Rappi food delivery in Bucerias. There are no dog daycares, Costco, McDonald’s, or fancy cocktail bars. What Bucerias does have to offer over PV turned out to be more important to us at this point in time: a quieter area, wider neighborhood streets with (mostly) usable sidewalks, along with traffic patterns that make it safe for Hobbes to cross the street without being held by the hand.