My big fat stupid vacation

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico

What happens when a former movie critic and her companion discover themselves in the middle of a vacation that turns into a two-person, mini-disaster epic?

(Voice-over prologue)

I know the idea of a vacation is to escape everyday routines. What I didn't plan on, with this visit to Puerto Vallarta, was a week that went: Saturday: Arrive. Sunday: Nada much. Monday: Near-drowning. Tuesday: Recovery. Wednesday: Stove explosion. Thursday: Shock and recovery, followed by food poisoning. Friday: Can we go home now?

(Credits roll over postcard images of vacation paradises)

It was supposed to be Chapter 4 of a tradition we've dubbed the "flake and bake": Christmas week, on a sunny swimming beach, with great food and a nice room. The first two years were spent in Hawaii, first on Maui (Kapalua Beach, which offers all of the above), then a Maui-Kauai combination. Perfectly beautiful, but I have a restless traveling nature, which my best friend, Silvia, accommodates. Last year was the idyllic, somewhat remote Mexican village of Troncones, a bumpy taxi drive from Zihuatanejo. The ocean sparkled at night with ghostly plankton, and by day, we ate grilled snapper we'd watched being hauled from the fishing boats.

(Cut to downtown Puerto Vallarta, a mix of tourist shops and taco stands along cobblestone streets)

I wanted one more hit of Mexico this year, and steered us to Puerto Vallarta, which I remembered from my last visit 15 years ago as a charming combination of colonial village and beach town. Friends recommended the Quinta Maria Cortez as the place to stay, and the guidebooks raved, so we booked in the second-cheapest of their seven suites, Raphael. All the rooms are different, but feature gorgeous touches like sunken baths, hideaway terraces and private kitchens (an amenity that would soon sound less like a benefit than an omen).

Quinta Maria Cortez is a love-child villa, in the sense that you can feel the taste of its creator, a former Texas showgirl known only as Silver, in every corner and eccentric space that she built, floor-by-floor, at the southern end of the city, around the time PV was "discovered" during the shooting of "Night of the Iguana," (1964) and at the height of the steamy love affair of stars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

Silver retired several years ago, and now new owners from Salt Lake City run the place, but the charm remains, with a distinct take-off-your-shoes atmosphere. In daylight, it has the look of a party girl still recovering from the night before. A knock-out, if a bit disheveled. Small surprise it's still used as the backdrop for fashion shoots and one memorably bad Kevin Costner movie ("Revenge," 1990), which appears to have had a scene shot in our very room.

I used to be a movie critic, so the whole faded Hollywood atmosphere had a certain allure. But when our vacation began to go south — more than literally — I found myself praying for a pair of little red shoes.

(Cue the music — a little John Williams, a little Bernard Hermann)

It may be the romantic nature to exaggerate, so when we were told that the beach in front of the villa was "fine for swimming, just a little rocky" we might have wisely translated that as "You see the water there, between those big rocks? That's an ocean that'll break you apart like a twig!" Granted, the aftermath of Hurricane Kenna, which swept through Banderas Bay and downtown Puerto Vallarta just two months before, has had a notable impact, and there's less beachfront than there used to be. But, we'd come for ocean swimming and so scrambled over to another beach where the space between rocks was a bit wider.

Silvia's a first-rate swimmer who can practically live in the water, so she went out while I lay on the beach, exposing my Seattle skin to the sun. When we swam together the day before, she warned me from getting too close to the rocks. Now, when I saw her drifting too close to one patch, I started to gesture go that way, you're too close. She waved. I waved back. She waved. She was still getting too close. I waved ... and this time heard her gasp, "I'm in trouble."

We were an old-fashioned rescue scene after that — me, running into the ocean trying to remember a lifeguard class from 10th grade; Silvia pleading "Save yourself!" Eventually, we managed to haul each other to shore. After we'd stopped spitting up the Pacific, we had to laugh.

In truth, she was merely feet from touching the bottom, but had been caught in a current that wouldn't let go — and had caught a couple of almost-victims that morning. It wasn't James Mason in "A Star is Born" (1954) but it was close enough. The next day, we took a bus to the much gentler beach of Mismaloya, where for the price of a beer and grilled fish, we were set up with a table and chairs, and spent the day in brainless relaxation. In movies, this is the interlude scene, where our heroes relax and think everything's going to be OK.

(Cut to: Christmas morning, two days later)

When people experience huge, crazy accidents, they invariably say later "That was just like in a movie." Because I was a reviewer, I tend to think that way, too, but with a separate sense of critical evaluation, kind of a "I give that fire three stars" point of view. So, when the stove came flying out of the wall on Christmas morning, directly between Silvia and me, I had the normal (whatever that is) reaction of shock/fear, coupled with "great special effects for a major appliance."

There I am, cooking a pot of beans on top of the stove. Silvia's lighting the gas oven. She shuts the oven door. There's a bright light and a scream. Then, in slow-motion, the beans and pot go up in the air and do a flip, and both breakfast and the stove perform a half-gainer about 2 feet from the wall before landing in the middle of floor.

The sound of the explosion brought other guests running down to the main area of the villa, where we'd escaped to get help. Silvia suffered a harsh slap to her face when the stove-front blew, and we didn't know what might happen if there was an open gas line. It was time to meet the friendly Puerto Vallarta fire department, and slowly absorb — again — that we were both still alive.

It was hard for us to know what to do, and regrettably, even harder for the hotel managers to figure out. Would you like a massage? With an almost-broken face? Nooo, thanks. Breakfast? When we could finally eat later, the waiter looked at us like two hangover cases. As the shock wore off and practicalities set in, we wondered why the hotel didn't offer to move us to another room, which was available, or at least some kind of refund. All the air went out of any sense of adventure, and we had the wrung-out feeling of a script that's gone on way too long — with subtitles.

(Fade to the next day)

The week was nearly over, but there was no question, we wanted to go home before any kind of third act: I was starting to have flashbacks to a conversation before we'd left with a friend who owns a condo in Puerto Vallarta, and who reported all was swell, post-hurricane, except for a little, ha, ha ... dengue fever (a nasty mosquito-borne disease that has since subsided).

That was it. We decided to cap off a week of frankly disappointing dinners with a search for authentic Mexican mole, that delectable dark chocolate paste that accompanies roasted meat (hey, when the going gets tough, the tough eat chocolate), and wound up at a place with the promising name, Los Milagros ("The Miracles").

It had been such a strange, movie cliché kind of vacation, that it only seemed right to end accompanied by a guitar trio and a big dinner scene: margaritas, mole and the chef's special, a dish of beef wrapped in grilled shrimp, the waiter swore up and down was the best.

We laughed, we drank, Silvia ordered an extra plate of shrimp. If this had been a comedy, we would have wound up inheriting the Quinta Maria Cortez, exploding stove and all. Or, a drama, with the heartwarming discovery of enduring friendship (which, in fact, we already had). But that wouldn't have been true to this trip, which was not yet over thanks to that shrimp, which was going to make a return appearance later in the evening, not altogether unlike the creature in "Alien" (1979). I can only promise we will never forget and will never, ever, return for a sequel.

(Credits)

Postscript: Silvia did recover from her food poisoning at Los Milagros.

After we asked, the Quinta Maria Cortez wound up paying for part of the room.

The only way I'm going back to Mexico for awhile is if I rent "Y, Tu Mamá También" (2001).

The End.

(Lucy Mohl can be reached at 206-464-2968 or lmohl@seattletimes.com)