Tania Ritchie and her husband were sailing around the world when friends of the Canadian couple asked to make a detour to view property.
Between mountains and the endless Pacific on a crescent of pristine beach is Punta Mita, a former fishing village on a private peninsula at the southernmost point of the Riviera Nayarit, 30 miles northwest of the resort city of Puerto Vallarta. A funny thing happened on their way around the world: The Ritchies ended up being the property buyers, calling off the sailing trip and never looking back.
“We were thinking we’d settle in Paris, maybe,” she says. “We had no intention of buying in Mexico, but we just knew and here we are 13 years later.”
Tania shared her origin story to this palm-shaded oasis of warm breezes, oceanfront holes and guaranteed good times between bites at a post-round feast last December at the 10th annual Golf & Gourmet, where I competed and hobnobbed along with golf greats Lorena Ochoa, Craig Stadler and Jean Van de Velde. It is the gated community’s signature and most anticipated event of the year, a four-day extravaganza of dining, drinking, teeing off and tastings. It is a modern-day bacchanalia with celebrity chefs, mixologists and sommeliers flown in for a weekend of culinary excellence, and it’s a bucket-list trip worth taking for golfers and non-golfers. (If anyone needs a partner, I’m available.)
I went solo because it was too soon for my wife and I both to be away from our then-10-month-old daughter. I promised my better half – not to mention the better golfer in the family – that one day I’d make it up to her. Never did I expect I’d deliver on the promise less than a year later, but that I did in October. The first time we were both away from our daughter – who we left in good hands with two of my sisters-in-law – felt like a belated babymoon.
A little more than 20 years ago, this southwest point on the Riviera Nayarit was nothing more than an off-the-grid spot for hardcore surfers. No one could have imagined that two championship golf courses, multimillion-dollar villas and two luxurious resorts, the Four Seasons and St. Regis, would be carved out of 1,500 acres of jungle on Banderas Bay.
On my first trip here, it didn’t take me long to discover why the Ritchies and tourists that enjoy activities such as snorkeling, scuba diving, sailing and fishing tend to fall hard for the intoxicating beauty of Punta Mita, especially at the Four Seasons Resort, where guests are welcomed at its thatched-roof – what the locals call a palapas – and open-air lounge and descend to a sparkling infinity pool at its center. Prepare to be blown away by views that register an 11 for “Wow” factor.
My accommodations were modern and elegant, and I opened the sliding glass door to draw in breezes off the electric-blue sea. But this is a place where you want to spend as little time in your room as possible.
I could’ve taken up permanent residence in the infinity pool, where the bartenders wade into the water to deliver drinks and snacks. I kept seeing sunbathers sipping straws out of coconuts, so I finally asked a middle-aged American tourist the name of this fanciful concoction. “Coco Loco,” he said of the mixture of gin, vodka, tequila and lime. “It’s kind of like a Long Island Iced Tea, but with tequila. You’ve got to have one … but only one!”
The St. Regis is every bit the equal of the Four Seasons for living in the lap of luxury, including a personal butler at your beck and call and a champagne toast for guests every Friday at sunset to ring in the weekend. There are two more five-star resorts scheduled to be built as part of a next phase in the development.
But when I visited with my wife, we stayed in a gorgeous rental property at the Tau Residences, which included our own terrace pool and a view of Bahia’s 17th green that could even be seen from the shower in the master bath. In effect the decision is to stay at one of the resorts and enjoy its amenities or choose from the many rental properties and receive access to the five beach clubs that dot the property and be treated as if you are the member-owner. It’s a bit like choosing between filet mignon and lobster tail for dinner. As someone who has done them both – the equivalent of surf and turf – I promise you can’t go wrong either way.