The Mexico Diaries: Miss Vicky

Punta Esmeralda view

The view of the Bay of Banderas yesterday upon my arrival to my Bucerias condo. Photo by David Lansing.

I arrived into Puerto Vallarta yesterday afternoon and when I walked out of the air-conditioned terminal into the muggy, hot México aire there was Miss Vicky, idling in her little SUV in the red zone while a bored Federale shifted his automatic weapon from one shoulder to the other. Ah, Mexico; I was home again.

I haven’t seen Miss Vicky in almost a year so we had a lot of catching up to do. I must see the Puerto Vallarta malecon, bordering Paseo Diaz Ordaz, she told me. They’d just completed a major renovation turning it into a pedestrian-only area. And there were new restaurants to try in Bucerias and La Cruz. Did I want to stop at Mega on the way to do some grocery shopping? I told her I didn’t think it was necessary, although if she wouldn’t mind it would be great if I could dash in to OXXO, the Mexican convenient stores that are as ubiquitous along the highway as stray dogs and the guys wanting to clean your windshield with spit and a dirty rag. I just needed to get some basics for my condo, I told her: beer, ice, and tequila.

“That’s all you need?” Miss Vicky asked me.

Well, at least for two or three days, I told her.

Miss Vicky is a real estate agent in Bucerias. She’s originally from Vancouver, which is where I first met her over a decade ago when she was doing pr for a downtown hotel and I was working on a story for National Geographic Traveler. We had dinner together at her hotel my last night in Vancouver and, making idle conversation, I asked her if she could imagine doing something other than public relations work in Vancouver.

“Well, I’m actually quitting at the end of the month,” she confided. “And moving to Mexico.”

¡Qué sorpresa! Did she have a job there? Did she speak Spanish? Did she know anyone down there? No and no and no, she said. Her parents owned a second home in a little fishing village an hour north of Puerto Vallarta, she told me, and she’d stay there until she figured out what her next step was. Seeing the bemused look on my face, she assured me it would all work out. I didn’t tell her this at the time, but secretly I was giving her six months before she was back in Canada. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Miss Vicky segued from doing pr work for a chain of Mexican boutique hotels to selling real estate and now speaks better Spanish than Felipe Calderón. Almost.

And she’s been incredibly successful as a real estate agent in Mexico. In fact, she sold me my condo five years ago. And I wasn’t even remotely interested in buying something in Mexico. Her soft sell was so good I can’t even remember how she did it. All I remember is that one afternoon she was driving me from my hotel in Puerto Vallarta to another one near Punta Mita and by the time I’d finished my ceviche that night, I owned a 2-bedroom condo on the Bay of Banderas. Amazing, no? And I won’t buy cookies from Girl Scouts because I fear they’re somehow trying to con me. But with Miss Vicky, anything is possible.

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