The Mexico Diaries: The Kim Kardashian of Mexico

The Sayulita beach scene. Photo by David Lansing.

Murray is from Canada. I met him four or five years ago when he and his wife invited me to dinner at their house in the hills above Sayulita. It was a very unique house, round, with almost no straight walls. And almost completely open to the elements. At the time I had dinner there, Murray, who made a fortune selling key-chains or something similar in Canada, went on and on about how much they loved Sayulita. So beautiful, so charming, so hip.

Murray still has his house in Sayulita but now he lives where I do near Bucerias. He mostly just rents out his Sayulita house. I asked him why that was and he thought for a minute and said, “I’m over Sayulita.”

I guess it was like a Kim Kardashian marriage: It just couldn’t last.

I sort of see his point. The first time you come to Sayulita you’re just enchanted. There are all these jewelry stores and art galleries and even though most of the stuff is really, really bad, it’s still kind of enchanting. You talk to the owners of these galleries who have moved here from New York or Santa Barbara or Vancouver and they tell you about the woman near the plaza who not only gives great massages for $35 but also teaches salsa lessons or the group of beautiful sisters, gypsies, who sell Tahitian black pearl necklaces near the beach, and you think, wow, this place is special.

And it is. The way Woodstock was special and Mill Valley was special and everyone wanted to go there. And they did. Until they realized that it wasn’t as special when you lived there year round. It was more like a weekend thing. And that’s the way Sayulita has become for me. I like it. They way I like Katy Perry: In very small doses and only when I’m in the right mood.