We embarked on our adventure on Friday morning. Me, Sam, Meredith, Dev, and his wife Jessica all flew together to Mexico. As the regular readers know, I have an intense fear of flying but it’s much easier to forget about the plane falling out of the sky when you are reading US Weekly magazines with your friends. Actually, it was just Dev reading the US Weekly because he was hogging them all.

We arrived in Puerto Vallarta and picked up our rental car. The drive to Cuixmala is supposed to take about three hours because of the one lane, windy roads but Dev got us there in two. Actually we would’ve gotten there faster had we not mistaken the security post of the house for a police station.

The property is like the Taj Mahal meets Morocco meets Jurassic Park. Once you enter the property, it takes about 30 minutes just to drive up to the house. On the drive you pass crocodiles (yes, crocodiles), zebras, antelopes, these strange monkey/rat hybrids, plantations, and fields full of coconut trees, agave, and other vegetation. Everything we ate and drank that weekend was grown on the property–including the tequila.

When you are inside the main house, you feel like you are walking through the pages of Elle Decor. There were fountains, a library room, a smoking room with hookahs, and rooms that I didn’t even have time to see. The family stayed in the main house while the friends stayed in these little bungalows. Apparently in Cuixmala, bungalow is spanish for the largest and nicest house I will ever stay in my life.

Envision white walls and floors; ceilings so high that a giraffe can fit; and a terrace overlooking the ocean. And each room comes equipped with an emergency margarita button. You press it and someones brings you a margarita. Perhaps I can train my roommate’s cat to do the same.

We went down to the pool and inhaled margaritas and chips and guacamole. We hadn’t eaten anything on our 12 hour trip so we pounced on the guacamole like lions on a gazelle.

Afterwards, we drove to El Careyes hotel for the welcome reception and dinner on the beach. Dinner was an amazing buffet of quesadillas, beef fajitas, ceviche, cake, icecream, and other goodies. I went up for refills THREE TIMES. And had cake AND icecream. So much for my diet.

Most of the girls were tired and went back to the house but the boys stayed and evidently they started getting rowdy and decided it would be a really fun idea to jump over the bonfire. Luckily no one singed their limbs off but unfortunately a certain someone did suffer first degree burns on his feet.

So that was the first night. Tomorrow I shall recount the night that I can’t actually recall. But don’t worry my friends apparently remember and documented everything I said and I did and proceeded to tell me while I was like “No, really, you don’t have to keep reminding me.” Hello, it’s called selective memory for a reason. While the wave of embarrassment slowly recedes, I can at least be relieved that I wasn’t the person who puked in a hot tub and then passed out in it. That’s jinius.

Related Posts:

Cuixmala Adventure: Part two of three
Cuixmala Adventure: Part three of three