The following is a travel story submitted by Carol and David M., members since 2007, from Scottsdale, Arizona. We asked members to share what summer travel means to them, and Carol’s note stopped us in our tracks. We think it’ll do the same for you.
I have to be honest with you.
For the first eleven years of our membership, David and I never once traveled in the summer. We’d look at the calendar in late spring, see June and July sitting there, and tell ourselves the same thing every time: it’s too hot, the crowds are different, we’ll go in the fall. And then fall would come, and spring would come, and somehow summer would pass again without us setting foot in Mexico.
It was our daughter who finally called our bluff. She was visiting us in Scottsdale one June, where it was 112 degrees and the sidewalk was genuinely cooking, and she said, “You have a membership to a beach resort in Mexico and you stay home in this?” When a 28-year-old makes you feel ridiculous about your vacation planning, it is time to reconsider.
So we booked it. Three weeks out, on something close to impulse, we reserved a suite at Villa del Palmar Flamingos for the last week of July. I told David we’d give it one try and if we hated it, we’d go back to October trips forever.
We have not taken an October trip since.
What We Didn’t Expect
The first thing I noticed when we stepped off the plane in Puerto Vallarta was that the air smelled different than it does in winter, thicker, greener, like the jungle was closer somehow. The drive to Nuevo Vallarta felt lusher than I remembered. There were flowers everywhere.
The resort felt different too, not empty, but settled. The members who travel in summer, we quickly discovered, are a specific kind of traveler. They’re not rushing between activities with a printed itinerary. They know where they’re going and they are in absolutely no hurry to get there. Within 24 hours, we had become those people.
David was in the pool by 8 a.m. every morning. Not because he was trying to beat anyone to a chair, there were plenty, but because the water at that hour, with the light still low and the bay completely calm, was the most peaceful thing he’d found in years. He told me on day three that he hadn’t thought about work once. I didn’t bring up that I hadn’t thought about work since we landed.
The Rhythm That Changed Everything
Here is what we figured out by day two, and have followed on every summer trip since: mornings are for moving, afternoons are for doing absolutely nothing, and evenings are for everything you’ll actually remember.
We’d have breakfast on the balcony watching the fishing boats cross the bay, then take a taxi to one destination, the Malecón, the market at La Cruz, once a boat tour to the Marietas Islands that I still dream about, and be back at the resort by noon. Then pool. Then the suite for a nap with the air conditioning on full and the curtains closed. Then dinner somewhere good, a walk, and usually a nightcap watching the sky go dark over Banderas Bay.
The Part Nobody Tells You
What I wish someone had told us before that first summer trip is this: the resort is at its most itself in the summer. The staff isn’t managing enormous crowds. The service is warm in a way that feels genuinely personal, not performative. Imelda at the front desk remembered us by name the second morning. The bartender at the beachfront restaurant knew David’s order by day three. These are small things. They are also exactly the things you remember when someone asks you about your trip six months later.
We’ve been back every July or August since 2018. We’ve brought our daughter twice (she was right and we have told her so). We’ve brought our neighbors, who are now members themselves, which I mention only because the referral program apparently exists and I wish we’d used it sooner.
If you’ve been telling yourself that summer is the wrong time to go, I told myself the same thing for eleven years. Don’t wait that long.
Carol M., Member since 2007
Have a travel story you’d like to share? We’d love to feature it in an upcoming newsletter. Submit your Member Moment HERE : include your favorite memory, a photo if you have one, and how long you’ve been a member.
