Top 10 Ways That Living In Vallarta is Different Than Wherever You Came From

I’ve lived in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for almost 4 years now. It is of course an absolutely lovely place to live, but it’s not without its challenges and its oddities. Here is my top 10 list of endearing, odd, and sometimes annoying Vallarta personality traits.

1. “I have to cancel, it’s raining”, is a thing. If it’s raining, whatever we were doing is not happening right now. Yes, the footwear decision of course plays a part, but so do the Class 3 rapids that are literally flowing outside my door…
2. It’s totally normal to remove a chicken from the middle of the road, I do it daily. They need saving. They are exactly as dumb as a tiny feathered bag of hammers.
3. My morning alarm is the Pan Man. I wake up every morning to the guy who walks through the park with the giant basket of bread on his head, screaming “PAAAAAN!”.
4. Friends with pools are a dime a dozen. Not only do at least half of the people in this town actually have pools, but anyone else can just buy a day pass to the Sheraton. So you can’t really use your pool as leverage for popularity. We all kinda have a pool.
5. Buying cheese out of a bucket on the side of the road is a thing. It happens, and I’ll thank you in advance for not judging me. In all honesty, my cheese is probably better than yours. Well, now I’m just judging you, aren’t I.
6. Everyone knows each other’s dog’s name, but no one knows each other’s name. In fact, some people actually call me Ruby. And sometimes the dreaded “Rudy”. But I let all of that happen because mostly it’s a good LOL.
7. Pants. Do you even own any? Why do the locals wear skinny jeans, every damn day of the year? Why does the idea of pants make me want to cry, even in the dead of winter? Do the pants I actually do own, even fit me anymore? I don’t know. Stop talking to me about pants.
8. When you live in Vallarta, you will end up whistling the gas truck tune. At first this will happen almost daily, and I’m sad to tell you it will persist for months. If you have never been to Mexico, you should know that when you do visit, the soundtrack to your day will include something akin to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_ZR0bw0UAg

This is your cross to bear. I don’t know what to tell you.

9. Shrimp on a stick. Is it safe? Do you even want it? None of that matters, because it’s going straight into your snackhole. The beach oysters too. It’s a month ending in “R”, right? What could go wrong? Stop arguing and eat this.
10. Brush fires. Depending on what time of year it is, there will be some days when you smell smoke. Should you tell someone? I dunno, maybe? Meh… It’s probably fine.

…. It’s probably fine.