DON’T MISS OUT ON PUEBLO BONITO
A little R&R will go a long way on this Mexican holiday
The irony was as delicious as the mojito I was savouring poolside.
I’d just finished reading an essay by a self-confessed Instagram junkie, who after tens of thousands of kilometres travelled and tens of thousands of dollars spent, came to the rather empty conclusion that his FOMO had led him down a self-involved, narcissistic path.
What’s that, you don’t know what FOMO means? OMG and LOL! Fear of missing out, of course, and evidently a thing among our omnipresent millennial class. I’m sure the Germans have a much more elegant word for it, but for our purposes we’ll stick with the acronym.
Anyway, seems our misguided, smartphone-tapping hero traipsed the world over in search of travel-related photo ops that would make his Instagram followers “ooh and ahh” with appreciation (translation: make them jealous as hell). And while he succeeded in posting plenty of pretty pics of empty Caribbean beaches, windswept fiords and underwater coral mazes, after a while he found it all a bit wanting; that when he was standing on a tropical beach in paradise, he wasn’t “feeling it” (his words, not mine).
Having travelled thousands of kilometres, racking up his credit card(s) in the process, enduring all kinds of in-air and overland hardships to get to his destination, he just couldn’t live in the moment and enjoy it. Cue the epiphany.
Which brings us back to my poolside perch, my mojito and that sense of irony.
At that very moment, colleagues of mine were aboard a sailboat cruising the Gulf of California, sipping their own mojitos, munching on fresh ceviche and taking photos of the famed Arch of Cabo San Lucas. I know this because they were posting all these activities and more on Instagram, Snapchat and any number of social media platforms.
Now, was I suffering the anxious pangs of FOMO, distraught in my decision to turn down the kind invite to join them in favour of relaxing by the pool at the all-inclusive and luxurious Pueblo Bonito Pacifica resort?
Far from it. Instead, I had a case of the BTDTs. Been there, done that.
Of course, such a thought is anathema to the 21st Century zeitgeist of so-called “experiential tourism,” where the very notion of going on a holiday to merely sit by the pool, read a book and let your mind and body rest is seen as a dereliction of a traveller’s duty, a passport-pulling offence. Instead, we are encouraged to hop on public transit, interact with locals, shop at bustling markets and eat street food. All the while posting images and pithy descriptions of said adventures on social media to prove to our followers we really are having a good time.
I felt exhausted just thinking about it.
Taking a sip of my mojito and motioning to my butler my desire for another one, I couldn’t help but think that taking public transit, interacting with locals, shopping at bustling markets and eating street food sounded a lot like my workaday life in Metro Vancouver. So the idea of a winter holiday is to do that, just in shorts and sandals? I don’t think so.
What I needed on this holiday was some good old-fashioned R&R. And not just rest and relaxation; but the military-grade sentiment that was the original intent of R&R: rest and recuperation.
As I came to appreciate, this all-inclusive resort is custom-made for just that. The Pacifica Golf & Spa resort is the adult-only property in the sprawling Pueblo Bonito Resort empire in Cabo San Lucas, which counts four other properties, including the family friendly Sunset Beach resort.
Pacifica is located on a secluded beach, with the nearest touchstones of civilization the Quivira golf course and Quivira Los Cabos, an exclusive residential development. As such, Pacifica caters to adults looking for a true getaway, with no beach-going hawkers selling blankets and trinkets, and a selection of on-property restaurants that provide a widerange of first-rate fare, from poolside fish tacos to Baja cuisine. I’ve had my fare share of mediocre food experiences at all-inclusives, but I didn’t have one sub-par meal during my four-night getaway at Pacifica.
Taking things up a notch in the luxury department, I stayed in The Towers, a recent edition to Pacifica, dubbed a “resort-within-a-resort offering an added layer of luxury and sophistication.”
To that end, the 47 guest rooms and suites have private terraces (six of them with their own plunge pools), your own, personalized 24-hour butler service (certified by the British Butler Institute), and access to a VIP Lounge.
In other words, everything is in place for you to simply check-in, unpack, grab your flip-flops, book and sunscreen, find a poolside chair and set your mind free. No need to think about reservations for dinner, how to get into town or any other mind-cluttering exercises that can make a sun-destination holiday as stressful as the everyday world you’re supposedly getting a break from.
Ferris Bueller famously observed that life moves pretty fast, and if you don’t stop and look around once in a while you can miss it.
Stay at this resort and I guarantee you won’t feel like you’re missing out on anything.