Gay Puerto Vallarta
Puerto Vallarta is among Mexico’s gayest resort towns, made ever-so-slightly gayer by the presence of a gigantic cruise ship filled with a couple of thousand gay and lesbian passengers! This all-gay visiting vessel caused not the least ripple of homophobia in town, as far as I or any of my friends could tell. Handsome Bradford (pictured) and I visited the famous “Blue Chairs” resort and restaurant right on the beach.
It’s actually 4:15 p.m. on the boat but 5:15 p.m. in Puerto Vallarta, the city that appeared outside my stateroom window, as if by magic, earlier in the morning. The ship stays on Pacific Time even though it’s visiting Central Time zone ports of call. You wouldn’t think this would cause a supposedly sophisticated world traveler any problems, but it was hard to get my mind around.
Add to that the exchange rate of dollars to pesos and you have the making of a nearly Einsteinian SAT problem: If you spend X pesos from noon to 1 p.m. on land, how many dollars would you have you spent on the ship, while it’s moving away from you at 25 knots?
Well, never mind that: This funny time-zone parallelism is about the hardest thing you’ll have to worry about while on board. The choices usually include which restaurant in which to eat, which show to attend, which costume makes you look hottest and when exactly to hoist your first cocktail. Tough stuff.
Additionally, gay passengers seem to treat the crew more familiarly and respectfully, calling them by name and looking at them in the eye when they speak with them, which the crew greatly appreciates. The boys drink more (no surprise there), tip bigger and just seem to enjoy interacting with the staff. At night, you’ll find off-duty crew shaking it with the gay fellows.
try to speak with various members of the crew to get their impressions of the gay cruise. Since this cruise is Princess’ first experience with the queer set, their responses were particularly illuminating. The overwhelming sense is that gay cruises are way more fun for the crew than traditional cruises.
Several of the crew mentioned that they’ve seen the gay cruises steaming by them from a distance when they’ve worked aboard other ships and their impression was pure amazement. The gay-chartered cruise ships have spectacular light and sound shows that are a joy to behold from a distance on the high seas.
Many of the crew really appreciates not having a ship full of kids and oldsters. A few of the men mentioned how they now appreciate how it must be for women to be hit on while doing their job.