After cartel violence erupted across the Mexican state of Jalisco this week, images and videos of burning cars and buildings, shuttered storefronts, and cities grinding to a halt hit the news. Flights into and out of Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara were canceled. Residents were told to shelter in place and to ensure they had enough food and water. Tourists were on lockdown and frightened.
I watched it all from far away in Seattle, where I’m currently traveling, as my phone lit up every 15 seconds with messages of panic, forwarded video footage, and WhatsApp voice notes from friends and loved ones on the ground in Puerto Vallarta.
For most people, Puerto Vallarta was just one of several cities mentioned in the news cycle, but for me it was different — it’s been my chosen home base for the last five years.
I travel for a living, but Puerto Vallarta has always been special
My relationship with this city on Mexico’s Pacific coast began more than a decade ago, on my first visit in 2013. At the time, Puerto Vallarta was just another reporting assignment at a beach destination, but something hit differently, and I kept returning. It became the place I ran to whenever I needed a break from real life. Each visit stretched longer. By much of 2024 and 2025, I was there full-time.
When you spend that much time in a place, it stops feeling like an escape and becomes the backdrop of real life. You learn the traffic patterns, see familiar faces at the coffee shops and bars, pick up your mail. Routine sneaks up on you; it becomes home.
You also build relationships. As I watched footage of a still-smoldering flame-licked car skeleton at an intersection just a few blocks from my last address, I listened to voice notes from friends. Fear sounds different when it comes from people you love.
For decades, Puerto Vallarta has been framed as one of Mexico’s easiest international trips
You don’t need to be a seasoned traveler or an adrenaline seeker to feel comfortable there. There are direct flights, large resorts, familiar comforts, and an infrastructure built around welcoming visitors.
Read more stories about Mexico travel
Plus, it’s jaw-droppingly gorgeous with that broad, blue curve of the Bay of Banderas and the jungle-covered crown of peaks that rise behind it.
For many Americans, Vallarta has been shorthand for “safe Mexico.” Could incidents like this change that perception? Inevitably, for some.
Travel decisions are rarely driven by data alone. They are fueled by emotion, personal tolerance for uncertainty, and individual experience. As happens after virtually every high-profile incident in Mexico, reactions tend to fall into familiar categories. There will be people who write Mexico off forever as a country to visit or live. Others will decide to wait and see.
And there will be people, like me, who are already itching to return because they understand something fundamental about moments like this: They’re traumatic precisely because they are disruptions, not constants.
Courtesy of Meagan Drillinger
Like any place anywhere, Puerto Vallarta and Mexico are much more than their worst moments
Violence in Mexico is real. It’s serious. It’s also limited to very specific parts of a massive country. Mexico is vast and regionally complex. Episodes of cartel-related violence, while alarming, do not function as a constant across daily life in most destinations Americans visit.
Moments like Sunday’s violence highlight a perception gap that often shapes how Americans think about risk abroad versus risk at home. Americans tend to discuss violence in Mexico as though it exists in a fundamentally different category of danger. Yet in recent years, the US has developed its own unsettling familiarity with public acts of violence, mass shootings, random attacks, and sudden disruptions.
There is no longer a clean psychological divide between “safe at home” and “dangerous abroad.” We are, increasingly, navigating variations of the same reality.
I have no hesitation about returning to Puerto Vallarta
Living in Puerto Vallarta has not made me dismissive of safety concerns. What happened across Jalisco is devastating and serious. But living there has grounded my understanding of the city in lived experience rather than episodic headlines. It has made moments like Sunday’s violence feel personal without altering my relationship to Puerto Vallarta.
Watching the videos didn’t make me want to run further from Vallarta. If anything, it made me wish I were there with the community I love.
So, when do I plan to return? Soon. I’ll be heading back to Mexico in early March, this time to Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, nearly 1,000 miles away from Puerto Vallarta. (Yes, Mexico is really big.) I have no hesitation about going. And, truthfully, if logistics allowed, I would go back to Puerto Vallarta this week. It’s not just a vacation destination to me, and it’s not just a clip on the news. It is nearly 13 years of memories, friendships, routines, and a sense of home that I have built over time.
Like any place anywhere, Puerto Vallarta and Mexico are larger than their worst moments. Like any place you love, those moments do not erase the steadier, more enduring reality of everyday life that surrounds them.
