| Central American Hotels |
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Rod IngramVilla Amor Sayulita, Mexico Rooms 32 villas Price $88–$555/night Luxury 3 stars Specialties Surfing, horseback riding, boat tours Contact villaamor.com Parking meters drove Rod Ingram to leave the U.S. for Sayulita, Mexico. Ingram first visited the small fishing town, 40 minutes north of Puerto Vallarta, on a surf expedition in 1974. Soon after, he began buying land while continuing to work as a graphic designer in Laguna Beach, California. But 11 years ago, when he found that surfing his home break of Salt Creek suddenly required feeding a meter, he decided he’d had enough of California. “Suddenly, I had to pay to go surfing,” he says with dismay. “That didn’t jibe with my [sense of] the way life should be.” Ingram, now 56, calls his way of life—the one that brought him to Mexico—the Joy of Being. It’s the same philosophy that guides his 32-villa hotel, Villa Amor, which climbs the steep hillside above the crashing surf of Sayulita. The resort is full of Ingram’s personal touches, like the broad-leaf majahua tree he left growing through one casita and the deliberately worn accents that give the resort a lived-in feel. To wit: Huge rusting colonial-era iron doors mark the entrance to one villa; in others, wooden window frames have been purposely stripped of paint. The rest of the decor, mostly Indian and Moroccan, comes from Ingram’s furniture-import business. Hotel aesthetics aside, it’s hard to argue with Ingram’s take on living, especially when he’s doing it on a longboard at a break just south of the hotel. After catching the wave of the day, a 50-yard, waist-high roller, Ingram paddles back to the lineup and cheers his 15-year-old son, Rodney Jr., into one just like it. The three of us trade off for an hour, then hop into Ingram’s boat and head to shore. “Tomorrow we’ll do it all over again,” he says with his arm draped around his son. RESORT REPORT The surf and 80-degree water are Villa Amor’s—and Sayulita’s—main draw. There are a dozen breaks in the area, ranging from the town’s beginner-friendly wave to El Faro, a 200-yard point break. In Bucerias, on the outskirts of Puerto Vallarta, Coral Reef arranges one-hour lessons from $60. When the surf goes flat, the hotel can arrange three-hour snorkeling, whale-watching, and cave-exploration trips to the nearby Marietta Islands ($38), or horseback rides ($25 per hour) along the region’s empty beaches. |
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