Sheltering In Place in Puerto Vallarta

0:15Hi, I'm Ryan Davis. And I'm Kiernan Schmidt. And this is Out of Office, a travel podcast. Bissy Taken. Hey, Kiernan. Oh my God, Ryan. I'm so relieved to hear you're okay. I mean, And people will know from the title, this is like a from the war zone sort of episode. Of course, an actual war has started since you escaped Puerto Vallarta. But I'm extremely relieved that you're here and you're okay. Yeah, no, I am here. I am okay after 36 hours in Puerto Vallarta that were pretty wild. And we're going to I don't want to, like, get too much into that right now because I want to tell I'm going to tell like a play by play.

1:03It's the end of the episode. But the end result is I am OK. I'm here in Dubai where it is very safe. That's not funny. That's not at the time of the recording. The the the state is a department. The State Department has put out an alert that Americans are to leave every Middle Eastern country. Yeah. So folks hope folks are safe out there. it's a very chaotic world we live in absolutely I had several contacts of mine were actively moving through the Dubai airport when the war started and one flew out just three hours before the first bomb dropped so it's pretty harrowing stuff that is when you take any seat they got you know by the bathroom take it I mean it's just total chance I mean it's just you do seem to have you're always like well in Spain you were like just ahead of derailment.

1:56Yeah. And then you were in Puerto Vallarta for how long before the drug cartels started taking out vengeance on the state? A whole week. A whole week. Okay. So again, you were like on the tail end, but I don't want to get too far into it. And it's funny. You do sound like my mom though, who can take like any geography that I'm in and then apply a filter of something bad that has happened there. If you keep constantly going places where you should be wearing a flak jacket, it, then I'm with her. So it's funny because on the outline today, we have the Judy alert here in the A block. A block is, you know, it's industry term for the first section of the podcast here.

2:33And the Judy alert is for, we haven't explained it in a little while. That's Ryan's mom, Judy. You know, Ryan, you know, as a son goes, I don't know, C plus C. And sometimes Judy doesn't know where in the world Ryan is and just wants to know he's safe. So we use the podcast to put the Judy alert out to reassure Judy Davis that Ryan Davis is okay. And it's just funny to me, you put it in the a block here because really this whole episode is the first extended episode long Judy alert. Yes. Um, so, so, you know, and I'll talk about how I told my mom that I was okay, but I currently in Bogota, um, where, you know, stuff like that hasn't happened in like 15 years.

3:16So no, sure. Surely we won't be replacing that regime for 10, 15 more days. Well, they have an election very soon. So they're going to have a new a new leader. So, you know. And who's pulling ahead here? It's somebody from the same party as the current guy. So, you know, a pretty leftist for sure. That doesn't bode well. No. Well, Ryan, before we get into the whole Puerto Vallarta epic, just a couple pieces of housekeeping. Now, last episode, you know, we did do a return trip. It had been a while since we'd done a return trip. Yeah, well, we were both sort of, you know, indisposed. You were trying to escape for your life.

4:04And I was on a ski trip with the family. We probably are due for another Traveling with Kids episode, which got a lot of good feedback, the first one we did after I did the cruise with the kids. And this winter, we've been on an epic journey of trying to make my four-year-old and my six-year-old ski because I didn't learn to ski until I was 30, and it was a huge mistake. It's better to learn when you only have like a foot to fall from the ground when you're four and six years old. So this winter has just been ski school, ski school, ski school. And this was a, you know, bad for the restaurant business, which I'm in, but good for the ski business, an extremely cold and snowy winter here in New England.

4:45It feels like the winters when I was growing up where like the lakes would freeze over, you could ice skate all winter. And there were there was sledding and all the winter activities for like four months of the year. Yeah, I have been following the weather and it does look like it's been very cold. You've got like two massive storms that hit the... Yeah, it's really... I mean, just a week ago was a massive blizzard, but record beating all over the place. You know, two to three feet falling within one day. You had hours where you were accumulating two inches. It's been pretty incredible. I mean, I love the winter and I love snow.

5:19So it's been great. A real throwback. And I rather hope that we have winters like this again. And the irony is for anybody who listened to the skiing episode, you know, for this year, every time I'm out at the New England Resort, which we've done a lot this year. We went to Catamount. We went to Pat's Peak several times, several days in Stowe, Killington, and Pico. I think that's every mountain we've done this year. But all of them have had great conditions and frequently hearing people in line talking about, you know, in ski culture, a lot of people plan their trips out West, especially to Colorado, Montana for skiing during these months.

5:59And it's been a not great ski season out there. It's been unseasonably warm with very little snow. And that could change. I mean, you get one or two big storms and suddenly it's great conditions. But a lot of people were talking about they canceled their trips. Or I know my Instagram is filled with a bunch of travelers who have gone to Colorado and they had a non-cancelable ticket. And they're just taking pictures of muddy mountains with this little stream of manufactured ski snow that they're meant to go down and not inspiring stuff. No, that is not inspiring. Well, you know, at least you got to just drive to your ski retreat.

6:36Yeah, it's great to drive. You know, I mean, you can underestimate how long it takes in New England to get to some of these places. And they're packed. I mean, you really got to. This is where my like type A planning really pays off. When you're trying to get two children and two adults out on a mountain for like the opening of the lift ticket or all these ski schools have very specific requirements and times that you can check the kids in and pick them up. And it really is a logistics game. And for the first two times out this year, the first time Catherine forgot her snow pants and we had to turn around, totally threw off the schedule.

7:10I sped and got us there in time. And then the second time I forgot the children's ski boots. There's just a lot of gear associated. I know I go into this in the episode. Oh, my God. Yeah. There's so much gear involved. By the time you actually have it all on, you're like actually going on the chair. you're just like exhausted because it's like, it takes all your physical energy just to get your feet into those boots. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm, and this is why I'm not a fan. Yeah. That and coordination. I know both. No, I started a little late, you know, Judy didn't take me skiing. I, again, I didn't learn to, but I think my lesson here and that I'll share with the parents out there who are thinking about this for their kids is you just have to bite the bullet and And you have to absolutely commit.

7:56And I would say that this is the first year, this is 2026, this is the first year since the pandemic where I really feel like we were able to get out there. I think we did 10 days in total skiing. We might even be able to manage one or two more if it stays cold here in New England. And you have to commit. And I really recommend these ski schools for the kids, which are a little expensive, but But it's also daycare, basically, so that they're teaching the kids, but then they get playtime and they get food. And it frees you up to go do your adult skiing and, you know, harder slopes. And you come back and the kids have usually bonded with their teachers.

8:34Usually they're like these really lovely high school and college kids who get along great with the kids. And you got to commit the kids. They cry when you drop them off and then they're laughing and happy when you pick them up. And that's the dream scenario. Yeah. If you had dropped me off, I would have been crying when you dropped me off and probably crying more when you picked me up. I want to put you with the four-year-old ski school. It's funny too. All these resorts, they have different names for it. So in one, they're a cub. In the other, they're like a chipmunk. And it's always like a cute little name for what their skill level is.

9:07Yeah. I never got out of ski school when I went. And Charlie at this point is like beyond me. He just did his first black diamond. I'm like, you're six. You're six. Oh, we were raising an Olympian. Be careful. That's expensive. That's expensive. Well, Ryan, I think, I mean, there's quite a tale to tell here. So I would suggest that we, as much as I don't want to say this, I think we should take off and get to Puerto Vallarta so that we can learn about how you escape. Let's go. Tell the cabin crew.

9:37Ryan:Flight attendants, prepare for takeoff, please. All right, Kiernan, we are here in sunny Puerto Vallarta. And to sort of set the scene, you know, we arrived about the Sunday before the Sunday we're going to be talking about. And who's we? Me and my boyfriend, David. And we got an Airbnb in Zona Romantica, which is the gayborhood. So Puerto Vallarta is a pretty big city. It's got like 300 ,000 residents and there's different sections. There's like the northern part, which is sort of like the high end hotel zone, like with all the resorts. And that's where like a lot of families will go when they're vacationing.

10:17Then there's sort of the middle kind of zone, which is where like people actually live. There's like, you know, more lower scale hotels. And then there's Zona Romantica. And that's sort of the gayborhood where there's just a lot of Airbnbs and restaurants and obviously bars. And so that's sort of how the city is divided. So, you know, we got into Puerto Verde on Sunday and had like a super normal week. So like a normal week in Puerto Vallarta, my friend Seth Sykes from New York had a cabaret show that we went to at Act 2 PV. And there's a lot of like little cabaret and music venues in the city.

10:57So there's always a lot to see. So that was that was a lot of fun. And then, you know, we went to dinner at the Iguana and the Iguana is this beautiful restaurant in the mansion that Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton built in Puerto Vallarta after they filmed a movie called Night at the Iguana. They fell in love with Puerto Vallarta and they basically invited a lot of their rich L.A. friends to come and build mansions there. So there's this like little neighborhood called Gringo Gulch. That sounds like somewhere you belong. That overlooks the bay. So had a lovely dinner there. It's got like a real kind of old Hollywood vibe.

11:36You know, when you walk up the grand stairs, there's a huge oil portrait of, you know, Elizabeth and her diamonds. So it's a super cool place. and then just you know a couple beach days at the the sapphire beach club and you you know you show up about 10 30 it's a beach club you know like you would find in in a resort where they're you know they have a full menu and they provide you with the towels and everything you need just kind of just show up um and i love i love spending time there between the ocean the pool you know and then we hit up like the bar scene like there's a really cool bar called paco's ranch which has like this massive um drag show every night at midnight where they've got i mean you're really painting a big like gay and entertainment scene that i didn't realize was there i you know i i think of mostly beach beach life yeah no it's it's a you know it is it is a town that's got beach all day and then and then you know a lot to do in the evenings um so yeah so pacos ranch is always a lot of fun so you know everything's normal we go to my friend don's uh hotel casa cupola which is is sort of up the the mountain yeah i forgot you have that place there right right right yeah and they've got a great pool club and they do um you know uh concerts up there we saw we saw a concert so you know everything was was really normal um and we had a great saturday night and we in you know and we went to bed uh thinking tomorrow we're gonna wake up have a little food and catch our afternoon flight you know uh kind of back to to to bocata it was really the plan.

13:12So here it comes. We wake up, it's Sunday morning, a quiet morning, you know, getting dressed for church, I assume. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thinking about getting dressed for a couple of beautiful churches in Puerto Vallarta. I bet, I bet. And, you know, you start to get like a burning sensation on your skin when you go near them. So, so we hear, we start to, we hear these sort of like pops and explosions in the background. And, and one of the things I should say about Puerto Verita is they're really into fireworks. In fact, every single night, there is a fake pirate ship where families go and the pirates take over the ship.

13:49And then there's like a Disney-esque pirate show in the ship. Oh, my God. It sounds amazing. And then it ends with like this big fireworks display. I bet flights are pretty cheap for me to take the kids there right now. Definitely. So, you know, there's five. Have you done the pirate music? Don't just skip by this pirate review. This is this is like Kieran and fodder here. No, no, no. I've never been on the pirate on the ship. But every night you see at the end, you know, when the pirates are defeated, there's fireworks. So every night there's fireworks in Puerto Vallarta from the pirate ship.

14:19And then, you know, independent, independent firework folks. So in my mind, I'm like, OK, there's some, you know, fireworks going on pretty early on a Sunday. Little early pirate show. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it's like a brunch pirate show. they've adjusted their schedule you know who knows um but we don't think anything of it and then i get a message uh from my friend uh chase um uh acquaintance of the pot yeah yeah who's also uh in in town um you know because one of the things he's in puerto vallarta as well yeah and my friends i mean the thing about puerto vallarta is there's so many new yorkers like i'm bumping you know i know so many people who are in town it's sort of like being in hell's kitchen um especially this time of the year.

15:03So I get a text from Chase and he's like, Hey, you know, you've got a, there's been a couple car bombs in the city. And so my first thought is like, okay, these things happen in, in Mexico. Sometimes I look at the news, it's like a report of like, you know, two car bombs and they're not anywhere near sort of the hotel zones or the, and you don't have a car there. So you're okay. Yeah. And we're like not leaving for hours. So the next couple, you know, next few hours. Cause your flight is that day. Yeah. Our flight is that day. So, you know, we think let's go get some food and we'll figure out, you know, what to do.

15:41Yeah. So. And let's go take in some fireworks. We'll head right to those explosions. That's a good idea. So we, we, we go down and, and, and, you know, things are kind of normal in the Malacan, which is sort of the boardwalk. Uh, you know, we're about a five minute walk from there and find a place that has a big breakfast buffet i love a breakfast buffet so we pop in and you know we start um you know it seems pretty normal uh uh people having a good time you know having mimosas is it like locals that are having a good time or is it the new yorkers are talking i mean yeah this is all like um it's this is mostly a crowd of like you know uh tourists it's like the tourists So we're having this this brunch and then this kind of like random man comes up to us, random gringo guy.

16:28And he's like, just want to make sure you know what's happening. And we're like, yeah, we're we're we saw the news. We know there's a bottomless Mamosa. I'm thinking about the frittata. But this guy who's sort of a MAGA adjacent look is going around telling everybody, you know, what's happening. And so, you know, I'm on Twitter. I'm talking to Chase and a couple other friends who are around. And I start to notice that instead of like there being fewer car bombs, there are more car bombs happening. And it seems like the geography of the situation is really rapidly expanding, you know, outside of Jalisco, in Guadalajara, you know, in many other Mexican states.

17:09And that's when news breaks that overnight the Mexican government had, you know, killed one of the main cartel leaders in the country. um so we start you know i begin to get a feeling that like all right like this feel this brunch setting is actually not reality and there's something else happening that is bigger okay than us that white privilege really starts to dial up at that point so i'm like david let's get the check let's get out of here you know take it and we start to notice that everything is taking a little longer there's a little more of a anxious look in the eyes people are sort of army crawling across the floor yeah yeah um their servers are starting to get a little more kind of like uh wide-eyed and and and uh do they seem to know what's going on like do you know you said the like the americans going around telling you does the restaurant staff seem to like you know surely their information is better than yours that you're getting less delayed than yours yes so david's like david's like overhearing some of their spanish and and and telling me like what they're saying like they're they're saying that they've heard this they've heard that so the restaurant staff is definitely i mean they're not they're not trying to freak out the guest but amongst themselves there's a feeling of anxiety that seems to be growing yeah okay so we leave and we walk by an oxo uh tip well did you tip well i hope we tipped very well i bet i hope you did yeah yeah 15 knock so we we oh my god we leave we leave and in the same building as the hotel that we had the brunch at there's a oxo which is like their 7-eleven and i debate if we should go in and just grab some water or something but again i'm not thinking this is going to be a super prolonged situation so we we skip it and you're thinking you're about to leave yeah we're about to leave so we go back to the house and um the apartment we come upstairs about 15 20 minutes goes by we're packing i'm messaging my airbnb host being like hey we're going to be leaving soon um and then we look out the window and the oxo we just walked by is completely in flames um oh my god and burning and i'm like oh wow this is you know this is actually happening and about that time in your face as well yeah and about that time my airbnb host writes back and she goes do not leave the house it's do not go outside uh wow and i'm like oh okay this is this is a whole other situation so So pretty soon after that, the Mexican government issues this shelter in place order, which basically tells folks not to leave.

19:43And when commerce starts to shut down in Mexico, that's a sign of bad things. Like when the taco vendors are shutting down, when the people are selling T-shirts. So we're watching from our window, the entire city in basically in a 45 minute kind of like block going from being an active beach town with all that entails to being like a completely shut down, empty kind of like ghost of a city with some really random kind of boomers, retirees who live there, who just seem like, you know what, we've we're 80. what are they going to do? And who are still kind of like walking, doing their like calisthenics, like on the, on the Malakon.

20:23But most folks have, have gone inside. So we go up to the roof of the apartment where there is like a pool. And this is the first time we meet all the other people who are like in the building for the weekend. And it's a, you know, it's a mix of like some gay tourists, some straight tourists, you know, all tourists. So, cause this building's basically Airbnb. And as we, as we start looking around, you know, we notice instead of the one or two fires that were there previously, there's probably nine or 10 kind of like, uh, fires happening all around the building. Um, okay. I have a question at this point, which is like, do you at all start going to like, Holy shit, where do we go if this building catches on fire?

21:11Yeah. That becomes sort of the conversation of the, the guests on the building, like what, what happens if this building catches on fire? So we're all on the internet getting information, you know, we're starting, we're seeing like what's happening. So the, so basically. I mean, the internet is a great place for reliable information. Well, that becomes, that becomes part of this, part of this story. Right. So we are reading like a lot of real news. So the cartels are burning cars or burning buses. They're blocking, they're blocking roads. They're burning OXOs. People are reporting they're burning pharmacies.

21:43Someone was reporting that the Costco is on fire, which is a huge building. Some of this is true. Some of this is not true. At the same time, there's stuff happening online showing us that the airport in Guadalajara has been taken over by cartel and that they burned an airplane. Neither of these things happened, right? The cartel did not take over the airport. They did not burn an airplane. How about the Costco? Did they burn the Costco? No, they burned a bunch of cars in front of the Costco. Because I got to say, a Costco, knowing that there's a Costco, that might have been a place that I would think to go.

22:20We all talked about like, hey, you know, being locked in the Costco, you've got wine, you've got big screen TVs, you know, you've got plenty of food. And it's huge. And you got to think a big international company like Costco would be willing to get security there. They probably have a fire system in place. uh yeah i i think a costco plus if a fire starts usually a lot of high quality meats that you could roast up and you know you could live on that for a week or two yeah yeah so we hadn't started thinking about the food situation yet but as the hours were on and we are like running out of of drinking water um because you know oh because you can't drink the faucet water right because we're staying in an airbnb we're we're three minutes from a restaurant we've eaten Now, like every meal, you know, there's no, have nothing in the apartment, like at all, like zero things.

23:13Now, one of the other folks who was in the apartment, he comes to Puerto Verde every summer for three months. And he was in the middle of his three months and there's a Starbucks that's like a block away. So he had gone that morning and all the Starbucks kids were kind of like freaking out about where they were going to go. And he said, come hang out on the roof and we'll figure it out from there. You don't want to be hanging out with the Starbucks crowd. No, here's what happens though, is all these kids who work at Starbucks, they come over and as the day wears on, they go back to Starbucks and they bring back all the sandwiches, all the pastries.

23:52They bring back all the stuff from the Starbucks. They're employees of the Starbucks, right? We're going to tag Starbucks on Twitter when this episode's revealed because I think you owe them a little money. Well, this becomes very important because as the night wears on, the day starts. So let me let me sort of big climactic moment is we're on the roof and we haven't seen any police response, any military. It's not like in New York where if something like this went down, there would be sirens endlessly. Yeah, it would be like they would, you know, the new NYPD would look like the army. It would be indistinguishable from that kind of response.

24:28So there's no but there's no response. And the government has decided, for better or for worse, because the cartel is not actually killing anyone, I shouldn't say that. There was a battle with police and many, many officers died tragically. But they were going out of their way to not kill tourists or civilians, right? Like it seemed obvious from the reporting that they were showing that they were powerful without – They're trying to create chaos without maximizing civilian death. Yeah, they were saying we could kill civilians, but we are not. So the big moment, so the government's not engaging with these folks on the street, which I think is actually probably a good idea because, you know, shootout in the romantic zone would kill a lot more civilians than a burning oxo, right?

25:16I have another question. At this moment, so Starbucks kids have returned with food and water. You're watching the fires. You're not hearing a response from police and military. Where is your fear level on a zero to 10, 10 being the max? you know it peaked it peaked a little earlier in the afternoon once we realized that they were they were they were burning fewer buildings like in the fires were not like spreading like they were they were cars and they in the car and i had no idea that you burn a little pinto the amount of smoke from that one car is astonishing like it looks like there's gas in there so that helps yeah and also they were burning buses and tractor trailers so and those things uh big they're big Okay, let me rephrase my question.

26:03At the scariest moment, where were you on zero to ten? Because you're not a famously brave man. No, I was not super frightened. Wow. Yeah, yeah. The peak moment was when this fire got really, it looked like it was really close. We had to close all the windows in the apartment and this was a lot of smoke. That was like a solid half an hour where we were like, is this fire going to travel? yeah but once once the fire started dying down that was like super close to us the main concern became like okay how are we going to eat how are we going to drink because it's like is that a is that a seven on the scale i just want to get a sense six or seven six or seven okay six wow i said okay yeah all right i i would have been at a nine so the streets are quieting down um and all of a sudden this huge um mexican helicopter um military helicopter i could tell that it was military because there were two big men with guns on each side now i you know i hope they were the good guys i assume the cartels didn't have access to this incredible you know technology but maybe they do right yeah he flew over us quite a few times i took a video of it and that's uh ended up the how i got the reuters interview or talk about in a little bit but um so that was the first time we had seen any kind of government like oh the mexican government exists there you know there's a helicopter.

27:28Things quieted down. Was there a fire response? Because the fires are dying down. Is that just because the fire? Were there people fighting the fires? When the OXO went on fire, the people, literally the civilians from that apartment complex, they put the fire out. There's no governmental response whatsoever. So I end up going outside because more and more people are kind of like wandering the streets looking for food and water, but everything is closed. There's one grocery store, not even a grocery store. It's like a little side deli. And there's a line of about, I don't know, 300 people in front of this little deli.

28:11And they're letting one person in at a time by opening up their massive security gate, letting the one person in and closing it. So in my mind, I'm like, okay, even if I get in this line in three hours when I get to the front, is there going to be anything left in this little store? So my little outside trip to find food did not work out. But I saw all these multiple burned down Oxos. I saw burned out cars. It was like, wow, this stuff was happening while we were inside. So I go back to David and I'm like, I've failed to secure any food or water. This is where Ryan's true. Yeah. The resourcefulness of Ryan.

28:57Come back. Sorry, man. I got nothing. So I go back up to the roof to the Starbucks kids and I'm like, hey, you don't know me, but please. Yep. We're leaning on the locals. We're hungry. Oh, my God. We're hungry. Sorry. Our morning brunch. We've just come off. the drunkenness from our morning mimosas. Is there anything you can do to help us poor foreigners? So they were nice enough to give us sandwiches and pastries and coffee. Oh, they weren't offering this. I thought because you guys took them in, they brought the stuff for everybody. No, we didn't take them in. Some other person who knew them took them.

29:34Sure, but you're all in the same place. Are you really all in it? They're on top of Starbucks sandwiches and waters, and they're not offering it. Was there any coffee? Yeah, so we got all that. so they they let it did you ever did you ever think of going over and go do you have anything other than starbucks that's what i well i you know we made a lot of coffee because we still didn't have any water um but you got you got the swimming pool yeah well gosh it didn't get that it didn't get that grim the grimmest thing was i reckon i found out in our freezer there was a big bag of ice cubes and the ice cubes were made with purified water so throughout the night we're like Good move.

30:11We're like sucking on ice cubes. That's like something out of a horror movie that the dad realizes, guys, we can suck on the ice cubes. Hey, those were amazing. I was so thirsty. I bet. I bet. No, it sounds like it was really tough. Yeah. So. I love that this is still day one. Yes. So we go to bed and things are calming down. Wait, wait. What's going on with your flight? Oh, it's all been canceled. And are they giving any guidance? Or is it just like, hey, you don't come to the airport? Well, Aeromexico said don't come to the airport today, but they rescheduled us for, you know, ambitiously, I thought, for the next afternoon.