I’ve had stupider excuses for picking a vacation destination. Once, I planned my whole summer vacation around eating lunch at Antica Pizzeria Port ‘Alba in Naples, Italy — the world’s first pizza joint. It opened in 1738. I ordered a medium sausage pie and a Coke Light.

It would have been nicer if the cook had taken the cigarette out of his mouth when he made my pizza.

Last week, I took a three-day vacation in Mexico because a buddy told me about a “Pie Lady” who makes the most incredible banana cream pies, and she only sells them walking up and down the sun-splattered beach in Yelapa, a small fishing village that time forgot, 45 miles south of Puerto Vallarta.

BURBANK, CA, Nov 19, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) — Beaches, beautiful weather year-round, and easy living are what most retirees envision for their golden years. Yet a high price for that picture perfect beach home in many popular American sunbelt locations — along with today’s financial turmoil — means that retirement dream may be quickly fading. So what are the options?
Many baby boomers are heading south of the border where not only are beachfront homes easily 50 percent less than in the U.S., but the culture, lifestyle and resort-style communities are all very attractive.
Luma, the first American developed, full-ownership, active adult beachfront community in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, will be a vibrant resort-living community for those 50 years old and over. Phase One opens in late 2009 with spacious, quality-built luxury beachfront condos starting at $500,000.

Sanders co-founded a snowboard company with her husband in 1982 and struggled for years to promote women in a male-dominated sport. When, at 44, she learned to surf, she shifted her focus from the mountains to the ocean and in 1997 launched Las Olas, located in a village on the Pacific coast just north of Puerto Vallarta, with the motto “We make girls out of women.”

On the other hand, the following airports experienced decreases ininternational passenger traffic: Guadalajara with 15.0 thousand fewerinternational passengers, Los Cabos with 15.0 thousand fewer internationalpassengers, Puerto Vallarta with 12.4 thousand fewer international passengers,Guanajuato with 9.1 thousand fewer international passengers, La Paz with2.5 thousand fewer international passengers and Hermosillo with 2.1 thousandfewer international passengers, among others.

When John Huston flew to a fishing village on the Pacific coast of Mexico in the early 1960s to begin filming The Night of the Iguana, his plane had to buzz cattle off a field before it could land. There was only one road to the outside world and in the rainy season it was impassable.

It wasn’t like that for long. Soon Huston’s film invested the area with an aura of steamy tropical romance. Hollywood paparazzi arrived to report on the tempestuous romance between Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and suddenly the little community of Puerto Vallarta became world-famous. From a sleepy backwater of 2,000 souls, it has been transformed into one of the country’s most lively and sophisticated resorts, with hotels and villas springing up along the coast for foreigners and affluent Mexicans, who are drawn by warm waters, legendary sport fishing and surfing. It is where Mexico comes to have fun.

Puerto Vallarta Mexico was the destination for anglers and golfers who participated in this year’s BJ’s Restaurants Hook the Cure Tournament powered by IOTEC. The nearly sold-out tournament took place on Oct. 24th and 25th and reeled in a whopping $450,000 NET for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.