I am fortunate that, due to my job, we have an annual team-building meeting, which is partly work and partly like a vacation.

Last year it was canceled due to the pandemic. This year, however, it was organized in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

There was an idea to avoid jet lag, so two of us stayed up all Friday night playing on Xbox until the airport transfer arrived at dawn. I managed to sleep almost the entire way to Budapest, and then we flew to Amsterdam, where I slept through the whole flight. After a short wait, we transferred and continued to Mexico City. This was the longest part of the journey, 11 hours. Thanks to skipping a night of sleep, I managed to rest quite a bit during this leg as well. Mexico City was the tricky part of the trip because we had little time to transfer. The first problem was that the airline misplaced the luggage of three out of six of us. It took quite a while to get this information deliver to us. We rushed to catch the connection, only to face another hurdle. At the security check, two items in our carry-on bags were flagged. One was the gift wines, and the other was a photography accessory, a glass orb. I thought it would be great for some stunning photos, considering I might not visit Mexico again. I didn’t foresee it being an issue at security. It was. The Mexican airport official didn’t speak much English and kept mentioning “documentos.” He looked at the glass orb with confusion, tossed it around, and didn’t understand it was just a simple glass orb for photography. So, just to be sure, they took the wines and the orb. These unexpected events delayed us enough to miss our connection.

Since there were no more flights that day, we found a cheap hotel near the airport, slept a bit, and continued our journey to Puerto Vallarta the next morning. This was a short flight, but the weather was vastly different. In Mexico City, we still needed sweaters, but Puerto Vallarta had pleasant summer weather with some extra humidity. A car took us from the airport to the hotel. The journey took over 24 hours, but we avoided jet lag, so we could enjoy Sunday right away. Except for the three people whose luggage was lost by the airline Based on previous experiences, we traveled in comfortable, long tracksuits from the cold in Hungary. We shared what we could with the others to make them more comfortable. Sunday was spent getting acquainted with the place, and the American colleagues arrived in the meantime. If I remember correctly, the luggage issue was resolved by Monday, and their luggage reached Puerto Vallarta.

The schedule wasn’t too complicated. The hotel was a large complex with its own beach. We had meetings in the morning, then free time on the hotel grounds. From noon to 11 PM, we had unlimited drinks, so we enjoyed ourselves. I think I drank more cocktails in those few days than I have in my entire life, but we tried to keep it reasonable.

The place was beautiful, and the weather was perfect, always above 30°C. The ocean also felt around 30°C. During low tide, the water pooled in holes on the beach and got even warmer. I lay in it a few times and could easily imagine it being around 40°C. Free time was mostly spent alternating between the pool and the ocean, chatting, and drinking cocktails. Night swimming in the ocean was very atmospheric, especially on this stretch of beach where you had to walk about 50 meters to be fully submerged.

We had three restaurants to choose from. I tried to sample as many dishes as possible. Except for two, everything was great. My only issue with those two was that they were too spicy for my taste. We said goodbye to the others on Thursday, marking the end of the company program. But we planned to stay a few more days at our own expense to do some sightseeing. We flew back to Mexico City from Puerto Vallarta, where we had our next accommodation booked. More on that in the next part. Meanwhile, here are some photos from Punta Mita.