Your Mexican Dream Life, Without the Chaos: Shasta Townsend on Puerto Vallarta
Puerto Vallarta keeps coming up.
In every queer expat Facebook group. In every "where should I move?" conversation. In every daydream you're having at your desk right now.
Shasta Townsend actually did it. Moved there. Built a life. And in this episode, she gives you the version the Instagram accounts won't.
The real one.
Not the "paradise found" version. Not the "don't come, it's terrible" version either.
The honest one. With actual numbers.
We talk about the Romantic Zone — what it is, what it isn't, and what it's becoming as the city grows faster than its infrastructure can handle…
The real cost of living (Shasta gives you figures, not vibes)…
The bureaucracy of actually moving to Mexico — it's real, it's annoying, and it's survivable if you know what to expect…
Healthcare. Safety. The social scene. How you find your people when you land.
And the thing most PV cheerleaders won't say: the city is changing. Fast. What worked five years ago doesn't always work now. The vibe is shifting. Some of it is great. Some of it requires trade-offs you should know about before you sign a lease.
Shasta doesn't sell you on Puerto Vallarta.
She gives you enough truth to figure out whether it's actually right for you — or whether you should be looking somewhere else.
Either way, you'll leave this episode with the clearest picture of queer expat life in Mexico that anyone's put together. No fantasies. No horror stories. Just the real thing.
Watch the Episode here
Listen to the Podcast here
Your Mexican Dream Life, Without the Chaos: Shasta Townsend on Puerto Vallarta
Meet Shasta Townsend, the expat whisper who turned moving to Mexico into an actual system. After relocating in 2021, she documented every wild detail so you don't have to turn to learning through face palm moments like she did. Now, she helps LGBTQAI folks and expats make their Mexican dream real without the usual chaos, confusion, or costly mistakes. Her cat Bob made it safely, too. He goes by Roberto now. This is Pride Nomad Unleashed where you're Mexican dream life meets someone who knows how to make it happen.
Ladies and gentlemen, Shasta.
You roll your Rs very well.
Thank you. I have a very nimble tongue, but that's another conversation for a completely different episode. I don't know where I learned that from but, anyway, hi.
Ola.
You are in Puerto Vallarta.
Escaping Corporate Chaos For Mexican Sunshine
I am. I've been living here for almost four years. I moved here from Canada and I moved at the height of COVID in good old Canada. I live outside Puerto Vallarta and have been helping people relocate, do real estate, and figure out Mexico. It's been amazing.
How did that evolve for you? You went down to PV for a reason. We'll either call it Puerto Vallarta or PV, as the locals.
I am cisgender. I'm an ally. My husband and I have been talking about moving to a foreign country. We were entrepreneurs in Canada. We had a bunch of real estate holdings, then that timeline accelerated because of what was going on during COVID in Canada. If you don't know, it was, as I say, a crappy show. That was at a challenging place to be in and operate business. My seven-figure business closed by no fault of my own.
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You can imagine reading this. Many of us entrepreneurs were devastated. My timeline was accelerated. Originally, my husband and I were thinking about moving to Italy, then Italy was in a bit of a serious lockdown situation also. We've been to Mexico quite extensively and we thought, “Let's go to Mexico and ride out what's happening. We'll go for like 6 or 12 months,” and four years later, here we are. We had been to this area.
I traveled quite a bit in Mexico before we moved here, but we chose the PV area because coming from Inland Canada and living on the West Coast like the Pacific Coast, Mexico dream was something that we wanted. The other reason is we knew that there was a great mixture of what we call expat culture, like services. You go to yoga or get your hair done.
You get holistic therapy treatments and yet also go for like $1 tacos. My husband and I both wanted to live somewhere where we could learn another language, which we have, and we could be a part of culture. We could learn from other people. I say it's thirteen months of sunshine, so you can't go wrong in Mexico.
That's awesome. I'm just curious. Where in Canada were you?
I was just outside Toronto.
We talked about that before. A big switch and big difference. For those of us that are either digital nomad, want to be expats or just going to pass through. What makes PV aside from thirteen months of sunshine, so incredible? I know it's got a giant gay, and I'm using gay as the overarching term for LGBTQ+AI, much less fewer syllables for me because I'm on a syllable suspension for the moment. What's so incredible about Puerto Vallarta?
Navigating The Top Queer Destination
As you just mentioned, Puerto Vallarta is the number one gay tourism destination in the world as of the moment. It is an amazingly diverse culture. We have an area in PV that’s called the Zona Romántica or Romantic Zone, which is the number one gay destination relocation. I call it literally like the happiest place on Earth. It's amazing.
Not all of Puerto Vallarta is amazing. Not all-all of it. There's always areas that we're not going to go into but, by and large, even if you're reading this or watching this, and you’re like, “I want to be in PV, but I don't know if I want to be in the Romantic Zone.” Truthfully, there's so many interesting neighborhoods. Mexican people, the nationals are very warm and very welcoming. You have this diverse expat community.
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A lot of people that are in Puerto Vallarta like culture. They like art, food, top shelf tequila, amazing weather and amazing landscapes. The interesting thing about PV, I would say it has something for everybody. It does. Whether you want to go golfing all day or clubbing all day or all night or you want to like to sit on the beach or go to art classes or cooking classes or learn Spanish. You can. The interesting thing about Puerto Vallarta when people think about it is they tend to think about this one area, the city.
Puerto Vallarta is on the Bay of Banderas. The Bay of Banderas is the third biggest bay in the world. It's a fairly large geographical location. We have PV itself, which is if you flew into the airport, it's just North in Puerto Vallarta then go through an old town into the Romantic Zone in itself, then you're into luxury areas called Conchas Chinas in the map. It’s like sensational properties. From the airport, if you go North, we can get to areas called Nuevo Vallarta or Nuevo Nayarit, and Bucerias, where I live.
If you follow the highway all the way out to Punta Mita, which is the playground of the rich and famous. It's like the Kardashians have a home and all the A-listers go there. We talked about Puerto Vallarta. Often many of us who live here are thinking of moving here. It's not just the city of Puerto Vallarta. There's a whole area. That's why it's also very diverse. You can find something for everybody.
The nice thing also, if I can say, this is not like a gay ghetto area where you can only go to the Romantic Zone and feel safe or you can only go to the Romantic Zone and meet the people. I live in Bucerias. It's North. It's in a whole other state. It's literally just across the river. It's about 40 minutes for me to get into the Romantic Zone. I have basically every week, be it gay, lesbian, trans, either individuals, couples or families, that are relocating here or moving here or staying here for a while as digital nomads.
Securing Legal Protections And Human Rights
If you're reading and thinking, “I want to go to PV but I don't know if I want to be right there.” It's this massive, amazing area. The final thing I'll say about this is that PV, the city, is in the state of Jalisco and right next to it, where I live is Nayarit, so the bay runs through two states here in Mexico. Both of those states have the highest human rights ratings in Mexico. It means that, Mexico has protected gay marriage and has protected trans rights. It protects gay adoptions. I never have a fear when I talk to people. It's a great area to be in.
Again, we have this massive geographical location and everything in terms of housing. You can get one bedroom in Romantic Zone maybe for like $1,500 all the way up to a month. I'm talking US, all the way up to like $20,000. It's a very welcoming, diverse, fabulous location and we have 5G internet. People always ask me, “What's the internet like there?” I say, “We have 5G. It’s amazing.”
That’s important. By the way, the best one reason why Mexico is eighteen on our nomad index. The ranks are high. Index relates to not just Wi-Fi and digital nomad visas and all that sort of thing. We merge that with 60% of the rating depending upon how accepting the country is for gay LGBTQ+ rights. Eighteen is pretty damn high. We cover 65 different countries in the index. A lot of other countries are not on the index no matter how good they may be for digital Nomads. I know you said away from downtown PV. How was it to get around? To live there, you probably own a car, but I'm going to come in. I'm going to spend three weeks, a month as a nomad there. What's public transportation like? How do you get around?
There's great public transportation. What people tend to do is, the truth is, like any city, there's neighborhoods. I'm happy to talk about that if you want to further this conversation. There's different neighborhoods that you may come to and decide, “This is going to be a great place.” You're probably going to spend your time and walk around those neighborhoods and it's very walkable. For the first couple years that I lived here, I didn't have a vehicle. I just bought a vehicle. I lived in Bucerias, so I just walked everywhere.
Mastering Public Transit And Local Apps
Now, if I want to go downtown, you can hop on a bus. You can also get what they call Colectivos. They're little white buses. They kind of drive like crazy people, but literally you can get on them for Mex$ 20, which is a dollar in the US. They go all over the place all the time. Now, the other thing about Mexico is that we have something called InDrive. It's basically Mexico's version of Uber. We do also have Uber here but InDrive is a little different. You set the rate on InDrive. You can put it in and you can say, “I'm going from, let's say Bucerias to Old town.” It's probably half an hour and I probably put in like, say Mex$500. It's about $25 US and you got to think about that. That's like in the US or Canada going that far, will cost like $150.
Say you put in Mex$500 and the drivers will bid on that. They'll come back to you and say, “I'll do it for Mex$510 or $480 or whatever it is.” That's another great app for those of you reading. It's called InDrive. You can also use Uber. Now, the other thing to keep in mind is that private drivers, which sounds very shi-shi, are pretty accessible in Mexico. I have a private driver and he helped me a lot when I first moved down here.
He speaks English and Spanish perfectly. I would send him a WhatsApp message. If you're reading and you're thinking about Mexico, you need Whatsapp. Everybody in Mexico is on WhatsApp. They won't even answer your phone call or email. Only WhatsApp people. It's free and it's encrypted. I would send him a message saying, “I want to go to Leprous,” and he'd be like, “I'm coming to get you in fifteen minutes or whatever. It's going to be like Mex$150.” You'll meet people but to start with, for sure, public transportation such as InDrive and Uber are completely accessible. It’s way less financially than what we would be paying for transportation in the US and Canada in my experience.
As a newbie to come down, you have a couple of these resources on the website, but for people that are kind of watching and want to get a perspective of, “I'm going to go to Puerto Vallarta. I'll be there for a couple weeks. I'm not going as a tourist. Although I will be a tourist, I'm going to go. I got a business to run.”
I'm talking about myself now that I'm thinking about it. I still got to work during the day so the 5G makes a difference, but where do I want to put myself so that I can experience the culture and not be in turista zone because that's not the real Puerto Vallarta. That's the cruise ship people. Also, for me, being in the gay zone is important because I want to meet people. I know no one else anywhere else. I'm here leaving it to your hands, mom.
For sure. Zona Romántica or Romantic Zone is a great place to land. You're going to meet a tons of people. There are business people like us working during the day and living it up at night. If we think of Zona Romántica, which is so South of the airport. If you go South from Zona Romántica or Romantic Zone, you hit a neighborhood called Amapas. Now, I call it mid-level luxury. It's not like $50 million houses, but for those of you that want a little more upscale, you're literally right on the ocean with sensational views. You can probably rent a property there for $3,000 to $4,000, for sure but sensational, then you can pop right into the Romantic Zone. That's an insider tip.
You can also go a little bit. It's not mountainous. The way we think of it is the Rocky Mountains, but they're called mountains here. From the Romantic Zone, if you think about going from the ocean back towards the mountains of Sierra Madre, there's another area called Alta Vista, which means high views and that would also be a place to look for rentals. There, you're going to get rentals for less. You're going to probably get a rental for like $1,050. This is kind of a Romantic Zone area.
If you go a little past Old Town, I wouldn't stay in the old town. It's a great place to stay as a tourist as you just said, but it’s not a place for you to stay as a digital nomad. It's busy. It's super touristy. You're getting all kinds of international and also national tourists. If you go past Old Town, there's a neighborhood that's turning over, meaning it hasn't lost its Mexican charm. It's called Cinco Diciembre, so it's the 5th of December. You'll see in Puerto Vallarta, there's tons of things named after dates. If you're reading or watching this, when you put in your search, put in literally Cinco Diciembre.
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Selecting Your Ideal Expat Neighborhood
You go a little bit past that and you get into one of my favorite areas in Puerto Vallarta, which is called Versalles. Now, I like Versalles for those of you that are reading. It's not touristy at all but it is a neighborhood that when I first moved to Puerto Vallarta was a little sketch and it has turned over. You still have some Mexican charm. These local amazing Mexican restaurants. You have the best Thai restaurant that you've ever been to like Asian fusion, amazing Sushi, cool bars, and an English books store.
You can walk through this neighborhood and find whether it's shorter term rentals or longer term rentals. It's called Versalles. It's not on the beach. You would probably be a 10 or 15 minute walk down to the ocean. That's something to keep in mind. The closer kind of often you get to the ocean, the little bit more touristy it is when you start to get back a tiny bit. Cinco Diciembre, to recap this, Versailles is a great neighborhood, and Romantic Zone, which we've talked about.
If you want to come out of Puerto Vallarta and you come into either Nuevo Nayarit or Bucerias, these are areas where we get some tourism for sure but there's a lot of digital nomads, a lot of expats and a lot of people that live here full-time. Those are neighborhoods. While you're reading, if this is okay, Ken, here's two areas I would suggest you avoid. One is the Old Town. You're going to go to it. You're going to visit it, and walk along the Malecon, which is the boardwalk. You're going to see all the old stuff but again, it's super touristy.
The other area is the Marina in Vallarta and hotel zone. They're kind of back-to-back. Why not that? It is super touristy and it's where our mega folks tend to go. Skip it. They're not all. I have friends that live in the marina and they're lovely. They're not of that mindset. Largely, there's a big number more of that mindset. Overall, Puerto Vallarta and out here in the bay, that's not the mindset. In fact, people are quite intolerant of intolerance but you will get pockets in the Marina that are a little more mega shouting at the bars and crap like that I literally have no time for.
Avoid Old Town in terms of stays and a good place to visit is Marina. You can walk through for sure. You'd be totally fine, totally safe but you're probably going to hear stuff that is intolerable in my world. It’s super gringo built. Literally no one speaks Spanish. It's not going to get any Mexican culture. Check it out, but it's often areas where, for my gay clients, I say, “Don't even go to those places because you're not going to like it.”
One of the things I want to bring us to, let's talk about business for a few minutes. In terms of a digital nomad community, is there any entrepreneurship group? Is there any culture where entrepreneurs hang out together?
It's growing. They are investing in entrepreneur groups down here. A group that I've just started that we're going to be starting up is like a real estate investing group. I’m bringing people together to educate them around. Do I want to? How do I do that if I invest in real estate in Mexico? The great thing, though, I will say this. Whether it's an entrepreneurial group, which is important, and what is happening. They do happen for sure or whatever the interest is that you have also. There are people or groups that you will meet.
The only thing about Mexico is it’s an interesting culture. Even as expats, I do a lot online. I put a lot of stuff out there, but it's often a like, who you know kind of thing. It's a very introductory type of thing. If you're reading and you come, reach out to me. I have no issue with that. Some of the made Facebook groups for Puerto Vallarta. You got to take them all with a grain of salt because let's say you posted, “I'm looking to find out where the entrepreneur groups are.” You're going to get some great feedback and you're going to get, as always, a few snarky people who have nothing else to do but troll Facebook, basically.
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Don't judge anyone of Puerto Vallarta by the Facebook trolls that sometimes come up in the Facebook groups. Also, you and I talked about this before. There's a real opportunity in this area. There's amazing people here, amazing businesses, amazing opportunities, amazing expats, and amazing digital nomads but if you're like, “I want to go down there and connect with people or even start something.” There's hunger and a huge opportunity.
As I said, things have been a little bit more, let's call it old school, which has its place for sure and everything. Relationships are still the number one business builder but there's opportunities for those of us that want to grow something. We want to put out more stronger containers, let's say, for entrepreneurship or relationship building. There's a huge opportunity in this area for that.
I get that impression. I want to ask you a couple more things because we’re going to land the plane at the Puerto Vallarta Airport. Real estate. I've been an investor for eons. I used to train real investors for many years in the US and Canada. Before I forget, can I get Clamato juice in Puerto Vallarta?
You can. Isn't that crazy? Mexicans love clamato juice.
Awesome. It's interesting you should say it that way, because in Sydney, you can't get it. In Australia, you cannot get Clamato at all. For those of you watching, Clamato is the integral ingredient for what, Shasta?
Caesars.
I don't drink but I drink. I love it. You can get in Florida. I’m with my mom's and she's 91, so I'm celebrating with her. We can get at the grocery store because all the French Canadians that come down or at least used to come down. Now, things have shifted. In Sydney, when I bought Clamato juice, it was shipped over from guess where? Mexico. I was like, “That's interesting.” Anyway, backtracking. Having trained investors for so long, what would you say are the real estate opportunities there?
Capitalizing On High Yield Real Estate
There's so many real estate opportunities here and I say that there are three reasons. One, price comparison. We do apple to apple comparison. I did a comparison. I did a big real estate training for a group in Canada and I said, “If you bought an oceanfront, three bedroom penthouse in Vancouver. If you could even find one, it'd be CAD$3.5 million. If I bought the same one in Miami, it'd be US$2.2 million. The same one in Puerto Vallarta, is under Mex$900,000.” When we start doing price comparisons, you're still getting a lot of value for your money.
Again, you're in thirteen months of sunshine. We also have extremely strong red markets. If you're reading and you're like, “I want to maybe buy a place where I would land and be there for six months of the year. What am I going to do in the next six months?” We have a high season where it's basically October to April, where we have foreigners. Americans and Canadians coming down here more than ever. It surprised me when I moved here. People leave at the end of April and you get off season right at those May travelers.
When Mexicans schools are finished, which they finish in early June. Mexican nationals love Puerto Vallarta and they love the beach. June, July, August and into early September, it's gangbusters down here. From an investment perspective, if you wanted to do short-term rentals, it's not like it's a six-month season. It's about an eleven month season. There's all the other types of real estate opportunities that are down here like commercial real estate groups.
I have a woman looking for a retirement hotel opportunity. You have either the price opportunities there, then you have this amazing booming economy and tourist season and a lot of different real estate opportunities. The other also is, the US dollar and the Canadian dollar is fairly strong against the Peso. That means you can get more for your money. There's also financing. Mexico now has opened up mortgage opportunities for foreigners.
It is a fair interest rate. It's about 9% to 11% depending on the broker that you work with, but people do the math. Here in PV, our property values are increasing 22% a year. Think about that. There's no bank investment I can make that would pay me 22% return. It's a very strong opportunity, but very accessible still for people who want to buy.
That's awesome. You covered the bases. I need to come down and visit and do some inspections. I was going to be cute and say, “On the beach,” but no. Having been an investor having bought properties, my whole thing was buying properties that were dumped and fixing them up and turning them into palaces. It helped communities and neighborhoods. I boarded up houses and turned them into rentals and then sales for some home buyers. It was a great place to be. It sounds like there's some going to be some fun stuff to play with there. What else should we tell people before we land this plane Ms. Townsend?
Building Deep Expat Connections
I say to people, Mexico is not even close to what you perceive in terms of American propaganda and negativity. Honestly, there was an index that came out. Mexico was rated the number one friendliest country in the world. It's also the third happiest country in the world. If you're looking for a place to land for a while, where you can let your hair down, get some work done, have a great time and be yourself and feel literally welcome. This is the place. That's not hyperbole. I say I have more friends at age 50 than I had at fifteen. They are friends of every background and tons of different nationalities. This is a good place to come and hang out for a while or maybe even call it home.
Shasta Townsend, I appreciate you. We will spend some more time together. I would recommend that if you're going to head down to Puerto Vallarta and you're looking to do anything with respect to making it your home in any way, get help from Shasta. She knows her stuff. We've talked a bunch offline before this talk here. She knows stuff and the community. Is 80% of your business is LGBT?
It is.
It's good to have someone on the ground that knows us, loves us, and understands us. With that said, Shasta Townsend, thank you so much. We will see you on the next edition of the show.
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About Shasta Townsend
Shasta Townsend is the visionary behind The On-Demand Wealth Machine™, a system that empowers individuals to achieve their dream lifestyles by creating wealth through strategic real estate investing. With a career spanning two decades, she has guided countless people toward realizing their aspirations. A proud Cree Métis Canadian, she currently resides in the picturesque Riviera Nayarit, Mexico, enjoying life with her husband, Ian.
