A love of travel lead to the love of my life

It was, perhaps, both history’s greatest and riskiest first date.

My stomach fluttered as I waited for Samantha to arrive. I sat at my gate at Dallas Fort-Worth Airport, pretending to read The New York Times.

To that point, Sam and I had been friends. Good friends, though certainly not the kind of friends who take romantic Mexican holidays together. However, thanks to my travel-magazine-editor lifestyle – and the vague instinct that we’d one day be more than friends – that is precisely what we were doing.

We headed to Puerto Vallarta, and from there, to Las Alamandas, a 1,500-acre nature reserve and luxury resort, carved into the remote, jungled hills of Costalegre, along Mexico’s Pacific coast. By night one, our anxiety dissipated. By night four, we were in love. At dinner, we joked: If this is our first date, where will we go on our honeymoon?

In 2013, Sam and I got married, and the answer to that question was obvious: We would go back to Las Alamandas. After living together in Toronto, New York and London, always abiding by our variety-is-the-spice-of-life travel philosophy, we yearned for something familiar. Nostalgia is powerful, and so is the impulse for symmetry; returning to Las Alamandas just felt right.

On the first night of our honeymoon, we settle back into what feels like an old routine: dinner at the resort’s beachfront restaurant, the site of our first Big Chat. Although we’ve only eaten here a half-dozen times, a half-dozen years ago, it feels vividly familiar. I’ve often pictured this place, recalling our Big Chat. This time, however, we aren’t discovering new things about each other but reminiscing – naming our favourite moments from the wedding, and negotiating the details of our relationship’s origin myth. Dinner moves at a languid, luxurious pace.

The next day, we sleep in late, with the waves crashing loudly about 30 metres beyond the foot of our bed. We snack on the morning delivery: a platter of intensely flavourful mango, cantaloupe, pineapple, strawberry and papaya, much of which is grown on-site. After battling a fierce riptide in the ocean, we rinse off in an outdoor shower and head poolside for brunch. We mainline coffee and Sam orders Huevos Isabel – poached eggs atop lettuce, salsa and served with a veggie fritter. I opt for quesadillas with huitlacoche (a.k.a. corn smut) and shrimp, caught in Perula, about 10 kilometres down the coast. We read quietly, and it occurs to me that I’ve already read more than I did on the entire previous trip.

After brunch, we run into Nazario, an always-smiling server who we remember from our previous trip. (He’s worked at Las Alamandas for 13 years; others have been there for 20-plus.) Nazario embodies the resort’s pitch-perfect service ethic – easy-going but attentive, with an overarching sense of informality. Las Alamandas feels like the home of a wealthy, generous and very fastidious friend. That friend, incidentally, would be Isabel Goldsmith-Patino, who transformed the property into an ecological sanctuary after inheriting it from her grandfather, the Bolivian “Tin King” Don Antenor Patino. Isabel has a Gatsbyesque presence here; her bright pink villa, seldom occupied, sits perched on a nearby cliff.

Before he died, Don Antenor Patino aspired to build a golf course on the property. That ambition’s legacy is a network of dirt roads, which now makes terrific horseback-riding trails. Sam and I relive one of our favourite memories from that first trip, galloping side-by-side on a pristine beach. And I, quietly, relive my own experience: Pretending to be calm and in control as my horse breaks into a full gallop, water splashing and Sam yelping with unbridled joy.

That evening, we recreate another unforgettable moment of the first trip: A sunset picnic. As evening approaches, we are shuttled to a remote mountaintop on the far reaches of the property. The flat-rock mountaintop, which sits above the open water, is furnished impeccably with a table, chairs, a tiny vase of flowers and a chilled thermos of margarita. Before the sinking pink sun, massive flocks of birds swoop and merge over dramatic rock formations. Sam and I talk about the future: The hotel we dream of one day owning; travelling with the children we would eventually like to have; planning a visit to Las Alamandas for our 10-year wedding anniversary. The sun touches the horizon and then accelerates, sinking quickly beyond the horizon.

We sit long after the sun has set, getting drunk on tequila and laughing, entirely unperturbed by the darkness, and blissfully unaware of the significance of this moment in our relationship. It is a moment untouched by nostalgia, by discovery, by hope or by fear – a moment in which we are simply together; entirely, inexorably, perfectly in love.

IF YOU GO

Las Alamandas is remote, about halfway between Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo, and a two-hour drive away from each. You can rent a car, but arranging a pickup from the luxury resort is likely easiest; you won’t need wheels once you’re there. Carretera Federal 200, km 83.5, Costalegre, Jalisco, alamandas.com.

To extend the trip and ease your reintegration into society, head from Las Alamandas to Sayulita, a low-key surf town about a half-hour north of Puerto Vallarta. A gentle break makes it a prime destination for beginner surfers; it’s also mecca for stand-up paddle-boarders. Private villa rentals are common here, especially in the hills surrounding Sayulita, but for convenience, it’s tough to beat the breezy Hotel Vogue. Located a block from the beach, just opposite the town’s main square, the hotel offers quiet, colourful rooms, including outdoor living spaces and kitchenettes. Rooms from $90 (U.S.). Calle Marlin 20, Sayulita, Nayarit, sayulitahotelvogue.com.