Four Seasons Punta Mita yacht (Photo by Brad A Johnson)

This was one of my favorite sunsets so far this year. I snapped this shot aboard the private yacht of the Four Seasons Punta Mita in Mexico's Banderas Bay, just north of Puerta Vallarta. Way too much tequila was consumed that day, but all in all it was a fairly perfect outing. I mean, just look at that view. Now imagine yourself barefoot. On a private yacht. With tequila, guacamole and tuna ceviche.

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A new beachfront villa at The Viceroy Riviera Maya (Brad A. Johnson)

The Viceroy resort (formerly called The Tides) near Playa del Carmen, Mexico has just unveiled its brand new beach villas and a fresh new look throughout the property. The revamp also include a new beachfront restaurant and new menus. (The resort is owned by the Viceroy Hotels group, which recently sold the original Tides in Miami, so makes sense that the group would want to reposition the brand.)

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Tres leches from the upcoming menu at The Restaurant at Las Ventanas al Paraiso (Brad A Johnson)

Worldwide exclusive: Las Ventanas al Paraiso in Los Cabos has been serving so-called "Baja Mediterranean" cuisine (a term it coined) at its signature Restaurant since the resort’s inception in 1997. But come January, that not-quite-authentic approach will be jettisoned in favor of a new, more genuinely Mexican menu inspired by regional classics (still incorporating the finest local ingredients), thus creating a far more authentic sense of place and local culture at the resort.

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Texas Meets Yucatan-style tortilla soup (Brad A. Johnson)

I challenged the chef—and I won.

Well, sort of. Las Ventanas al Pariaso in Los Cabos offers a program called Challenge the Chef. To be honest, it’s not exactly what I thought it was going to be when I first heard about it. Initially I thought it was going to be a head-to-head competition, and I thought to myself, “Bring it!” More specifically, I was thinking of tortilla soup. I’ll pit my tortilla soup against anybody’s, even the chef of a five-star resort in Mexico.

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Arugula and strawberries from Hacienda Purisima at Rosewood's 1826 Restaurant

There’s an incredible farm-to-table culinary movement taking hold in San Miguel de Allende. The town's best chefs have been racing to embrace the region’s local agricultural bounty: incredible goat cheeses, farm-fresh eggs, artisanal honeys and surprisingly great wines. There’s even a bewildering variety of locally roasted coffees. But the real treasure is the region’s organic produce. And one of the key players in the movement is Hacienda Purisima de Jalpa, an organic farm located 15 miles from San Miguel de Allende in the rural village of Jalpa (where local residents share a single, communal phone booth in the center of “town”).

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Making tortillas at Cholula's Festival of the Virgin; One of Cholula's ancient pyramids

Every year, beginning August 31 and lasting for about 10 days, the Mexican town of Cholula celebrates the Festival of the Virgin of the Remedies. For a lot of people, this is a religious pilgrimage. But for most, it’s a celebration of food. And, oh my, the food! 

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Maria Guadalupe outside her food stall in Acuna, Mexico. (photo from Kiva.org)

A few years ago I became involved with Kiva, an amazing organization that changes the lives of hardworking people all over the world. It’s a micro-loan program that offers life-saving financial aid to people who otherwise can’t quality for or simply don’t have access to typical bank loans. I first became aware of Kiva after seeing micro-loan billboards along the roadside in Uganda en route to the Impenetrable Forest, a gorilla preserve in the rugged, remote mountains bordering the Congo.

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I’ve just finished watching a the sunrise from the beach in Playa del Carmen. The coastline at dawn here is always eerily silent, the quietest it will be all day. For a few hours at most, no one is stirring. The dozens of bars and restaurants that line the shore appear abandoned, like a ghost town. My lounge chair is wedged into the sugary white sand just out of reach of the crashing turquoise waves. The sky is an infinity of blue, and the sun’s rays merely lukewarm, like an oven that’s just been turned on but which hasn’t yet had begun to warm up. A seagull circles overhead, effortlessly floating in the breeze like a kite, and I wonder if he, too, is merely half awake.

A small wooden fishing boat powered by a small outboard engine sputters across the horizon then turns toward the shore and heads straight for where I’m lounging.

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I’ve just come back from a business meeting in Oaxaca, where I had an amazing lunch just outside of town in the village of San Martin. The entire community came together to put on an incredible feast of chiles rellenos, grilled chorizo, and two types of quesadillas, one of which was crafted from homemade blue-corn tortillas, squash blossoms and Oaxaca’s famous string cheese; the other made with white flour tortillas cooked over wood-burning coals. This was by far the best meal of the visit (which also included the supposed best restaurant in town, but that meal turned out to be somewhat disappointing.) 

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