Vista Hermosa

Vista Hermosa means Beautiful View, which reads less like a promise than a plain statement of fact. The villa is in Porta Fortuna, on the gated Punta Mita peninsula, and the Pacific is present from every living space, panoramic and open all the way to the horizon.

Five bedrooms and six bathrooms hold ten guests. The interiors are Mexican craftsmanship of the careful sort, the kind you notice on the third day rather than the first. The gourmet kitchen looks out on the same water as everything else, which changes how long people are willing to spend in it. Cooking becomes something you do slowly, with an audience, because nobody is in a hurry to move to another room.

The infinity pool does most of the work. Its edge reads as continuous with the sea, so swimming and looking become the same act. Meals move outdoors to the terraces and the light sets the schedule: breakfast while it is still soft, the long middle of the afternoon in shade, dinner as the sun works its way down. From November to March the humpbacks pass offshore and everything else waits. The six-passenger golf cart is parked for whenever the day wants to be somewhere else.

Premier Golf membership comes with the house. It opens both Jack Nicklaus Signature courses, including the Pacifico's hole 3B, the only natural island green in the world, reached by boat when the tide allows. The practice facilities, the clubhouse and Punta Mita's private beach clubs come with it.

Air conditioning and high-speed WiFi are here. By the second morning most people have forgotten about both.