I have been on Vallarta for almost a year now and can say there is a very weird dynamic going on within the expats who are here. The younger expats, particularly ones with young kids (like myself), have largely came to escape all the crap in the states and in Canada. The older retiree types, however, want PV to be like Canada. There is a very outspoken majority on the biggest PV Facebook group calling for people to mask up since I have been here and have been calling for the vaccine cards to get into places since the vaccines have become more easily available. They have even started going as far as calling the police on small store fronts not enforcing the mask mandates here and have cheered the news that the governor of state has put a mandate for proof of vaccine or negative test to enter bars, night clubs casinos and "big events".
So, there has been a divide in the ex pat community here, with the freedom seeking ex pats vastly out numbered. However, I have heard there are many people coming from Europe and New Zealand to get away from the tyranny there. This talk of the uptick in "freedom centric" ex pats has really only started since December though, so we will see if it continues.
As far as the mandate situation here goes, the government implemented mask mandates/recommendations before we first got here and have constantly gone back to "mandating" mask since we have been here whenever they claim there is an uptick in "infections". These mandates are usually only enforced by store fonts for a short time before they stop asking customers to mask up and the reason many of these smaller mom and pop stores even enforcing them in the first place is the expats, who largely push the commerce in this tourist destination, have been so outspoken about wanting it. I have heard this directly from a coffee shop owner. They have tried to implement stuff on the bar/nightlight scene here the most, but everything from curfew, to total capacity, to wearing masks, has been very loosely followed. In fact, the last time the state south of here tried to enforce a curfew in bars, the bar owners came together and said we are not doing that and that was that.
Basically, when things are enforced it is for a limited time (outside of big outlet stores like Costco and Walmart, these have enforced mask wearing the whole time) and when the people decided they have had enough, the police and national guard (who patrol like police) don't have interest in enforcing these mandates. For instance, the government has periodically tried to enforce mask mandates for the malecon/boardwalk and the NG just put people at the start of the malecon, who tell people entering to mask up to enter. However, we would just walk around and enter at the next street. If the NG personnel ever saw people on the malecon without a mask, they never stopped anyone. As long as you were beyond the checkpoint, they did not care. Moreover, they tried to shutdown the malecon on NYE and cancel the fireworks. They brought in this massive screen that let everyone know that the event was off. However, people still showed up and the nightclubs didn't close, so the NG just stood guard in front of the monitor because people began throwing things at it while flipping it the bird. That was it, they did zero to shut the event down. They had no interest in shutting it down because PV ultimately needs tourist and from what I have heard the cartels have a stake in that and make sure that tourism isn't slowed to much.
All that said, there is still around a 65/35 masked to unmasked ratio of people walking around here in the heavily tourist areas, which is pretty annoying. Additionally, we can't go into every place we would want to because we would need to mask up. So, while I still do feel free, in some ways it does feel more free in the states, even if its the calm before the storm so to speak.
However, you will find almost zero masked people in the heavily tourist destinations in Riviera Nayarit. This has been the case since we first took a day trip to a beach town called Sayulita. I don't think I saw a single person on that trip wearing a mask, inside a store or walking through the town. I told a waitress how awesome I thought it was that no one wore mask and she said "well, we don't watch the news so covid doesn't exist here" my kind of town. Unfortunately, this was my wife's first time living out of the country and didn't feel comfortable living in a smaller town without hospitals close just in case our kids got an injury. However, I think we will end up there, or surrounding areas, when our lease is up here because that state has been that way since and is incredibly free right now. If you are looking to excape to this area in Mexico, I would head to Riviera Nayarit.
