I’m a gay man, but I’m not generally into party cruises (I don’t drink much and also don’t sunbathe). So I was hesitant about taking the Wet & Wild Gay Cruise in Puerto Vallarta. But my husband is good at getting me to try new things. And in this case, I was glad he did. This gay cruise is decidedly not for everyone — it is, indeed, a bit “wet” and a bit “wild,” but it can be an unforgettable way to experience Mexico’s most popular gay vacation destination. (If you’re sensitive to explicit content, however you shouldn’t read the second half of this review.)
We bought our tickets online, a couple weeks before our arrival. Tickets were about $111 per person, which is not cheap. But it’s a six-hour excursion, and the price includes open bar (beer, margaritas, some mixed cocktails with vodka and rum), snacks, a full lunch, on-board entertainment (mostly in the form of Speedo-clad guys), visits to a restaurant and a secluded, clothing-optional beach and the use of snorkeling gear.
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GAY TRAVEL TIPS: Top LGBTQ Tours in Latin America this Year
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What to Bring on the Wet & Wild Gay Cruise
To fully enjoy this Puerto Vallarta gay cruise, you should bring a few important items:
• Sunscreen or sunblock
• Beach towel and something to sit on in the sand
• Bathing suit and a change of clothes if you want to feel dry afterwards
• Money for tipping the boat crew and the go-go boys
• Flip flops
• A camera (if you have an underwater camera for snorkeling, that’s good too)
• A waterproof bag isn’t a bad idea, just in case
• Dramamine, if you tend to experience motion sickness
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What the Puerto Vallarta Gay Cruise is Really Like
We took a Saturday cruise, which departs at 12 noon. You should show up about half an hour before departure time, and join the line at the pier that juts off of Los Muertos beach. The check-in process is a bit slow but it works; the boat staff checks in passengers one by one, providing each passenger with a wristband and also asking what your preference for lunch is (choices included chicken, fish and quesadillas). They give you a ticket for your choice that you need to hold on to, for redemption later at the restaurant.
Since the Wet & Wild boat is rather big, passengers need to take a small boat to reach the party boat (you’ll need to get used to the on-and-off aspect of the cruise, as it takes place at least three times during the day). The party boat has three levels (although the very bottom level is only for bathrooms). The top two levels have plenty of tables, seating and shade.
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Upon arrival on the main party boat, we were greeted by a muscular guy wearing an official Wet & Wild Speedo-style swimsuit. Dance club music was already providing a good beat, and the bar was already open.
After everyone was on board (a process that takes several back-and-forth trips by smaller boats from the pier), four or five of the Speedo-clad muscle men (I will call them go-go boys from now on to simplify, although they don’t exactly go-go dance during the cruise) made their way around the boat to offer their services as “lotion boys,” enthusiastically applying sunscreen to anyone who requested it.
The first stop was near some dramatic rocklike formations, where passengers could don masks, snorkels and life jackets (but no flippers) to venture into the water, where there were some small fish visible. On board, healthy snacks (pineapple, watermelon and papaya) were served, as the drinks continued to flow.
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For the next stop, we were shuttled via small boats to El Caracol, an open-air beachfront restaurant in Las Animas beach. The gentle breeze provided a comfortable setting for diving into the plate of salad, rice and grilled chicken that we’d ordered (drinks were not included).
After lunch, we once again shuttled on small boats, but this time to an isolated beach nearby, where music was pumping and a makeshift bar kept the spirits alive. For the purpose of this cruise, this was a clothing-optional beach, and about half of the people in our group got fully naked. We stayed on the beach for about an hour before jumping on board yet another small boat for the ride back to our bigger host boat.
This is Where You Should Stop Reading (Maybe)
They call this the Wet & Wild gay cruise for a reason, so if you’re weak of heart you should be warned to stop reading here. During the final leg of the cruise, some passengers got naked once again. But the primary entertainment on that final part consisted of a demonstration of “foreskin shots” and “booty shots,” during which the emcee chose a few volunteers from the audience to participate in doing tequila shots from their choice of two different body parts of the go-go boys. (If you can’t figure out from the names of the shots which body parts those are, email me and I will gladly send you links to a dictionary.) Participation of course is not required (only about five people did so), and those who didn’t want to watch could hang out on the other deck.
All in all, by the time we returned to the pier, we’d made new friends from various places (Washington, D.C., Mexico City, Florida, New York City, Chicago, to name a few) and even had dinner and ran into other fellow passengers later that evening at a hotel party. While six hours on a party boat seemed like too much to me, after doing it I realized that it was broken up well into different activities, and was an enjoyable way to spend the afternoon and meet new people. And the experience can really be as wet and as wild as you want it to be.