Now Mexico's most popular gay destination, bar none, this is a magnet for gay tourists from all over North America, a short flight away. Eventually the media attention and public sympathy that followed created a friendlier environment for his and other gay businesses. Despite being arrested three times, Ruiz refused to be intimidated by the police harassment. At the time, there was only one other gay bar in town. That's when Paco Ruiz opened his namesake gay nightclub, Club Paco Paco in this seaside getaway on the west coast of Mexico. The city's gay evolution began just two decades ago. But it was the 1963 John Huston film, The Night of the Iguana, with Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and their media-grabbing love affair and marriage, that really put Puerto Vallarta on the US tourist map.
![sunset gay bar puerto vallarta sunset gay bar puerto vallarta](http://www.discoveryvallarta.com/vendor%206%20aaa%203.jpg)
By 1945 their DC-3s were bringing 21 passengers per flight for fun in the sun. A road connection was built in 1942, the same year that vacation ads of the Air Transport Company of Jalisco began to appear in a New York magazine.
![sunset gay bar puerto vallarta sunset gay bar puerto vallarta](http://www.discoveryvallarta.com/gay-beach-puerto-vallarta-blueChairs_15a_small.jpg)
The small fishing village soon became a local vacation destination, but access was limited to sea routes and mule trails, until airplanes first arrived in 1932. Puerto Vallarta was founded the same year as Seattle, in 1851. See Travel Bans/Mexico US Embassy and Mexican government updates, and the websites of the NYTimes, PuertoVallartaTours and GayPV.
![sunset gay bar puerto vallarta sunset gay bar puerto vallarta](http://www.discoveryvallarta.com/los-muertos-beach-Sunset-Vallarta-pictures%20%20Image3w.jpg)
The land borders between the USA and Mexico are closed to all non-essential travel until at least February 21, 2021. The United States and Mexico entered a joint initiative March 21 restricting non-essential travel along the U.S.-Mexico land border. As the virus spreads, the government is still downplaying the danger. Mexico was frighteningly unprepared for the Coronavirus.