Explore the World Beyond Your Own Backyard
LGBTQ+ travel experts offering advice, tours, group retreats, relocation, storytelling & other unique travel experiences.
About Quirky Travel
Who We Are
We're a group of avid travelers, writers, and experts who love exploring new destinations and experiencing different cultures. As LGBTQA+ tourism experts, safety while traveling is our No. 1 priority, but we also focus on sustainability, responsible tourism, and regenerative travel. As an organization, our goal is to share our experiences and inspire others to embark on their own travel adventures while elevating the people who live in the places we visit.
TIDBITS FROM OUR FORMER TRAVELS
Mexican, Indigenous, Delightful
Mexican, Indigenous, Delightful
As we sit in our small boat, headed to a snorkel at the magnificent Marietas Islands, Miguel explains the difference between Punta Mita and Punta de Mita. Miguel and his parents— and all of his ancestors before him as far back as he knows — grew up in a small fishing village on an island known as Punta Mita. They were mostly Mexican fishermen, though the Aztlan culture was there as early as 200 B.C.
Then in the 1990s, real estate developers worked with the Mexican government to buy Punta Mita, which is now the luxury Four Seasons resort (famed for its Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course, with a 19th hole that requires a boat to reach). The villagers were all moved off the island of Punta Mita, down a few miles from the northern tip of Bahía de Banderas to what was then dubbed Punta de Mita.
Ironically, the W Punta de Mita feels like the perfect antidote to the extreme gentrification that’s happened in parts of Mexico. Less than an hour north of Puerto Vallarta, Punta de Mita feels a thousand miles away from their crowded beaches and Romantic Zone. With beautiful uncrowded beaches (I don’t think I saw a single beach vendor), proximity to the bars and restaurants — and an easy trip to the bohemian surf village of Sayulita — Punta de Mita is emerging as a popular honeymoon locale for LGBTQ couples.
That's in part because the Punta de Mita’s W — a brand already popular among queer travelers — has a marketing director and a W insider guide who are both gay. Together, they speak from experience on what the area offers for LGBTQ travelers. But what the W offers here is an experience that feels intricately tied to the village Miguel’s family grew up in. Located on Mexico’s Riviera Nayarit, the W pays homage to the profound cultural history of the Indigenous Huichol peoples. As soon as you walk into the lobby, an incredibly vibrant walkway created from more than 700,000 blue mosaic tiles leads you down endless steps, bisecting a bar and eatery, continuing outdoors, then above the pool and seemingly straight to the ocean — a clear shot from the lobby.
The amazingly intricate beadwork of the Huichol is incorporated into the design everywhere, and other elements (from the white sugar skull entryway to the Frida Kahlo and Pancho Villa pop art in the rooms) elevate the hotel to something you won’t find in other resorts along the bay.
A quick 28-minute drive from Punta de Mita down the Carr. Federal la Cruz de Huanacaxtle highway offers pretty jungle views, and you land at the beach village of Sayulita. In the small square, you can meet Huichol Indians working and selling wares. These artists who live 60 miles up in the Sierra Madre mountains still live off sales of their beadwork, which incorporates their socio-religious beliefs in Shamanism, Animism, Peyotism, and Catholicism as well as of pain relief cream they make from cannabis and peyote. Locals warned me not to try to get it into the U.S. but packed in my checked-in suitcase; it made it home without problems.
If you want to party, grab a Coco Loco (a full coconut with tequila or vodka and lime) and check out the locally owned boutiques. My favorite: Revolucion del Sueño, which sells contemporary products from local artists, like sugar skull storm trooper tees and rainbow-emblazed Frida pillows.
Of course, that’s if you can draw yourself away from the W for a few hours, which we only did twice — once for Sayulita and again to snorkel the Marietas, a federally protected wildlife reserve and one of the only places on Earth where you can see a blue-footed booby. At the resort, the spa offers locally inspired treatments like a must-try tequila and agave facial and sweet cactus body wrap. The pool is luscious, but the beach beckons even more, especially because the servers will bring you piña coladas just feet from the surf.
Inside the rooms, floor-to-ceiling windows bring in the ocean or the jungle, and nearly every single foot of the rooms is Instagram-worthy with funky Mexican pop art wall murals, headboards made from surfboards or hammered aluminum, rainbow-hued hanging chairs, freestanding oval tubs, and terraces with a daybed that easily fits two.
Five restaurants are on site, including the must-eat Spice Market offering a really exciting take on Thai, Vietnamese, and Malaysian street cuisine; the fun Chevycheria, a beachfront bar and made-to-order ceviche hut built into a 1950s Chevy truck; and Mesa 1, easily one of the most romantic meals here, as you literally dine in the middle of a lake. Mesa 1 is only accessible via stepping stones that emerge from the water then disappear once you’ve taken your seats at the massive Parotta tree trunk dining table.
Trust me, you don’t have to venture far to have water adventures. Punta de Mita is the closest town to the Marietas Islands, so taking a catamaran out to see this protected ecosystem is worth a few hours. You can’t reach it by land. Kayaking through the rocky archways and caverns is a treat but snorkeling or scuba diving is even better since it’s teeming with hundreds of species of colorful fish, sea turtles, giant manta rays, and of course, along the way, leaping dolphins.
You can also stop at Majuhuitas Beach, one of the most secluded beaches in Mexico. Back at the W, you can rent paddle boards, kayaks, snorkel equipment, surfboards, and boogie boards (if you’re traveling with kids, the latter are especially important).
During migration season, viewing humpback whales is a must-see. Witnessing a 50-ton mammal playfully rising above the water repeatedly just 100 yards away was life-changing.
But again, a weekend in Punta de Mita felt that way often, a rarity in our modern world of crowded Americanized resorts and obnoxious, selfie-taking tourists.
This article originally appeared in OutTraveler.com. Rights reserved.
From the Pink Lady to Oz
Mexican, Indigenous, Delightful
I'm sitting in a restaurant cuddling with my co-pilot, fully aware that, at this moment, I'm one of the most privileged people in the country, seated at San Diego's Marine Room watching the crashing surf wash over the dining room's floor-to-ceiling windows. It's not the customers (romantics and local power players are both in attendance) or the food (though if you go, don't miss the delicious Absinthe Butter Basted Lobster Tail and the Mayan Spice Chocolate Dome, Domaine Canton Ginger Creme Brulee).
Actually, it's about the location. Being able to witness a safe oceanic engulfment was spectacular. The Marine Room, opened in 1941, is known for being on the finest beach in La Jolla, a section of San Diego that has been made more famous by the Netflix hit Grace and Frankie. The show -- about two older women in San Diego whose husbands fall in love and come out as gay -- features lesbian icon Lily Tomlin and feminist activist Jane Fonda coming to terms with their aging bodies, elder sexuality, and their agency in life.
Even though the show's famous beach house is actually located in Malibu, Grace and Frankie shines a light on La Jolla, a jewel of California that's art-centric, LGBT-friendly, chic and affluent, but accessible. It's a wonderful spot for romance and water adventures, such as snorkeling with baby leopard sharks in the waters of La Jolla Cove, the only place in the U.S. to do so. There are tours -- both kayak and snorkel -- to the area's ecologically preserved waters and caves, and you can see the sharks (as well as yellowtail, garibaldi, and rays) from your kayak. The Birch Aquarium at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography offers its own snorkel tours too.
Staying on the beach at La Valencia Hotel, you can literally walk out your door and dive in. Known as "The Pink Lady," La Valencia is an enchanting, rose-colored Mediterranean-style oceanside resort that is pet-friendly -- a rarity with a hotel this swank. The Cafe la Rue (Bistro + Bar) inside the hotel takes the European experience up a notch with terrazzo floors, Venetian plaster ceilings (think Paris in the '40s), and al fresco dining. (The Watermelon Fresca with Xicaru Mezcal and the Pink Lady cocktails are both divine; Chimichurri Steak is one of the best I've had.)
From the historic La Jolla Cave Store, we visited the world famous Sunny Jim Sea Cave. A wooden staircase leads 145 steps down a manmade tunnel to the only sea cave here you can access by land. Like all of the 200,000-year-old sandstone and rock caves, the mineral deposits, kelp, and vegetation make for a carpet of amazing colors and fossilized shells. The cave, which is a huge hit with kids, was named "Sunny Jim" by Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz, who thought the cave opening bore a resemblance to a 1920s cartoon character of the same name. On your long climb back up the stairs, reflect that it took two Chinese laborers two years to build the tunnel using only picks, shovels, and buckets (to move the rock).
After a lovely but too-short stay at La Valencia, we moved to Grande Colonial Hotel, the more than 100-year-old European-style hotel once favored by Hollywood legends from Groucho Marx to Charlton Heston. Many actors continue to stay there, because of its privacy and proximity to famed La Jolla Playhouse, which has incubated 28 productions that later ran on Broadway (earning 35 Tony Awards), and dozens more that have enjoyed international fanfare. Founded by La Jolla native Gregory Peck, the Playhouse remains a top attraction for LGBT travelers and Hollywood heavyweights. (Between November 7 and December 10, you can see the world premiere of Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, by director Des McAnuff and choreographer Sergio Trujillo, the Tony-winning team behind Jersey Boys.)
The Grand Colonial is lush, and what was once Peck's father's pharmacy inside the hotel (back when pharmacies had soda fountains and ice cream parlors) is now one of the best restaurants in San Diego, hands down. NINE-TEN's farm-to-table focus on seasonally fresh items pays off here -- every egg feels freshly plucked from a chicken's nest.
Lunching socialites and aging fashionistas swig martinis with shopping bags by their sides (from the Rodeo Drive-style shopping and beauty salons nearby), but "Mercy of the Chef" prix-fixe menu dinners are the main attraction. My favorites included a Stone Fruit Salad (with purslane, burrata, blackberries, charred cucumber, and peach vinaigrette), an extensive global cheese course, and an Alaskan halibut (with fava beans, chanterelle mushrooms, and a corn dashi emulsion). Between the hotels, the food, shows, and shopping, La Jolla offers a surprisingly sophisticated experience for a beachside resort. We spent our final morning absorbed in a walking tour of the Murals of La Jolla, commissioned by the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library and the La Jolla Community Foundation. During the guided tour, curator Lynda Forsha shares the history of each mural, introducing the artist and inspiration behind each image.
The Art Advisory Committee, composed of the heads of the major visual arts organizations in La Jolla, first commissioned artists Roy McMakin and Kim MacConnel to adorn local buildings in 2010. Subsequent artworks have been printed on vinyl and installed on billboard-like structures. Each work is on view for a minimum of two years and has been generously funded by private donations. Many amazing queer artists have been among those featured, including Catherine Opie and Mark Bradford.
"What's interesting about this collaboration is that the leaders of our arts organizations have come together to create an outdoor exhibition that makes artwork accessible to a larger audience, 24 hours a day, seven days a week," said California Congressman Scott Peters. He's right. After our walking tour, we drove around marveling at the cosmopolitan art on display in this relatively small city.
Intimate, sophisticated, bold, adventurous, and California mellow -- the words could describe La Jolla as much as they do Grace and Frankie. As Fonda and Tomlin, the titular heroes of the show, prepare for yet another season (Netflix has renewed a fourth season for 2018), I'm going to get to La Jolla as much as possible before the rest of the country realizes what a gem it is.
This article originally appeared in Advocate.com. Rights reserved.
Sustainable Travel in Hawai‘i’
Sustainable Travel in Hawai‘i’
I’m not wearing anything special, certainly not whatever stereotypical image the word “hula” might arouse; there are no grass skirts or coconut bikinis here. Neither were historically a part of Native Hawaiian traditions. In this hula class we’re not swinging our hips, just moving our arms and clapping wooden batons together. As the kid who could never master rubbing their tummy while patting their head, I am failing to keep up. I won’t remember the moves in 30 seconds. But I will retain a much deeper lesson.
Tourism is Hawai‘i’s largest industry. In 2019 it brought 10 million visitors to the islands, supporting 216,000 jobs and generating $17.75 billion (and raising $2 billion in state taxes). More than half of those visitors spent time on O‘ahu, the most visited island, overtaxing the local environment and, critics say, depleting the quality of life for residents and tourists alike. During the pandemic, locals got a taste of their islands without so many visitors and many aren’t eager to see the old model return.
“As a whole, in Hawai‘i, we are looking for a more respectful and responsible visitor, one that comes with a deep respect for our culture and our place,” Mālia Sanders, executive director of the Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association, said in a statement to the press last year. Sanders and others in O‘ahu believe there can be a post-colonial, Indigenous-focused, ecologically sustainable form of travel that puts the land first and doesn’t ask locals to be in servitude to visitors.
The Hawai‘i Tourism Authority has adopted the philosophy Mālama Ku‘u Home (Caring for My Beloved Home) and started investing in community-based efforts to protect and enhance the state’s unique treasures: the beautiful beaches, towering mountains, freshwater streams; the plants, animals, and birds that live here; and the unique Hawaiian culture that evolved here. The gamble is that by fostering those resources — and creating authentic experiences around them — the islands will draw the kind of travelers willing to pay for the privilege of visiting Hawai‘i while still respecting its traditions.
That’s where hula comes in. The traditional dance we’re learning is also a sacred story about Hawai‘i’s birds, flowers, mountains, and seas. The practice shares ancestral Hawaiian knowledge, physically connecting dancers to a form of education that predates the written word and engages mind and body. After your hands have made the motion of Hawaiian birds and your chants evoked the fragrance of native hibiscus flowers, can you trample them when you leave? Learning the hula makes you less of a tourist and more of a guest.
We are at this moment guests of Outrigger Reef Waikiki Beach Resort’s new A‘o Cultural Center, part of the hotel’s recent $80 million renovations, where Luana Maitland, director of cultural events & activities, shares her cultural knowledge (and displays some of her personal collections).
Elsewhere in the hotel sits Kalele, a century-old outrigger canoe restored by the Friends of Hōkūle‘a & Hawai‘iloa. Guests can take in local Hawaiian music while noshing at Kani Ka Pila Grille, and artwork curated by the Bishop Museum adorns hallways and guest suites. Our suite features portraits of Hawaiian royalty and a map of O‘ahu, which incorporated the Native Hawaiian tradition of ahupua’a, the division of land running from the top of a mountain to the sea.
That lesson is furthered the following day during a koa tree planting tour at Kualoa Ranch a 4,000-acre private nature reserve, working cattle ranch, and setting of several Jurassic Park films. During the three-hour UTV tour — which took us deep into the Kualoa, Ka‘a‘awa, and Hakipu‘u valleys to learn about Hawai‘i’s ecology — our guide shares that within each ahupua’a were all the resources Hawaiians needed to thrive. The tradition was essential to the sustainability of the island when O‘ahu was home to up to a million Native Hawaiians. Now the population of over one million (and millions of annual visitors) feels far from sustainable.
According to HTA, “The reciprocal nature of our relationship to land is that we care for our natural resources and in return the land will care for us. In this symbiotic relationship, as people dedicate time and resources to the well-being of the land, the residents and visitors of this land will thrive.”
We’re dedicating our day to planting a koa tree in the traditional Hawaiian way to be part of the regenerative travel movement; to not just avoid damaging a destination through low-impact activities but to play a part in restoring or revitalizing it.
The native canopy tree koa is prized for its hard wood, from which Hawaiians hand-carved wa‘a (canoes) and mea kaua (weapons). That durability was also present in the living koa, allowing it to withstand fierce winds and protect the undergrowth below. We choose and name our koa sapling. It is stick thin and seems fragile as I cradle it, bouncing along in the back of the UTV. By the end of the tour, we’ve given it a good start at rooting in its new home in the shadow of a zipline course. Our tree, the first in this new initiative, will become part of a hardwood forest that will displace the zipline.
On our tour of the valleys, our guide explains the difference between native, invasive, and canoe species. Many of the natives are endemic and not found anywhere else, and the canoe plants were brought by Polynesians when they first came to the islands around 1090 A.D. Invasives came post-Western contact in 1778 and have contributed to the endangerment of many native species.
Later Ha‘aheo Zablan, general manager at Kaimana Beach Hotel and a member of the LGBTQ+ community, reiterates what our guide told us: one of the canoe plants is particularly important. “It’s literally a root of our culture and our people,” Zablan explains. Kalo (taro), the root of which is pounded and eaten as poi, was a traditional diet staple and cultivated across the islands.
The closeness of the relationship between Hawaiians and the kalo plant is exemplified by its origin story. It is said that kalo first sprouted from the spot where a stillborn child of the gods was buried. That child’s younger brother, Hāloa, fathered the Hawaiian people, who were taught of their familial obligation to care for their sibling.
Stories like these help establish the relationships and obligations Hawaiian people have to each other as well as to the land. These relationships are like webbed fishing nets that tie everything together. We are all connected and dependent upon one another for survival.
Zablan says relationships make it easier to navigate difficult conversations. And there are difficult conversations being had. This February, two bills were introduced in the state legislature that would effectively eliminate the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority and turn management of the industry over to those eager to see the number of tourists grow ever higher in the coming years. The soul of O‘ahu is at stake.
This article originally appeared in OutTraveler.com. Rights reserved.
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