Here’s one thing I’ve learned while watching reality TV in my living room during a global pandemic: You really start to crave a beach vacation. Too Hot to Handle, the Neflix series about hot, horny people who are forbidden from sexual activity of any kind, dropped last Friday, and it definitely has a Love Island vibe to it: The contestants are all in a nice resort together, and we see way too much of their daily lives.
Watching these swimwear-clad sexy people put on sunblock and lounge in the pool is very challenging when the closest thing I can get to that scenario is my shower. My prediction is that, when it’s safe for us to travel again, the majority of vacations will be taken based on the reality TV locations we watched during self-isolation. That leads to the number-one, most important question any audience member could ask about this show: Where, exactly, was Too Hot to Handle filmed?
Production too place at a private villa in Mexico.
The Too Hot to Handle cast lived in Casa Tau, a private villa in Punta Mita, Mexico. If you’re putting this on your post-quarantine trip wish list, it’s best you know cost; TripAdvisor says the villa is available to rent for $15,660 a night. So, yeah. There’s that.
Netflix executives chose this location for a particular reason.
Punta Mita is situated in the Mexican state of Nayarit, on the Banderas Bay in the Pacific Ocean. Series creator Laura Gibson told OprahMag.com that she and the producers were told to go all out when it came to location. “Netflix executives were like, ‘Find the most beautiful place in the world…Show us the place where the A-list of the world could only afford to go.'”
Punta Mita draws an exclusive crowd
The Kardashians, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Bill Gates have all spent time in this area of Mexico, according to Forbes. In 2014, Gates invested in 48 acres of beachfront property here, as well as the Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita.
“The very affluent are drawn to Punta Mita because we offer something that can’t be found elsewhere in the world,” Andrés Rossetto, the Managing Director of Punta Mita Development, told Forbes. “A master planned community like Punta Mita would be extremely difficult to duplicate in today’s financial climate, and geographically, Punta Mita is stunningly unique.”
This location came with a drawback (sort of).
I’m not sure those of us sitting on our couches binging this show while looking up DIY face mask patterns noticed this, but apparently, there was something kind of annoying about Punta Mita: “The waves were loud,” Louise Peet, the show’s producer, told OprahMag.com.
Oh, wow. Real bummer.