Riviera Maya vs Riviera Nayarit: 95 Beachfront to 8

The question usually arrives in the same shape: Riviera Maya or Riviera Nayarit? And the answer is almost always settled by the next sentence, which is somebody saying we want to be on the beach or somebody saying we want to be looked after.

Those are not the same holiday, and the two coasts are not equally good at both. Here is our own data, and then the steer.

The numbers, from our own listings

Villas only. A condo is not a house.

Read the beachfront row twice, because it is the whole argument. Ninety-five houses against eight. Across all of Mexico we have 107 beachfront villas and 95 of them are on the Caribbean side; the entire Pacific has twelve.

That is not a quality judgement, it is geography. The Caribbean coast is flat white limestone with long runs of sand along it. The Nayarit coast is rock, headland and bay, and houses there sit above the water rather than on it, with a path down. Both are lovely. Only one of them puts twenty people on sand outside the kitchen door.

Now read the chef row. Nayarit, with nine fewer houses, has more of them staffed — 75 against 71, which is three in five against one in two. If the thing you want is to stop making decisions for a week, that row matters more than the first one.

Riviera Maya: the sand, and a lot of it

This is the Caribbean: white sand, turquoise water behind a reef, cenotes inland, and ruins on the cliff at Tulum. Sixteen kilometres of beach run south from the archaeological site alone, down to the Sian Ka'an reserve, which is the scale nobody is ready for.

It also has the big houses. Twenty-one of our houses here sleep twenty or more, against nine in Nayarit, and the largest, Hacienda del Secreto at Playa del Secreto, takes sixty-three people across four houses on the same stretch of sand. For a wedding party, a reunion or three families, this coast is not really in competition.

The quieter end of it is the part we steer people towards: the bays twenty minutes north of Tulum, Soliman and Tankah, where nothing passes. Villa Bella Vita on Tankah Bay has eight bedrooms, a villa manager, a butler and a chef all working eight until eight, and direct access to the sand.

And the honest caveat, which we say about this coast every time: it is built for visitors. The Mexico you meet on the beach road is an arranged one, done extremely well. For everyday Mexican life — a market, a plaza, a town that existed before tourism — you go Pacific. That is not a reason to stay away; it is a reason to put the house twenty minutes off the beach road and eat in the pueblo twice. What Tulum is known for goes through it properly.

Riviera Nayarit: a gate, two courses and the bay

The Nayarit coast north of Puerto Vallarta is a different proposition entirely, and its centre of gravity is the Punta Mita peninsula — a gated resort community of fifteen hundred acres with nine and a half miles of Pacific coast and two Jack Nicklaus Signature courses inside the gate.

What it is for is getting away from everything. Golf, seven breaks round the peninsula, calm swimming stretches and surf stretches a few hundred metres apart, the Marietas a short crossing offshore, and a staff that looks after the whole group. There is no nightlife, and that is the selling point rather than an apology: the evening happens at your own table, and you leave the gate to find the town.

The service is the reason people come back. The chef in the rate is the norm rather than the exception here, and houses like Casa Koko Iyari list a butler and a villa manager on their own staff pages alongside the chef. Outside the gate, Casa Todos Juntos is one of the eight Nayarit houses that really does sit on the sand.

Water is the one caution. This is the open Pacific; it is bigger and darker than the Caribbean, and there are stretches of this coast that are for watching rather than swimming. The bay protects a lot of it, but not all of it.

Who each one is for

Riviera Maya if: somebody wants to swim off the beach in front of the house; there are twenty of you; small children are involved and flat water matters; cenotes, ruins and reef are the week's shape; or you are flying from the eastern seaboard and the shorter flight decides it.

Riviera Nayarit if: being looked after is the point; somebody golfs or surfs; the group is eight to sixteen rather than thirty; you want the week quiet and the gate shut; or you have done the Caribbean and want the other Mexico.

Both, if it is a first trip — in which case take the Caribbean first, because the water is the easier promise to keep, and keep Nayarit for the trip after, when you already know what a staffed house feels like.

What you cannot do is both at once. They are on opposite coasts of a very wide country and on different seas; a week split between them is two travel days and no holiday.

And one more comparison

If what you are actually weighing is service against a town, the sharper version of that argument is Vallarta against the Riviera Nayarit — same coast, forty-five minutes apart, and a different week.

If it is the sand, start with houses that really have a beach.

Otherwise: our houses in the Riviera Maya, or our staffed houses in Punta Mita. Say how many of you are coming and how many of you swim, and we will tell you which coast to stop looking at.