El Anclote: the Village Outside the Punta Mita Gate

At half past five the light goes long and low down the beach and three men start pushing a panga back up the sand on rollers, which takes all three of them and about four minutes. A dog supervises. Thirty metres behind them a waiter is putting candles on plastic tables. Two hundred metres beyond that, past a barrier and a man in a hut, is a golf course nobody on this beach is going to play.

Both of those things are true at once, and keeping them straight is the only hard part of understanding this place.

Two names, one syllable apart

Punta Mita is the gated resort community on the tip of the peninsula: the private clubs, the two courses, the security barrier, the houses behind it.

Punta de Mita is everything outside the gate — the village, the fishing beach, the shops, the road. El Anclote is its beach.

They are a syllable apart and they are not the same place, and almost every guide to this coast runs them together. Even the Riviera Nayarit tourism board does it on its own page. We are going to keep them separate, because the difference decides what your week is actually like.

The beach itself

The board gives it to you plainly: the Coral del Rusco and El Anclote beaches stretch for 500 metres along the shore. That is the whole thing — five hundred metres, which you can walk end to end in seven minutes and will, several times a day.

The peninsula behind it is 1,500 acres with almost ten kilometres of Pacific coast; the village sits on the inside corner of it, facing back across Banderas Bay, which is why the water here is calmer than it has any right to be on an open Pacific shore. Punta de Mita means Mita's Tip. Mita, the board says, means Half.

The boats, which are the whole economy

The pangas are pulled up at the north end, nose-first, and they have been there a great deal longer than the gate has. In the morning they go out fishing; in the middle of the day they take people to the Marietas; in the evening they come back and get pushed up the sand again.

The board calls what is here a quaint marina, and describes the shape of a day fishing here that ends with somebody cooking your catch. From this side of the gate the national park is a short crossing rather than the long run from across the bay, which is the practical reason to be on this beach at eight in the morning.

The wave

El Anclote is one of the seven breaks the board counts around the peninsula, and it is the one to learn on: the break is long and slow with a very smooth pitch. It is the beginners' wave for this whole coast.

That is the other rhythm of the beach. Boards go past you all morning, carried by people who have had two lessons and are extremely pleased with themselves, which is a nice thing to be around.

Eating, and what we will not do

The restaurants are along the back of the sand, open-sided, plastic chairs at some, linen at others, all of them with the same fish.

We are not going to name them. Not because they are not good — some are very good — but because no official source names a single one, places on a beach like this open and close and change hands in a season, and a list we cannot stand behind is worse than no list. Walk the five hundred metres, look at what is on ice at the front, and sit down at the one where the locals are eating. That is what everybody who lives here does.

Where you stay on this side

Twenty of our published houses are in the Punta de Mita area rather than inside the resort, and nineteen of them include the chef in the rate.

Casarena at Pontoquito — six bedrooms for fourteen, chef included. Casa Maka at El Farallón, seven bedrooms for sixteen, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Casa Tres Reinas, four bedrooms for ten, right on this side of the gate.

The choice between this and inside the gate is a real one, and it is about what you want the evening to be. Inside, the evening is your own terrace and, some nights, a beach club. Outside, the evening is a five-minute walk to a table on the sand where nobody knows which house you are in.

Both are good weeks. Only one of them has a dog supervising the boats.

Start with our fully staffed houses in Punta Mita and tell Rocío you want to be outside the gate — it is a short list and she knows it by heart.