Punta Mita Surf Spots: Seven Breaks, Most Outside the Gate

At seven in the morning the water off El Anclote is the colour of weak tea and there is almost nobody on it. A man wades out past his waist with a longboard under one arm, turns, waits, and catches something so slow and so long that he is still standing on it two hundred metres later, level with the pangas. It is not an impressive wave. It is a very good wave to learn on, which is a different thing and a more useful one.

That is the honest opening for a story about surfing here, because the peninsula's reputation and the peninsula's surf are not quite in the same place.

Seven breaks, and where they actually are

The Riviera Nayarit tourism board counts them plainly: seven breaks circling the southern peninsula, from Anclote round to Sayulita. Not thirteen. Seven, with their own names and their own tides.

Here is the part the brochures leave out. Almost all of them are outside the gate. Punta Mita is the gated resort community on the tip; Punta de Mita is everything beyond it — the village, El Anclote, El Farallón, the road south. The breaks people fly for are mostly on that side of the barrier. If you are staying inside the gates, surfing means getting in a car or on a boat most mornings, and knowing that in advance is the difference between a good week and a mildly annoyed one.

The one to learn on

El Anclote is the beginners' wave, and the board says why in one line: the break is long and slow with a very smooth pitch. You can stand up on it, fall off it and get back on it in the same wave. It breaks in front of the village, so you walk to it, and the restaurants are right behind you when you have had enough.

If anyone in the group has never surfed, this is where they start, and most of them will stand up on the first morning.

The ones you walk or boat to

The Cove is the one local guides argue is the best break in the whole of Banderas Bay. It is also about forty minutes on foot from Punta Mita, or a panga ride, and it wants high tide — low tide runs shallow over the rock. La Lancha is the same arrangement: longboard water, forty minutes' walk or a boat, and it works on the tide coming in or going out rather than at slack.

Both are the sort of place where the walk is part of it. Take water, take a hat, and go early, because by eleven the sun on that path is the main event.

The ones you drive to

Punta Burros, south of the peninsula, is the one everyone ends up at, because you can park near it. The board calls it extremely popular and easily accessible, good for short and longboards both, and says the right-hand side gives the longer, softer ride. High tide is best, but it works most of the day, which is why it is busy.

Further south, Los Veneros is a reef break and a short-board wave. Just north of it, Swimming Pools is a longboard wave you have to paddle out to. And the Beach Break beside them is a sand-bottom wave with a wide left and, when it is on, a proper barrel. Three very different waves inside a few hundred metres of coast, which is the real argument for a car.

North of all of it, Sayulita breaks all day on any tide without much swell behind it. It is forty minutes up the road and it is where you go when the family wants a town as well as a wave.

When the swell comes

December to April. That is the board's own window, and the reason is the north swells arriving down the Pacific. In those months the reefs stand up and the people who plan their year around waves are here.

The rest of the year the same seven breaks are smaller, softer and far emptier. If you are learning, or your children are, summer is the better half of the calendar, not the worse one. Warm water, small waves, nobody shouting at you for dropping in.

Lessons, and who actually needs one

Anyone who has not surfed, and quite a few people who have and learned badly. Two hours with somebody who knows which way the tide is running is worth a week of guessing.

The lesson we point guests to is a lesson at Punta de Mita, because it runs on the beginners' wave rather than somewhere ambitious, and because boards and the walk down are included. Our own surf-lessons page has the rest of it. Children do well here; the wave is forgiving.

Where you stay, and how far the board is from the door

Of our houses in Punta Mita, the ones inside the gates come with a membership their own listings describe as covering the beach clubs, the two courses, the pier and the surf breaks — Casa Mare up in Kupuri and Villa Amistad at Porta Fortuna both read that way.

If the surf is the point of the trip, look outside the gate instead. Casa Maka sits at El Farallón on the Punta de Mita side, seven bedrooms for sixteen with the chef in the rate, and the beginners' wave is a short drive rather than a project.

Start with our fully staffed houses in Punta Mita and tell Rocío which of you is surfing, because that decides which side of the gate you want to be on.