Hidden Beaches Near Puerto Vallarta: the Boat, or Walk

The road south out of Puerto Vallarta runs as far as Boca de Tomatlán and then stops. Not narrows — stops. There is a beach, a few boats pulled up on it, a man with a clipboard, and after that the coast carries on with no road behind it at all.

Everything on this page is on the far side of that.

What the board actually says

These are not undiscovered. They are on the tourism board's own pages, several of them have restaurants, and on a Saturday in March one of them is extremely busy.

What the tourism board's own page says is the useful bit, and it says it plainly: Colomitos, Las Ánimas, Quimixto and Yelapa can only be reached by water taxi. That is the whole character of this coast. No road means no coaches, no car parks and no day-trippers who have not committed to a boat.

Two places to get on. The Los Muertos pier in the Zona Romántica, which serves Yelapa, Quimixto and Mismaloya. And the beach at Boca de Tomatlán — the board puts it about twelve miles south of downtown, a twenty-minute drive — where the pangas go to the coves with no other way in.

Pangas leave when they are full rather than when a timetable says so, so early beats late in both directions. Take cash. Take shoes you can get wet, because you will be stepping off the bow into the water at the other end.

Colomitos, the one you can walk to

Colomitos is the first cove past Boca and the smallest: a crescent of pale sand between grey rocks with the hillside coming straight down behind it.

It is also the only one you can reach on foot. The coastal path leaves from the end of the beach at Boca and climbs over rock, through trees, in and out of little bays, and it is a proper walk rather than a stroll — over rock, in heat, with no shade in the open stretches.

The right version is to walk in and take a panga back, which is what the people who live here do. If you want the whole stretch rather than the first cove, the full-day hike along this coast links several of them with a snorkel stop and a boat home. It is well reviewed, and it runs November to May — outside those months it is not on offer, which is also when you would not want to be doing it.

Las Ánimas, which is the busy one

Las Ánimas is the cove with a row of palapa restaurants along the back of the sand and blue loungers in front of them, and by midday in high season it is full.

That is not a criticism. It is the one where a group of twelve can land, sit down, eat fish for three hours and get back on a boat, and there is a real appetite for exactly that. But if somebody has sold you Las Ánimas as a deserted beach, go at nine or go somewhere else.

Quimixto, which has the waterfall

Quimixto sits about twenty minutes by boat south of Boca, between Las Ánimas and Majahuitas, and it is a working village rather than a beach club.

The reason people come is inland: a walk — or a horse, if somebody offers — up the river behind the village to a waterfall and a pool you can get into. It is a walk rather than a hike, and a very good morning for a group with teenagers in it.

The village has somewhere to eat and not much else, which is the point.

Majahuitas, the quiet one

Majahuitas is the cove the photographs are usually of: pale sand, palms behind it, green water, nothing built on the hillside. The board says to take a panga from either Los Muertos pier or Boca.

It is also where the pirate ship's day sail goes, which is worth knowing in both directions — if you want it empty, find out whether the galleon is coming that day, and if you have children, arriving on an 800-ton replica galleon is its own argument.

Yelapa, which is a village

Yelapa is the furthest and the most committing: about forty-five minutes by boat from Boca, roughly twenty-seven kilometres from Puerto Vallarta, and it has no road to it either.

What is there is not a beach so much as a place — houses up the hillside, a river, a waterfall behind the village, and a long sand beach with palapas at one end and nothing at the other. People go for the day and then talk about staying for three.

If the week has one long outing in it, this is a strong candidate, and the group version is to take a private boat rather than the scheduled pangas: fourteen people, your own schedule, and the stops of your choosing on the way back. Between the middle of December and the end of March there are whales in the bay you will cross to reach it.

Doing it from the house

The honest geography is that all of this starts at Boca de Tomatlán, which means your week is easier the further south you already are. How you get around covers the drive; a house on the south shore shortens it to almost nothing.

Casa Morada is on that stretch, with snorkelling and paddleboarding straight off the front of the house on the calm days — which on several mornings means you do not need a boat at all. Villa Mandarinas has its own pier, which is the version where the boat comes to you.

Start with our fully staffed houses in Puerto Vallarta, and tell Rocío whether the group wants the walk, the waterfall or the long day to Yelapa. They are three different boats.