Sayulita Nightlife: the Plaza, the Street, the Hour

It gets dark at about half past seven and within twenty minutes there is a saxophone on the corner. A man with a drum arrives, then a juggler, then a crowd that is half locals and half people who were in the sea four hours ago, and two golf carts have to wait. Nobody organised this. In a town of five thousand people it does not need organising.

That is the honest shape of a night in Sayulita, and it is why the lists of twelve best bars miss the point. The evening here is not a venue, it is four streets and a square.

Where you are

Thirty-eight kilometres north of the Puerto Vallarta airport, which the Riviera Nayarit tourism board calls less than an hour by car — its press kit says thirty-five minutes from the town. Seven kilometres south of San Pancho, about fifteen north-east of Punta Mita, over the state line into Nayarit. A Pueblo Mágico, officially, and a fishing town of five thousand people in the board's own description.

The streets are cobbled, and there are more golf carts on them than cars.

The shape of a Sayulita evening

Six o'clock belongs to the beach, because the sun goes down into the Pacific at the end of the main street and the whole town turns to watch it. Nobody is being romantic about this; it is simply where everyone is.

Seven to nine is dinner, which happens outdoors, mostly at tables that are on the pavement rather than behind a window. Nine onwards the music starts — and the board's own guide describes it better than we can: as night fell, music made its presence known, a completely different life came alive in its streets.

The plaza is the centre of gravity. The board puts it plainly: it all begins in its square, where the fusion of a beach town and Wixárika culture intertwines. Stand in it at ten and you will be able to hear three different things at once and decide by walking.

Which places we will actually name

Four, because four is what an official source will put its name to.

The Riviera Nayarit board's own press kit names three in Sayulita — Bar Don Pato's, Bodeguita del Medio and Mi Amigo Cantina — and the board's own guide names a fourth, Yambak, right on the corner of the main square, with house-brewed beer and techno the night the writer was there.

There are more places open than that and some of them are excellent. The reason we are not listing twelve of them is that bars in a town this size open, move and close in a season, and a list we cannot stand behind is worse than no list at all. Walk the four streets, listen at the doors, and ask the house manager what opened since the spring. That is what everyone who lives here does.

What to drink, and the one word to learn

Beer is cold and nobody will think less of you for ordering it. Tequila is the obvious thing and perfectly good.

The word worth learning on this coast is raicilla — a traditional distilled agave spirit from the sierra behind Puerto Vallarta, related to tequila and mezcal and rougher than both, and the thing a bartender here will be pleased you asked for. Mexico's federal tourism portal notes the bars in Sayulita that pour it. Ask for it neat, ask what it is, and you have had a conversation rather than a drink.

If somebody in the group has only ever had tequila as a shot with salt, do a proper tasting on the first afternoon. It changes everything they order for the rest of the week.

Getting home, which is the only logistics there are

Everything above is within four blocks. You walk. If you are staying up at Punta Sayulita or on the Northside you take a golf cart — Treehouse includes one.

Four of our houses are in Sayulita itself. Casa Ensueño is on the Northside — three bedrooms, a cathedral-ceilinged dining room, a yoga room and custom murals by the artist Víctor Eugenio Ramírez Sánchez, which its own listing names. Treehouse, Jungle House and Casa Poseidon are up at Punta Sayulita at the south end, with beach-club access and, in Treehouse's case, a golf cart included in the rate. Jungle House has two indigenous papilla trees growing up through its deck, which the builders chose to keep.

One honest note. None of the four includes a chef in the rate. In Puerto Vallarta forty-nine of our fifty-four houses do; in Sayulita none does, and a cook is arranged rather than assumed. Budget for it, or eat out, which here is no hardship.

Seven kilometres north in San Pancho, Casa La Joya does come staffed — a private chef, a bartender, a steward — if you want the town and the cook both.

If what you want is a late night

Go to Puerto Vallarta, and the Riviera Nayarit's own board will tell you the same thing. Its press kit describes this coast as bars, pubs and cantinas, and sends anybody who wants to be out until dawn across the bay to the malecón, El Centro and Olas Altas.

Sayulita is not a small version of that. It is a different thing — music in a street, a square with a few bars on it, and everyone walking home before it gets late. If that is the evening you want, it is an hour down the coast in the right direction.

The surf is best from December through April when the north swells arrive, and the town is busiest November to April. In August it rains in the afternoon, the hills are green, and the same saxophone is on the same corner with fewer people watching.

Start with our houses in Punta Mita — the four Sayulita houses are listed there — and tell Rocío whether you want to be in the town or above it.