Quimixto: You Cannot Drive There, and That Is the Point

The panga leaves when it is full. There is no timetable, there is a man at the top of the beach at Boca de Tomatlán who knows where you want to go, and when there are enough of you he pushes the boat off the sand and you climb in over the bow with your shoes in your hand. Twenty minutes later the engine drops to nothing and you step off into knee-deep water onto a beach the colour of amber, and there are no cars, because there is no road.

That is Quimixto, and the single thing worth knowing about it is in that last clause. People plan this day as a drive. It is a boat.

Getting there, which is the whole first act

The Puerto Vallarta tourism board puts it without decoration: Colomitos, Las Ánimas, Quimixto and Yelapa are reachable only by water taxi. The only way in is by water taxi — there is no track, no shuttle and no back way.

The pangas go from Boca de Tomatlán, the fishing village where the coast road south runs out. The board puts Boca about twelve miles below downtown Puerto Vallarta, roughly a twenty-minute drive, and Quimixto about twenty minutes by boat beyond it, between Las Ánimas and Majahuitas. Water taxis also leave from the Los Muertos pier in the Zona Romántica if you would rather start in town.

Go early. The organised day boats come down from the marina around midday and turn back in the middle of the afternoon, so a panga out of Boca at nine buys you the beach and the trail with almost nobody on them. The other way in, for people who would rather earn it, is the coastal walk from Boca along the cliffs through the coves — arrive on foot, leave by boat, which is the best shape a day on this coast can have.

The waterfall, and the two ways up to it

The river behind the village is the La Puerta, and the waterfall is about an hour's walk up it. The board describes the route as going either through the village's cobbled streets or along the trail by the river, which in practice means the same path with your feet drier or wetter depending on the month.

At the top there is a drop into a dark pool with rock on three sides. In the dry months it is a swimming hole; after the summer rain it is loud. Either way the water is cold, which after an hour's walk is the entire point.

The other way up is on a horse. There are horses on the beach and they will be offered to you before you have finished taking your shoes off. Adults tend to walk and regret it; children choose the horse and are right.

The village, which is a village

A few hundred metres of sand with palapa restaurants along the back of it, lanes behind that, and people's houses. People live here and have for a long time, and the thing that keeps it the way it is is the absence of a road.

Eat where the fish is on ice at the front. Nobody needs a recommendation here because there are not enough places for a recommendation to mean anything. Order whatever came in this morning, and if you want the local drink, ask for raicilla — the agave spirit from the sierra behind Vallarta, rougher than tequila and considerably more interesting.

Two hours of this is enough for most people, which is exactly the right length. Quimixto is not a destination you fill; it is one you visit.

The one house on this beach

There is a single house here: Villa Mixto, six bedrooms for up to eighteen, directly on the sand.

Its own listing describes an open-air beachfront restaurant and bar, a palapa-covered lounge and dining area, an open-air yoga shala with proper props and aerial hammocks, kayaks and paddleboards, and what it calls an organic design in natural materials — which in a place you can only reach by boat is less a style than a necessity. Included with every booking: exclusive use of the whole property, housekeeping, maintenance, night security, a cleaning crew, a paramedic on site and a 28-kilowatt generator. That last pair tells you more about where you are than any photograph does.

Two lines on the listing matter more here than anywhere else: the round-trip boat from Puerto Vallarta and the private chef, both priced per person and both arranged through the house. On a house in a village with no road, the boat and the cook are the logistics, not the extras.

When to come, and what else is out there

The crossing is the attraction from the middle of December to the end of March, because that is when the humpbacks are inside Banderas Bay — whales from the panga, twenty minutes out of Boca, with nobody selling you anything.

In summer the hills behind the village go green, it rains hard in the afternoon and clears, and the waterfall is at its best. The sea is warm all year.

If Quimixto is a day rather than a week, the rest of the coast is right there: Yelapa is further round at the southern end of the bay, about twenty-seven kilometres from Puerto Vallarta and bigger, with its own waterfall and its own opinion of itself. And the town is forty minutes behind you, which after a day with no cars in it feels like a long way.

Start with our fully staffed houses in Puerto Vallarta and tell Rocío whether you want the boat day or the boat week.