Sayulita

Sayulita sits on a north-facing bay between the jungle and the Pacific, an hour from Puerto Vallarta and a world away from it. The right point break at the river mouth has been running since the 1960s when the first surfers arrived from California and found a town that had no particular reason to resist them. The waves are not world-class — consistent, warm, and forgiving enough that the ISA World Surfing Games came here in 2015. The beach runs with surf schools from dawn.

What kept people coming back was not just the surf. The yoga arrived early and stayed. The town became a Pueblo Mágico — Mexico's designation for places of genuine cultural heritage — and the cobblestone streets, the Huichol art, the organic markets, and the fish tacos coexisted with the surf schools and the retreat centres without any of them consuming the others. The hotels in this guide sit outside the centre rather than in it: on private beaches, on jungle hillsides, on clifftops above the water. They came because the town was already the thing.