Mexico

Mexico has two coastlines that barely acknowledge each other. The Pacific side is where the surf lives, and it covers the full range of what surf can mean. Puerto Escondido's Zicatela is the Mexican Pipeline — a beach break heavy enough to anchor an international big-wave calendar — with La Punta at the south end of the bay offering a point wave the rest of us can actually ride. Sayulita, up in Riviera Nayarit, is the opposite proposition: a forgiving beach break in a fishing town that learned to longboard, better for a first wave than a fiftieth. And at the bottom of Baja, Los Cabos and Todos Santos put desert against ocean — Costa Azul's summer rights on the East Cape side, Cerritos on the Pacific, and a pace that development keeps threatening and never quite manages to kill. South swells run April through October on the mainland; Baja works most of the year.

Tulum is on the other coast and plays a different game entirely. The Caribbean is flat, warm, and clear; there is no surf and nobody pretends otherwise. What Tulum has is the densest concentration of serious yoga and deliberate design in the collection — jungle shalas, cenote swims, hotels built barefoot-first — which is why it belongs here on those tags alone. The hotels in this collection span all four destinations and both coasts: surf-first in Puerto Escondido, yoga-first in Tulum and Sayulita, and design throughout, because Mexico is currently producing some of the most interesting hotel architecture on either ocean.