Riviera Nayarit: hippy-hunting on Mexico's Pacific beaches

21.07.2023 - 07:57 / roughguides.com / Neil Macquillian

On a trip to Mexico's Riviera Nayarit, just a short drive from bright lights of Puerto Vallarta, Neil McQuillian discovers the unexpected...

There! I whipped my head round to get a better look. Yes – roger that – no doubt about it. That rare combination of bright, clashing colours and drab browns: remarkable. Quite a sighting. I never thought I’d encounter one like her in these parts.

For this, surely, was absolutely the wrong sort of habitat. I was just 40km – a half-hour drive – north of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco state’s second-biggest city, a sizzling party town throbbing with North American tourists. I'd have expected my lesser-spotted to shun this neck of the woods.

But no – I'd seen a hippy all right. With the grey slab of a highway gas station forecourt for a backdrop, her beach camo tan and golden dreadlocks was unmistakable. And she’d been thumbing for a ride too: textbook hippy behaviour.

This was only my first full day in Mexico. I’d not yet experienced central Puerto Vallarta for myself, though I’d flown into its airport on one of Thomson’s newly launched direct flights from the UK (the only services here from Europe that don't require a change). I'd then immediately scarpered north up the coast – having read about the town’s spring-break steam-letting reputation, I didn’t fancy it much. I was after tranquility.

Yet Guillermo, my guide, assured me that, not only were the towns we’d be visiting that day chilled: they were hubs of hippiedom, bastions of bodaciousness. I'd been on the edge of my passenger seat ever since – and then there she was, right on cue, a vision in tie-dye.

Even without the proximity of Vallarta (as it’s known), there's another reason I was dubious about this hippy idea. This stretch of coastline, just over the state border from Jalisco, has been rebranded in recent years. No longer is it the easily overlooked southern corner of Nayarit state, a ragtag of little towns overshadowed by Vallarta. No – these days it is Riviera Nayarit. Mexico’s tourism bigwigs are turning the full force of their will towards it, with the resorts already in place rather more power-shower than flower-power. And beware: the last time the tourist kingmakers got so exercised, Cancún was their target. We know what happened there.

Yet once we'd turned off the highway, the approach road to Sayulita – the best-known of Nayarit’s boho beach towns – certainly didn’t feel like it was gearing up for a touristic boom. Billowing trees crowded in as we drove along. Wire fences were strung between rudely carved posts. Little huts with thinning palapa roofs sat by battered old cars, parked at wonky angles on uneven ground. So far, so hippy.

But while Sayulita itself was a jumble, it was a just-so jumble. The