Cuyutlán

Cuyutlán is a small beach village in the municipality of Armería, on the strip of land between the big Laguna de Cuyutlán and the open Pacific, about 14 km west of the town of Armería. It had 1,006 people at the 2020 census and sits barely above sea level. The name is usually explained as Nahuatl for place of the cuyos. Its beach is one of the classic weekend escapes for people from Colima: the surf is strong, the water deep, and the sand is fine and almost black, worn down from volcanic basalt, so it gets very hot in the sun. Seafood palapas and restaurants line the seafront.

Salt has been gathered from the lagoon here since before the Spanish arrived, and the salt flats are still worked, mainly from March to May. The railway reached the area in 1882. On 22 June 1932 an earthquake off the coast was followed within minutes by a tsunami that almost completely destroyed the village; a scientific reconstruction counts about 50 dead and 1,200 injured, and the water reached the railway line. The Mexican director Emilio "El Indio" Fernández later filmed La Red (1953), whose cinematographer Alex Phillips won a prize at Cannes, and his last film, Erótica, in Cuyutlán.

The village is best known for the Ola Verde, the green wave: the name is given to the big swells that roll in each spring, famous across Mexico and popular with surfers and windsurfers, and some describe the waves glowing green at night in April and May. In town, the Museo de la Sal, opened in February 1996 in a 19th-century wooden salt warehouse, explains salt-making with a large model and also shows archaeological pieces, whale bones and posters of the films shot here. A few kilometres away on the road to El Paraíso, the Centro Ecológico El Tortugario has worked for more than 30 years to protect olive ridley, black and leatherback turtles, has released more than two million hatchlings, and runs boat trips through the mangrove tunnels of the Estero Palo Verde, where about 130 bird species have been recorded.