El Paraíso

El Paraíso is a small beach village on the Pacific coast of the municipality of Armería, about 7 km south of the city of Armería and about 15 km from Tecomán. INEGI lists it as El Paraíso, a balneario or beach resort, and at the 2020 census it had 171 inhabitants in 59 occupied homes. It lies about 3.5 km west of Boca de Pascuales and the mouth of the Armería River, whose sediment, carried down from the Volcán de Colima, gives the beach its dark, medium-grained volcanic sand. Together with Cuyutlán, about 10 km to the northwest, it is one of the two beach resorts of Armería, and it is among the busiest spots on the state's coast during Semana Santa.

Armería itself grew up around a hacienda, on the railway line down to Manzanillo. It was a town within the municipality of Manzanillo until it became Colima's youngest municipality, by decree on 3 June 1967, and its seat received city status in 1988. The plain behind the coast is farmland: lime, coconut, mango, papaya, corn and sorghum, with a lime packing plant and coconut processing, while salt is still harvested at the nearby Laguna de Cuyutlán.

The village is essentially one long row of enramadas, open-sided restaurants under palm-leaf roofs set on the sand; more than 30 of them serve fresh fish and seafood, including pescado zarandeado, ceviche, garlic shrimp and octopus a la diabla. They typically open from about 9 am to 7 pm, and a meal costs roughly 150 to 400 pesos per person. The sea is open, deep and rough: locals advise against swimming, but the waves draw surfers and windsurfers, and the stretch of coast between El Real and El Paraíso has some of the biggest surf in Colima. Boat trips go into the nearby mangrove estuary and the Laguna de Alcuzahue to see resident and migratory birds, and a rustic eco-hotel, Las Delicias del Paraíso, offers rooms, pools and camping facing the sea.