Chacala

Chacala is a small fishing village on the Nayarit coast, set on a curved cove backed by green hills, with a long beach of fine pale sand. The bay is sheltered by a rocky point, so the water is usually calm enough for swimming, and a row of palapa restaurants faces the sand. Its name is often said to mean "place of shrimp" in Náhuatl.

For centuries it was just a landing on a quiet bay. Spanish explorers came through in the colonial era, and in 1683 the Jesuit missionary Eusebio Kino sailed from here on an expedition to Baja California. Until the 1990s the village was reached only by a rough dirt road; the paved road that came with a private development at Chacalilla, the cove just north, opened it to visitors.

Even so, Chacala has kept a small-town pace. There are no big hotels, only guesthouses, small inns and the Mar de Jade retreat center at the south end of the beach, which grew out of a community clinic founded here in the 1980s. People come to swim, snorkel around the rocks, take a boat out with local fishermen, and eat grilled fish on the beach.