Boca del Asadero

Boca del Asadero is a small fishing village in the north of the municipality of San Blas, Nayarit, on the flat, low-lying coast near the mouth of the Río Grande de Santiago. The river, which runs 433 km from Lake Chapala, makes its last loops just west of the village and reaches the Pacific about 2 km away, some 16 km north-west of the port of San Blas. The village stands only about 6 meters above sea level, with farmland, shrimp ponds and estuaries around it, and San Blas is about 31 km and 45 minutes away by road.

It is a very small place: 139 people at the 2020 census, close to the 147 of 2010, with a primary school and a community preschool. People here fish and farm, and services are basic; in 2025 a state legislator listed Boca del Asadero among the San Blas villages without piped drinking water. In 2022 the state government finished a new road from the neighboring village of El Limón to Boca del Asadero, built, in the governor's words, for the area's farmers and fishermen.

The village has a remarkable footnote in Mexican seafaring. Before dawn on October 28, 2005, five men set out from the mouth of the Santiago, from the fishing communities of El Limón and Boca del Asadero, to fish for shark south of the Islas Marías. By their account, they ran out of fuel and the current carried them across the Pacific; three of them were picked up by a tuna boat on August 9, 2006, about 200 miles east of the Marshall Islands, after some nine months adrift, and the story went around the world. Today the village sees few outsiders beyond birdwatchers, who have recorded sightings around it; there are no hotels or restaurants, and San Blas, with its mangrove boat trips and beaches, is the place to stay.