El Coatante

El Coatante is a small rural village in the far northeast of the municipality of Bahía de Banderas, close to the Jalisco state line and a long way from the resort coast. It lies on the Camino Viejo a Puerto Vallarta, the old road that runs north from the Ameca valley through El Colomo, about five kilometers to the southwest, and on toward the hills. The Río Ameca, which marks the state line with Jalisco, flows less than a kilometer south of the village, and Tebelchía (El Roble), on the Jalisco side in Puerto Vallarta municipality, is about four and a half kilometers to the south, the hamlet of Los Sauces about three kilometers to the northeast, and Cerro Vallejo, at 1,133 meters the high point of the Sierra de Vallejo, rises about nine kilometers to the west.

It is a modest, slowly growing community: 268 people at the 2005 census, 315 in 2010 and 322 in 2020, living in 90 occupied homes. More than half the residents were born outside Nayarit, which is not surprising this close to Jalisco. Almost every home has electricity and piped water, and between 2010 and 2020 the share of homes with internet jumped from almost none to more than four in ten. The village has a kindergarten, two primary schools and a telepreparatoria, a distance-learning high school.

There are no hotels or tourist services. The nearest restaurants and food stands are in Las Palmas de Arriba, about nine kilometers away, and the nearest lodgings some 16 to 18 kilometers away. The climate is hot and humid, with about 1,400 mm of rain a year, most of it in summer. For travelers it is a glimpse of the farming country inland from Banderas Bay, best seen on a drive along the old road.