Laureles y Góngora

Laureles y Góngora is a farming village in the north of the municipality of San Blas, Nayarit, registered by INEGI as Laureles y Góngora (El Ciruelo) and known locally as El Ciruelo. The same ejido name also covers its western neighbor, Laureles y Góngora (El Limón), about two kilometers away. The village lies on the flat, low delta of the Río Grande de Santiago, whose last stretch before the Pacific passes only about half a kilometer to the north, and it practically touches Isla del Conde to the east. Guadalupe Victoria, the main town of this part of the municipality, is about 4 to 5 kilometers away.

With 549 people in 214 occupied homes at the 2020 census, El Ciruelo is one of the larger villages of the San Blas countryside, though it has been shrinking: there were 636 residents in 2010 and 684 in 2005. Its people farm the ejido land, mostly beans, and in 2023 Laureles y Góngora was among the villages whose farmers asked the state for help leveling their fields after losing money on their crops. Like its neighbors it lies in an area certified as low prevalence for fruit flies. Services are basic, and in 2025 a local congresswoman named El Ciruelo among the San Blas communities with problems in their drinking water supply. Between El Ciruelo and Isla del Conde there are kindergartens, primary schools and a telesecundaria.

This is not a tourist village, but it shows the other side of the San Blas coast: instead of beaches and colonial ruins, a landscape of fields, canals, river banks and estuaries at the southern edge of the Marismas Nacionales wetlands. It is easy to combine with a drive to Guadalupe Victoria or toward the coast at Boca del Asadero, near the mouth of the river. Expect heat all year, about 25 °C on average, with the heaviest rain in August.