I Live A Charmed Life 2022: Friday 2/11 | |
Wanda walking down the lazy streets of San Pancho. | |
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I must live a charmed life - more on that later.
SAN PANCHO aka San Fransico. The next town north of the crowded town of Sayulita is the laid-back lazy town of San Pancho. It is a town of two names. In 1524, the Spanish conquistador, Don Fransisco Cortes de Buenaventura (now that’s a great handle), came across a tiny native settlement. He named it San Fransisco after St. Francis of Assisi. Yeah, right! I think he named it after himself. How the San Pancho name fits in, I couldn’t ascertain.
We love San Pancho. The pace is very slow and the beach is excellent with good wave action. Getting there is both easy and dicey at the same time. About half of the Compostela buses go to Sayulita (the other half goes to Punta de Mita). Only a handful of the Compostela buses that go to Sayulita continue on to San Pancho. You have to just hang around the bus stop and wait until you see a Compostela bus with San Pancho on the windshield. It can take up to an hour.
An alternative is to go to the Pacifico Bus station in downtown Bucerias and take the bus to Guayabitos (Pacifico buses are not affiliated with Pacifico beer). I think they run every 20 minutes. It passes San Pancho on the way. Just ask the driver to let you out at San Pancho. Pacifico buses are a lot plusher, but double the price. On the return trip we almost always flag down a Pacifico bus.
The bus stop on Hwy 200 is about a kilometer away from the beach. The main street that runs from the highway to the beach starts off with informal food stands and little street vendor stands. The closer you get to the beach, the more swanky things get. The downtown is just before the beach. San Pancho is untouched by the frenzied building going up from Puerto Vallarta to Sayulita. Although it is just four miles north of Sayulita, it is a world apart.
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Close to Hwy 200, the shops, vendor stands, and eateries are barebones as far as fancy decorations go. | |
I love the mobile bicycle-powered eateries and drink stands. | |
A single traveler can save a lot of money staying in a hostal. For two people, however, we found that sleuthing out an affordable Airbnb isn’t much more expensive and provides more privacy. San Pancho has these two hostals. | |
As you walk closer to the ocean, the crude open-air restaurants give way to establishments that have walls. | |
As you near downtown, actual buildings rule. | |
Restaurants now have fancier courtyards. | |
San Pancho spices up its downtown with some colorful strings of flags. A lot of towns put these up in their downtown. Some ambitious towns hang colorful umbrellas. | |
Wanda has a Mexican hat collection. She is eyeing up a hat for this trip. | |
This restaurant features handmade tortillas made right on the street. | |
This restaurant staff was excited to see me. | |
You pay a premium at this street market in front of the beach - location, location, location. | |
The iconic tree guarding the entrance to San Pancho’s beach. | |
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It is the beach that attracts us, or I should say the surf. The wave action has always been impressive when we have visited. Buckle up, it’s time for a hell of a ride.
Today, the waves were the strongest we’ve ever experience. We got pounded, punched, and pounced until we could barely stand it. Then, after one vicious tumbling, I stood up and immediately noticed that my waterproof fanny pack, with my cell phone and wallet, was gone. My cap was also gone (I need a hat to keep my head, with my thinning hair, from sunburning).
As I was hustling out of the surf before the next wave hit, I was already thinking about how to deal with this new reality. Halfway out, I spotted my hat - big whoop. Wanda and I confirred on the beach, just outside the reach of the waves. Wanda still had her wallet and some money for the bus to get home. Suddenly, Wanda looked down the beach and spotted my fanny pack. It had been thrown up on the beach. I ran as fast as I could before another wave could come up and snatch it back into the ocean depths.
It was all there. The water proofing did it’s job. Everything inside was dry. The strap hadn’t even broken. It just unhooked, which was a near impossiblity. I figured it was a one in a million chance for it to unhook in the way it did. It was also a one in a million chance that I found it. Jeeze, I must live a charmed life. Quick, where do I buy a lottery ticket? Wanda says it was karma for tipping the musicians at Las Famosas yesterday.
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Like Playa Destiladeras, the umbrellas and chairs are not tied to a bar. You rent them separately. Also like Playa Destiladeras, it was another 350 pesos ($17 US) for all day. I am seriously thinking about finding our own portable umbrella and chairs. I’ve seen some sturdy-looking collapsible umbrellas that have a nifty screw on the bottom that you twist, and the pole bites down into the sand firmly anchoring the pole when you get it deep enough. It all takes apart and goes into a carrying bag. I have other ideas for chairs, but they aren’t absolutely necessary. We could lay down our big beach towels to lounge on. It’s the shade that is essential. | |
The surf was rough, but when those vicious rogues hit, it was lights out. Wanda has a theory about waves and tides. She speculates that low tide brings smaller waves and high tides bring in the big ones. Well…., I don’t know ‘bout dat. I think it has more to do with wind patterns and strength. | |
Like Sayulita, just a few miles down the road, San Pancho is a surfing mecca in the Riviera Nayarit. | |
The surfboard shops are in between a pond and the ocean. | |
One surfer is poised to catch a wave. | |
We weren’t the only ones crazy enough to get hammered by the waves. | |
Usually, the birds occasionally dive in after the odd fish here and there. However, a large school of fish must have skirted the area. These pelicans were in a crazed frenzy diving, flapping, and honking. The flock followed the fish as the school swam around. | |
One of a handful of bar and restaurants serving the San Pancho beach. | |
The well-stocked bar for the seating in the above photo. | |
Overlooking the beach is this marvelous structure. There must be some big doings going on this evening. A large crew was setting things up. | |
Another beach bar and restaurant - love the grass roofs. | |
I think someone was squatting on the beach, and right in front of some of the beachfront mansions - the nerve! (lol) | |
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Well, that put the kibosh on swimming for the day, if you call being trapped in the spin-cycle of a washing machine, swimming. It is Wanda’s tradition to buy a hat when she comes to Mexico. It was time to hunt down her hat.
We had spotted a good candidate earlier from a street vendor. He was asking 280 pesos ($13.65 US). We returned only to find the hat she liked was gone, presumably sold. She found another, nearly identical, at a vendor near the beach. This means, more expensive. Sure enough, the lady quoted 400 pesos. I hate haggling, but that kind of inflation just because she was in a more touristy location got my haggling mojo going. Wanda, to my surprise, the person who hates haggling even more than me, blurted out 280. I was just in the middle of spitting out 300. The momentum of my thoughts reached my mouth before I could stop it. The lady accepted 300 and I was stuck paying it, but I was proud of Wanda nonetheless. I fell in love all over again.
With a new hat, it was time to wander the streets. It's Zuege zig-zag time.
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Wanda celebrating her new hat with a margarita. | |
We started our zig-zagging along the coast. These are gorgeous homes. | |
San Fransisco’s Golden Gate. | |
We zigged back to downtown, then zagged away again. | |
This tree, the mural below, and the junk-art horse is in the main plaza. | |
For supper, we tried a new place, Punto Las Olas, a “mercado gastronomico” (a gastronomic market - what a great phrase for a restaurant). We split a dish of nachos and each had a grilled shrimp taco. Both were gastronomically delicious. | |
The bar at Punto Las Olas, where we settled in for supper. | |
The Punto Las Olas mercado gastronómíco has drink specials on Monday and Tuesday, and live music Thurday through Sunday. | |
Our nachos loaded with cheese, bacon bits, black olives, and jalapeno slices. | |
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We caught the Pacifico bus for the return trip. Just 5 kilometers away from our stop, a crash blocked all the traffic on the highway. It must have been bad. We waited for 20 minutes. Impatient, the driver drove out onto the opposite lane, backed up for a good half a kilometer, and turned around in a small opening. To make the 180º turn-around, he had to inch back, and inch forward about 30 times.
The only way to reach Bucerias was to return all the way back to Sayulita and then loop back around on the coastal version of Hwy 200. It added another 36 kilometers according to Google Maps as I tracked his detour. The coastal route was ultra-slow slogging due to all the absurd speed bumps. The road took us through an especially depressed back area of Sayulita, a section that the tourists don’t see. It broke my heart. I wonder what these people think of all the wealthy foreigners dominating all the best coastal land?
Still, as we toured the coastline around Punta de Mita, it was fun to see a different locale.
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We watched helplessly from our seats on the bus as these guys pushed their car up an incline. It reminded me of Al Bundy in an episode of Married With Children where Al’s car never ran, and he couldn’t get his kids to help him push. | | | | |
