So relaxed in San Pancho — and charmed by Chacala

As Quent and I continue our quest to figure out a warm-weather destination where we’d like to land for several weeks or a couple months in order to spend as little time in snow for the rest of our lives, I won’t bury the lede: San Pancho is absolutely a contender. With some caveats.

San Pancho is a beachfront town about a 15-minute drive from Sayulita, where we just were for 2 weeks. This is our first visit to San Pancho, so I can’t compare what it was like years ago, but I’ll say it’s absolutely no longer the “sleepy fishing village” it was before foreigners “discovered” it and started building vacation homes here. Like Sayulita’s “Gringo Hill” neighborhood, San Pancho has “Gringo Flats,” an area of newer-built construction off the main drag that houses a concentration of the English-speaking crowd — both homeowners and visiting renters.

San Pancho is decidedly smaller than Sayulita and feels more manageable for walking around, and it’s much less bustling. There’s one main road into town from the highway (like Sayulita), but it’s not as built up at all. I appreciate that the cobblestone streets are less dusty than Sayulita, and for couple of blocks in the core center of town, the main street is actually decorative cement (“stamped concrete,” Quent says) so it feels really clean. There’s also a lot more greenery and foliage in general — both downtown and in the residential areas around it.

The beach is smaller than Sayulita’s, but still a great size for taking walks and finding quiet spots to pitch your umbrella and settle into chairs or blankets. There’s not so much of a surf culture going on because the surf break isn’t as prominent. That said, we’ve seen a few surfers out there in San Pancho’s waves and walking around town barefoot with their boards. There’s also at least one in-town surf shop and boards for rent on the beach.

San Pancho draws plenty of English-speaking tourists

The visiting crowds here are similar to Sayulita — boho-chic young people, families with babies and toddlers, and plenty of older folks — but again, it’s hard to tell if people are on vacation short term or living here longer term.

Like Sayulita, San Pancho has some amazing restaurants — amazing! In fact, when I realized just how many I wanted to try, I lamented only being here for 9 nights! From families selling $2 tacos out of their homes to modern international restaurants with $23 steak entrees on the menu, there’s a gamut of food options. We’ve had delicious fresh seafood and fabulous wood-fired pizza — always sitting outside on pretty patios or at tables on the street.

We go to bed early — by 9pm most nights! — so I also can’t really comment on the San Pancho nightlife. But San Pancho feels much less like a party town than Sayulita does. We’ve seen live music at the local brewpub — a cute little spot serving charcuterie boards, burgers and Mexican craft beers — but that seems to wrap up by 10pm. I haven’t spotted any groups of bachelorettes in a caravan of golf carts whooping it up in the streets like we did in Sayulita.

That’s not to say people weren’t having a ball on the main beach on Saturday, which was also Constitution Day, a federal holiday. We wanted to see what it was like to spend the day on a comfy lounge chair in the thick of the action. You can rent a beach chair for $15 for the day or simply agree to buy your day’s food and drink at one of the restaurants hosting chaise lounges and tables. We did the latter, and spent $50 on drinks and lunch (bacon wrapped shrimp and tuna tostadas).

The beach was absolutely busy and upbeat — we spotted many groups of people who’d brought their own music, dancing with drinks in hand. And then there was this awesome drum circle that attracted dozens of people with its amazing beat. Lots of weekend festivity and frolicking on the main beach, for sure.

And the vendors! San Pancho’s beach, like Sayulita and most touristy beaches we’ve been to on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, attracts vendors walking around selling everything from wood carvings and sunglasses to blankets and bracelets. I started counting how many approached us on our lounge chairs, and stopped at 25 in the first 2 hours of our stint there.

We’re staying on the north end of town, and we have our own “quiet beach” about a 5-minute walk from our vacation rental down a steep hill below our casa — it’s about a 20-minute walk along the shore to the main beach. Some vendors do make their way up to us, but they are many fewer in number.

Our San Pancho casa on the hill

We’ve rented a two-bedroom, two-level (plus a third outdoor lower level for our infinity pool!), gorgeous home that’s perched on a cliff. Part of our reason for booking this pretty place (which is twice as much as we paid for our one-bedroom in Sayulita) was to see how much we’d want or use certain amenities. We also wanted to see what it was like staying a little outside of the main town core vs. closer to downtown.

While this gorgeous home is absolutely fabulous, with direct ocean views and stunning sunset skies, we’ve learned a few things:

• Having a washer/dryer is super helpful — I’ve done a load of laundry — but I also don’t really mind dropping our laundry to get it cleaned at a local lavanderia.
• Having two bathrooms each with showers is also great — Quent has set up shop in one, and I’m in the other — but not necessary. We share a bathroom with one shower and one sink at home and we can do it in our “warm-weather locale” too.
• I think moving forward we’ll only feel like we need to rent a two-bedroom apartment/bungalow/house/whatever if we know our kids will be visiting us (or hosting other family or friends!). It’s been nice having two bedrooms to spread out (Quent’s clothes are in the second bedroom’s closet, too) and a place to go sleep if one of us gets up in the middle of the night and wants to relocate (like we do at home sometimes). But having that extra space is not a necessity.

Most significantly, we’ve learned we want to stay closer to town. Our current walk to town is 20 minutes, which is too far from the action, in my book.

I had an “aha moment” the other day: Our Colorado home is up on a hill with lots of open space, a stellar scenic view, with walking trails outside our door. We have to get in a car to go anywhere; the grocery store is a 7-minute drive away.

For our “other home in the winter even if it’s a vacation rental because we don’t think we’re going to buy anything” we want to be closer to the action. I want to experience an easy walk to the corner cafe in the morning for my coffee — or walking to the beach for the day, coming home for a shower, and then walking to a favorite dinner spot or my neighborhood bar. It’s not as easy to do that when you’re nearly a mile from town and up a hill (the walk back to our current casa is super steep!).

In fact, realizing that we’d be nearly a mile by road from town (for whatever reason, this didn’t really register when I booked this house and location), we decided to rent a car for our stint in San Pancho. I’m so glad we did. It’s easy to scoot down the hill in our rental car and park on the street downtown to enjoy dinner without having to walk the uneven streets and sidewalks in the dark back home.

Side note: I hate bringing up/dealing with my bad ankle, as I’m trying so hard to age gracefully and I really dislike not feeling 100 percent, but it’s absolutely been a factor in getting around this trip. Whenever we venture out, given the less-than-smooth condition of the streets and sidewalks throughout Mexico, I wear my Asics sneakers with a big ol custom ankle brace — one I’ve worn for hiking and long walking stretches for the past 3 years since the bad sprain. It’s not a sexy look — cute sundresses with dirty sneakers — but I’m doing what I gotta do right now before surgery to a) not sprain it and b) reduce achey pain not only in my ankle, but in my knee, leg and hip too — eeesh.

Anyway, picking up a car in Sayulita with a return at the Puerto Vallarta airport allowed us to do a big grocery-shopping run for breakfast items and picnic lunch ingredients at the Mega (like a Super Walmart) in Bucerias, a big town (city?) south of where we are now. And we can drive back to the Puerto Vallarta airport so we won’t need to take a taxi. Plus, it’s given us the chance to easily do a little more exploring of the area. Which brings me to….

Chacala: A darling little beach town

An hour north of San Pancho is Chacala. Unlike other towns north of San Pancho that are right off the highway, Chacala is still a 5-mile drive to the coast from Highway 200. I think that’s led to it retaining its charm and its size, while other towns along the Riviera Nayarit are more developed.

My guess is, if San Pancho is what Sayuilta was 20 years ago, Chacala is what San Pancho was 20 years ago. I absolutely loved its small village vibe and authentic charm.

In Chacala, we found dirt roads, a few newer hotels, and a gorgeous palm-fringed beach. On one end of the beach there’s a quiet RV park (no hookups, so it’s not for us for long-term living!) and a hotel/retreat center, Mar de Jade.

On the other end of the beach is a short malecon (boardwalk) along the water leading to a tiny marina of fishing and tour boats and some really pretty homes above the rocks (I tried Googling and figuring out of they’re for rent, to no avail). On the beach are a string of thatched-roof seafood restaurants and only one small beachfront hotel with a bungalow to rent (I’ve got my eye on that).

I’d never heard of Chacala, but I think it’s been “discovered” by the expat retiree community. When we reached the beach around 11:30 am, a group of English-speaking folks, seemingly in their 70s, were gathered in a circle in plastic chairs, cold beers in hand, holding court — a mid-week mingle of sorts! We spotted lots of older folks walking down the beach. I also overheard an English-speaking group of younger people on some sort of retreat (maybe staying at the Mar de Jade). Our servers at the restaurant spoke English, and menus were in English, so they seem accustomed to visiting tourists.

I loved the beach. Firm sand made it easy for walking, and the ocean was calm enough swimming for exercise (I lamented not bring my goggles or mask/snorkel to do laps!). People were out on stand-up paddleboards, and I spotted kayaks for rent, too.

Anyway, I was simply tickled by this town. There’s construction going on (as there is in Sayulita and San Pancho), so who knows if it’ll remain as undeveloped in coming years. In addition to the multiple beachfront, toes-in-the-sand beachfront restaurants, I also saw a couple pizza places, and later research revealed a craft brewery, which sounds rather cosmopolitan for this little village. Is Chacala too quiet to spend several weeks on end? I’m really not sure. Before committing to staying here for several weeks, I’d also like to know how good the Wi-Fi is — that’s unclear.

Lo de Marcos: Another town up the road, but probably not for us

We also spent one afternoon at Lo de Marcos, just a 15-minute drive north of San Pancho. This town has an expansive beach, no surfers (at least this time of year), just a couple thatched-roof beach restaurants we could see, and families and couples enjoying a sunny Sunday.

This area isn’t nearly as newly developed as San Pancho. Lo de Marcos doesn’t have the sophisticated and worldly feel that San Pancho does with its multiple upscale restaurants and boutiques (though I did spot a corner wine bar that looked intriguing). Instead, we found lots of little family-run Mexican restaurants and a couple of cafes that cater to the English-speaking expat crowd.

And there definitely is a crowd of retirees here, namely because we counted at least five RV parks on the outskirts of town! We saw older folks in golf carts on the dusty roads and relaxing on the beach with their own chairs and umbrellas (like we brought for the day), as well as enjoying leisurely lunches at the couple of small restaurants that seemed to appeal to Americans/Canadians.

I wasn’t as enamored with Lo de Marcos as I was with smaller Chacala — for whatever reason, I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe because the town felt a little more lacking in charm, with bland cinder-block buildings and not tightly encircled in leafy jungle like Chacala? Regardless, I’m glad we spent the day there — we enjoyed $2 beef and pork tacos on the street, plus we brought home yummy banana bread and corn bread from a vendor on the beach.

So what’s the consensus?

Here’s what we’ve learned:

• I don’t think Quent and I want to stay for several weeks in a town any bigger than Sayulita.
• We want to stay in a neighborhood within easy (flat!) walking distance of restaurants and cafes. I’m talking 5 to 8 minutes tops to multiple dining options.
• We’d be ideally near the ocean, but I don’t need to be beachfront. (Quent would disagree.) Ocean view would be lovely, but honestly, I’m fine not being steps from the beach. We’ll save that for when we’re on a “resort vacation,” not when we’re “living somewhere warm for a while because we are tired of snow.”
• To that end, I have to maintain the mindset that we’re “living somewhere else” not “on vacation.” I started this trip going to organized exercise classes in Sayulita (which I loved) and being pretty cognizant of not gorging on chips and guac daily, but that’s fallen by the wayside. (San Pancho has a neat yoga/holistic center in town, and I’ve checked out the class schedule but have yet to go to one!)
• I absolutely need to learn more Spanish if I’m going to spend significant time in a Spanish-speaking country.
• We’ve been lucky with Wi-Fi in Sayulita and San Pancho, and having a good connection is important to us moving forward. I’d rather not have to work from cafes with Wi-Fi (even with the minimal work I’m doing), and I like being able to keep up with my Netflix shows at night!
• Quent would prefer warmer water and warmer air temperature than what we’ve found this time of year in Sayulita/San Pancho. This means we might need to situate ourselves further south in Mexico, or in Central America, in January/February vs. here in the Riviera Nayarit (e.g. the 200-mile stretch of coastline north of Puerto Vallarta). We haven’t used our rental’s unheated pool — too cold — nor have we had to turn on the air-conditioning in San Pancho. In fact, we had to find more blankets to keep us warm through the night! The Riviera Nayarit might better suit us (okay, him; I’m fine with this weather) in November or later in March/April. We need to check some historic monthly temperature charts.

We’re thoroughly enjoying our few final days here in Mexico before heading back to 30°F, my date with a surgeon, and Q’s need to get reacquainted with his snowblower. I’m trying not to be too sad about leaving since I know Mexico isn’t going anywhere. We’ll be back.

We’re not sure what next winter will bring. I’m still obsessed with RVing through the U.S. Southeast in the winter months (still need to get to my 50th state of Alabama). I do love the Caribbean coast of Mexico, so would like to spend more time there — it’s been a while since we’ve been in the Riviera Maya. Maybe maybe the sunny Costa del Sol in Spain could be fun for us — the last time I was there was decades ago. I sure look forward to more research in warm-weather locales… no matter where that might be.