The Six Sisters of Nayarit: La Penita, Guayabitos, Lo de Marcos, San Pancho, Sayulita and Punta Mita Chuck Bolotin - Best Places in the World to Retire
go to original September 30, 2016

We wanted very much to visit the towns just to the north and south of Lo de Marcos, in the state of Nayarit. How could we not? Lo de Marcos was beautiful, exotic and interesting, the people were friendly, the food was great, and we had never been anywhere else in the area.  We had only eight days in which to explore before our deadline to leave for the Central Mexican Highlands.
 
From side to side, Lo de Marcos is only about a half a mile wide, from where you can watch the sun set as it plunges into the Pacific Ocean on the west, to where the town effectively dead-ends into the main road to the east. This main road runs roughly parallel to the ocean and connects the areas from the north (from where we arrived, originally disembarking from the Baja Ferry in Mazatlan) to the south, to Puerto Vallarta, about an hour away by car. From that road, we could visit several little beach towns, roughly 30 miles from the one furthest north, La Peñita, to the one furthest south, Punta Mita.
 
One of the reasons we were so happy to explore the area is that the main road is wonderfully beautiful. From the sides of this road, jungle vines, palm trees and broad-leafed plants accompanied us on all our journeys, and at various times, formed a canopy overhead through which we and the other cars and trucks passed.

For us, this stretch of road was very relaxing, but evidently less so for the other drivers. Even though there was only one lane and a small or non-existent shoulder in each direction, we were treated to the fairly constant spectacle of cars passing us, and each other, irrespective of whether there was enough visibility to do so safely.
 
And it’s not as if there weren’t any accidents. In our short time there, we saw several of them in various stages of cleanup, as well as several shrines and crosses along the side of the road. It seemed to me as if every driver must be either a 17 year old boy or someone with severe intestinal distress racing to the next baño, which made it even more surprising when I looked into several of these cars and saw how absolutely ordinary and nonchalant the drivers were — middle aged men with their families; pleasant looking, well dressed women; older, bored looking couples; all with nary a hint on their faces of the terror that I would think a person would naturally feel at times when, within seconds, one could be involved in a fiery Nayarit road with car head-on collision.
 
Starting from our rental in Lo de Marcos, we would visit five other towns along the main road. Like six sisters who were raised in the same home with the same parents and later went out into the world to start their own families in their own homes with their own styles and personalities, each town had a similar core and common foundations.

Each started out as beautiful young women, blessed with good genes. Physically, with the exception of Punta Mita, the land that would eventually become these separate towns each had their own outcroppings dense with jungle on each their north and south sides demarking their Pacific boundaries, and each had a sandy beach in between. Later, as people arrived, they would evolve into small villages with similar but not exactly the same culture and food. As time went on, some of their distinctive inherent traits would make the differences between them just a little more pronounced, for example, as Sayulita or Punta Mita was just a bit better for surfing than the others, so they developed into surfing destinations with a bit more of a surfing personality. Also, chance would play its part, as one town became more well known on account of a particular person who liked it or publicized it, or a successful businessperson happened to choose one town over another.
 
Furthest to the north, La Peñita is the town that everyone in Lo de Marcos went to when they needed something, whether it was a part to fix our air conditioner, or to ship a package. The La Peñita Nayarit sister was reliable and helped the others in a workmanlike manner...

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