The Sayulita surf guide

Welcome to Sayulita

Surfing in Sayulita

Sayulita is the other Mexico, and the useful thing about it is that it runs on a different clock from Puerto Escondido.

• 2spots

The Nayarit coast faces west into the Pacific rather than south, so it takes west-southwest swell and its best month is October, when Oaxaca's season is closing. If your holiday falls in autumn, this is the coast that is working.

Two breaks carry the page and both are lefts. Punta Sayulita is the point at the north end of the bay, over mixed sand and reef, and it is very consistent. San Pancho is a left reef ten minutes further north, in a quieter village that most people end up visiting anyway. They return the same October figure, nineteen clean days out of thirty, because they share one cell of the forecast grid rather than because they are the same wave.

The beach in front of the town is where the schools actually take beginners, and it has no published numbers, so it has no sheet here. That is worth saying plainly: this page documents the point and the reef, and a first lesson happens somewhere neither of them describes.

Sayulita itself is busy, coloured, and full: cobbled streets, food, and a lot of other visitors. It is the least remote surf town on either Mexican coast, and the easiest one to bring somebody who does not surf.

Welcome home.

Explore Sayulita

• 2 spotsSurf spotsThe waves worth the trip
• Seasonal guideWhen to goMonth by month
• PracticalGetting thereFlights and transfers