Lori and I had high hopes for Mazunte. When we were deciding where to move after Sayulita, it even made our shortlist. So, I was stoked when our day trip to Mazunte finally rolled around.
Would Mazunte live up to the hype? How would it compare to Zipolite? We were excited to find out.
Lori’s been enjoying her sunrise walks and runs on the beach. Still a bit early for my tastes, but I still get to live vicariously through her photos.
Our Mexico-USA RV Journey 2024-25
Mazunte isn’t far from Zipo, but it took a bit of legwork to figure out how to get there by public transport.
Lori asked around and was told to head to the edge of town where the Camioneta/ colectivo station is. We passed it a couple times before finding the small “station” down a narrow dirt driveway.
We were the first ones on and grabbed a choice spot on one of the benches of the open-air bed of the truck. The pickup filled up faster than we thought it would and in no time, we were on the road headed in the direction of Mazunte.
The road between the two towns is narrow, winding, and hilly, but the ride took under 20 minutes. Before we knew it, we were in Mazunte.
In fact, it took us longer to walk from the colectivo drop-off on the highway to the water than the actual ride took. Fortunately, it’s mostly shaded by palms and broadleaf trees.
When we arrived at the beach, Lori and I both looked at each other as if to say, “that’s it?” We had essentially walked the length of town down the main drag and hadn’t noticed much going on.
We knew Mazunte was chill, but hadn’t expected such a sleepy little enclave. Looking out at the beach, there weren’t a lot of people there either. What do people do all day here?
Ducking in to the one functional restaurant-bar-cafe we could find, we at least got a partial answer—the place was packed with young digital nomads plugging away on their laptops.
Now, I’m not going to start ripping into digital nomads here. Lori and I both do remote work and it would be a bit hypocritical of me. I suspect there are plenty of remote workers in Zipo as well. The difference being that the town doesn’t seem to be defined by them, and they tend to be invisible during working hours. Here, on this particular day, it was one of the defining characteristics of town.
Nevertheless, the four of us were hungry, and this was the only spot open in the area. The pancake tower looked good, so we ordered that and few other things. Not nearly as yummy as Noe’s pancake mountain in Puerto Escondido, but certainly not bad either.
The highlight of mealtime, however, was watching the skiffs, one-by-one, race towards shore, leap out of the water, and glide across the beach on strategically-placed logs before eventually coming to a stop.
The beach in Mazunte is a long, hot stretch of coarse sand. Walking the beach at midday wasn’t the best life decision we’ve ever made, but it allowed us to see a bit more of the town’s coastline before taking refuge once again beneath the dense inland canopy.
The one other interesting highlight of town is the mangrove reserve around Tonatiuh Eco Hostal, which you can explore even if you’re not a guest.
The Mazunte crab is the star of the show here.
Not terribly enamored with Mazunte, we made our way over to the neighboring town of San Agustinillo, which turned out to be a lot more to our liking.
In Mazunte, we liked that we were actually able to swim around in the water on the far western edge. But the calm waters of San Agustinillo blew Mazunte away. It was just like old times…
There’s a sand spit that divides the two bays in town. On one side, the water is calm and shallow. On the other, the waves are just big enough to catch a fun ride into shore.
