Besides hanging out here in Lo de Marcos all week—which we would totally be ok with if there weren’t so many other fun places nearby to visit—we’re going to make the short hop down to San Pancho for the day before heading back to Sayulita later in the week.
Next week, we’ll relocate our rolling home to Chacala for a few days—but that’s getting ahead of ourselves.
We considered dry camping near the soccer fields in San Pancho (we hear that a number of RVers do this), but it’s a short 15-minute bus ride and we’re pretty happy with our situation here in Lo de Marcos.
Plus, it’s been starting to heat up at night and dry camping means no A/C—so day trip it is.
Lori’s sunrise office in Lo de Marcos. She’s an early riser. Lori likes to get up most weekdays just before sunrise for a short workout and to get the bulk of her contract work done before 8:30am—just about the time the boys and I are digging into breakfast.
There’s a pretty cool cultural center here in Lo de Marcos that host shows and workshops for kids. We’ve been trying to take advantage of that as much as possible while we’re here. Today, an acrobatic performing troupe from Argentina.
Lo de Marcos has one of the best plazas in Nayarit—complete with performing stage and playground. And unlike Sayulita, this one isn’t overtaken by tourist vendors.
Off to San Pancho. It’s a short 15-minute bus ride between the two towns, but requires an additional four miles of hoofing it to get in and out of both towns.
As is the case in a lot of parts of coastal Mexico, the main highway in Nayarit doesn’t run through the center of any beach towns (though it gets pretty close in Guayabitos and Bucerias).
After arriving in San Pancho, we beelined it to one of our favorite comfort food breakfast cafes in all of Mexico—The DoughJoe—for our biscuits and gravy fix.
I meant to snap a picture before we dug in, but had other priorities.
Same old San Pancho—for the most part.
I always get a good feeling coming back here. Don’t think we could ever live here (the surf is too intense for our liking and we simply don’t have enough tats, piercings, and dreads between the four of us)—but it’s always nice to visit.
San Pancho’s official name is San Francisco, which may help explain the bridge.
Most of town looks the same, but for this monstrosity. Hopefully this isn’t a sign of things to come—but it wouldn’t surprise me, sadly.
One thing I’ve never liked about the San Pancho beach is the rows of beach chairs and umbrellas that have been slowly growing like a plague over the past years. The worst part is I rarely see anyone using them (late afternoon and weekends, mostly), but there it is—the empty beach chair gauntlet—for everyone to navigate to reach the shoreline.
Our boys have never been fond of the San Pancho beach—nearly any other beach in Nayarit is safer and more fun for kids. But they do love visiting the lagoon.
Walking back through town, I point out that we’re near the plaza and might want to stop by the San Pancho Market. Lori says, “We can walk through, but the market’s not going to be open today.” I reply, “Didn’t the market used to be on Tuesdays?” Lori says, “Yep. Too bad it’s not Tuesday.” I gently tell her it is Tuesday (how I knew that, I’m not really sure, to be honest). Such is RV life.
Off to the market we go.
San Pancho Market is always an eclectic affair, with the aroma of smoked Chimichurri sausage mingling with patchouli, cardamom and body odor.
This hour’s live entertainment—belly dancing.
We duck in to a new (to us) coffee shop for a treat and to cool off. The coffee shop doubles as a surf shop, of course.
We had some time left before heading back, so the boys got to play on BOTH playgrounds in town. That’s right, San Pancho has not one but TWO playgrounds.
A fun day revisiting old haunts and checking out new ones. With every visit, however, it’s evident San Pancho is becoming more upmarket-tourist-attraction than Sayulita’s free-spirited and under-the-radar neighbor.
In that sense, it was nice to get back to Lo de Marcos, which is by all measures still very much a legit Mexican pueblo.
We were reminded of this the second we returned to town and were greeted by this.
Lori and I have been joking about this since we first observed it a few years back. We wondered if the lady who spreads her cans across the road at the entrance to town for passing cars to flatten them for recycling was still practicing. Now we know.
You’d think the boys would be exhausted by a big day out and six miles of walking. Not quite. It’s off to the beach for a splash around and some sunset waves.
When we signed the RV paperwork on a cold and rainy Pacific Northwest day last February, it was the promise of days like these that motivated us.
We’ll see how long we stick around until the feet start itching again. But honestly, I don’t think any of us are in hurry to be getting a move on any time soon.
