Today was intended to be a short one-hour hop back down to the Pacific Coast—but that was not to be.
One of the biggest benefits of this lifestyle is being able to go where we want, when we want. And, reserving the right to change our minds (and change course) whenever we want.
We left Rancho Primavera in El Tuito at 11am, bound for Punta Perula where we planned on spending the next couple of weeks. Five-and-a-half hours later, we rolled into Melaque, a stone’s throw from the Colima state border.
Here’s how the day unfolded, and highlights from our first few days kicking around San Patricio Melaque.
Our homey little spot in Rancho Primavera, just outside El Tuito. All packed up and ready to hit the road on this beautiful May morning.
Can you guess what these are? Each and every one of those tiny A-frame houses is a rooster home. It’s a rooster farm—everyone’s favorite neighbors, I’m sure.
Punta Perula
Just after 12pm, we arrived in what we thought would be our next big pit stop for a while—Punta Perula.
We’ve heard good things about the place, and, hey, any [new-to-us] Mexican beach town offering a full-hookup RV park is worth a three-night stay in our opinion. At least that was our mantra…until we arrived in Punta Perula.
Our top RV park pick was closed for the season. Our second choice looked pretty bleak and uninspiring. Maybe if the one other vehicle there hadn’t taken the primo spot adjacent to the beach we might have stayed for night.
But even then, the RV park had a weird rule that if you stay for one night you can’t dump your waste. Seems we’re not the only RVers not entirely sold on the place. Given that we had just come off of three days of dry camping, that was a no-go. We were going to need to dump tonight.
And to be honest, it seems there’s not a heck of a lot going on in this town this time of year. After three weeks in Nayarit and a surprisingly fun-packed two nights in El Tuito, we simply weren’t feeling Punta Perula.
What we were feeling was hungry.
We had already gone through the trouble of parking the RV in a spot and thought we’d give the town one more chance to win us over. Who knows, maybe we’d feel differently after some food.
We spent the next hour canvassing town for a bite to eat. I don’t care where we are, it shouldn’t take an hour to find a place to stuff our faces in a small beach town.
We eventually landed on a road-side taco stand (the only one open at 1pm on a Saturday, apparently) and filled our bellies. In the end, it was not enough to change our minds on staying, so we headed back to the RV park.
We informed the lady at the front desk we’ve decided to hit the road, who then proceeded to throw a hissy and accuse us of covertly dumping our poo (which would’ve been a tremendous feat given that our site was in plain sight of her office, and it would have taken at least 15 minutes to hook it all up, dump, and pack it all up).
Nope, sorry. We did NOT grace your sewage system with our grey and black water. We just don’t like your town and think your RV park is a dump.
She refused to put down the chain until Lori petitioned the manager for our freedom over the phone. We obtained the almighty manager’s blessing to depart and left town without looking back.
Adios, Punta Perula.
Traditionally, the next stop on the RV trail south of Punta Perula has been Boca Beach.
I’ve heard about Boca Beach for some years and was really excited to stay there for a few weeks. That is, until we learned that they had raised the fees of their sites to exorbitant levels (a staggering MX$1,000 per night in off-season—they charge the same for kids as they do for adults).
To date, we’ve yet to pay more than MX$500 for the four of us for a site with full-hookups.
On to Melaque!
San Patricio (Melaque)
When we rolled into Melaque 90 minutes later, we instantly got a good vibe from the place. A busy enough beach town that’s got enough amenities but still manages to be uber chill—at least in mid-May.
We had a choice of two RV Parks, a ma-and-pa operation in the center of town close to the water, and a full-service beachfront hotel with pool and a couple dozen RV sites—many right on the beach.
We went with the latter, despite it being a solid 20-30 minute walk from the Centro. The pool and atmosphere won us over.
Laguna del Tule Bungalows & RV Park
Our backyard, for the foreseeable future. Despite the red flag and huge waves, Noe was very pleased with our find.
Bungalows Laguna del Tule is very popular with RVers in the winter months, and has long been a regular stop for RV Caravan tours. That’s not the case this time of year. It’s a Saturday night and the hotel is hopping. But out here in the RV Land, it appears we’ve got the place to ourselves.
That’s not to say that there are no other RVs. The place still seems to be at a quarter capacity with permanent rigs that obviously aren’t going anywhere.
Many owners have even gone so far as to construct elaborate tiled enclosures and palapas around their seasonal homes.
How this arrangement works (whether they own the spots or just pay rent indefinitely) is beyond me.
Fortunately, the good people of the North have left us commoners with a few choice spots here in the quiet low season months.
The view from our bed. Not too shabby for US$29/night. 30-amp shore power, good water pressure, and sewage. And of course, the pool. But we’ll get to that.
The waves were HUGE and LOUD the first several nights of our stay (and crashed with such force that they’d make the RV rock back and forth).
The sea spray was so intense that it made our bedding feel damp by the time we went to sleep (even though we’re in the depths of dry season).
The spray also coated the rear cap of the RV with a thick layer of salt, despite my best efforts to spray off the backside every day with a hose.
We thought this might be the norm for Melaque, but it just happened to be a higher than usual tide event going on.
Bungalows Laguna del Tule is situated on a thin strip of land hemmed in by the Pacific Ocean and its namesake lagoon, which is rumored to have crocodiles. While we haven’t come across any reports of issues at the hotel, we still made sure the boys didn’t venture too close to that side.
A closer look at the lagoon.
And, the view from our dinette window.
Getting into the Groove
Like Lo de Marcos, we quickly found ourselves sinking into a comfortable routine in Melaque.
Among other things, we finally got Noe to help with little bro-bro’s personal grooming—not an easy task.
The ocean conditions adjacent to the hotel never really improved (the red flag never went away). I think we would have heard a lot more complaining if the hotel didn’t have a pool—and a nice one at that.
Because the hotel is a popular draw for domestic tourists from Manzanillo, Colima, and Guadalajara, there were always other kids to play with down at the pool. The hotel even hosts instructor-led activities for kids every afternoon.
We might not have been able to get in the ocean, but there was still plenty of beach time to be had. Noe and Riley particularly enjoyed watching the skim boarders at sunset. Melaque is a well-known destination for the activity.
And, if that weren’t enough, we were treated to incredible sunset after incredible sunset every single night of our stay.
Exploring Melaque…or is it, San Patricio?
Melaque is a pleasant enough town to explore, but requires a considerable amount of walking—particularly if you’re staying on the far southeastern edge like we did.
No Ubers here, and taxis are both hard to come by and a bit spendy. So we did a TON of walking. If you’re RVing and don’t like walking, you’ll probably be happier at Playa Trailer Park.
So, what’s with the two names? We still don’t really know.
Maps and online resources seem to use the two names interchangeably. But we’ve heard the western portion of town referred to as Melaque, and the eastern portion of town, San Patricio. We’ve also been told that San Patricio is part of the larger community of Melaque (and vice versa).
This all of course is completely separate from the neighboring town of Barra de Navidad.
We tend to go by what the letters in the central plaza say, hence our use of Melaque.
The gateway to the city.
The newly constructed foot bridge near Trailer Park Melaque, which looks more like a squatters camp these days than a legit RV Park (in Mexico, they use Trailer Park and RV Park interchangeably).
Last December, there was a woman in the bay who was attacked by a shark. At least that’s what everyone thought initially. Yet…there’d never been a recorded instance of a shark attack in Melaque.
More likely, most experts now believe that it was a crocodile. I thought this too seemed a bit far fetched, until we came down here realized that the crocodile lagoon is actually connected to the bay at this point.
Yep, our hotel pool’s just looking better and better.
It’s 2.5 miles from our RV to this point, the farthest point in town if you walk along the malecon in the opposite direction.
The restaurant on top of the rock, RocaMar, caught our attention. It doesn’t appear to be functional but apparently opens for dinner on the weekends.
The malecon here is only a couple of years old and it shows. Very impressive little walkway with even more impressive views of town.
Across the way, is one of the most interesting landmarks in Melaque. Sitting on prime beachfront real estate is the former all-inclusive luxury Hotel Casa Grande, which was destroyed in an earthquake in 1995. The hotel has neither been rebuilt nor demolished to date.
