La Cruz de Huanacaxtle
The fishing village that became a marina town without losing its soul — 340 slips, a Sunday market with 170 vendors, and boaters who came for a week and stayed for a decade.
Every marina town tells you it kept its village character. La Cruz actually did. The fishermen still launch their pangas at dawn, the church still rings its bells over the plaza, the horses still dance on Friday evenings — and since 2008, the Marina Riviera Nayarit has parked 340 slips’ worth of international sailing culture right next to all of it. The cruising fleet calls it “El Sueño Hecho Marina” — the dream made marina — and unlike Marina Vallarta’s quick-turnaround tourists, the boaters who tie up here stay for months. Then they buy.
That’s the market in one sentence: a working Mexican village with the only full-service marina of its scale on the Pacific coast, where forty-plus restaurants somehow coexist in a town you can walk end to end. If Bucerías is the friendly entry point and Punta Mita is the gated summit, La Cruz is the connoisseur’s pick in between.
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Distance to Airport
30 km north of PVR; Punta Mita is 20 minutes on.
Marina
30 to 400 feet, full service, 150-ton travel lift — the largest on Mexico’s west coast.
Sunday Market
The region’s best farmers market, on the marina pier, November–April.
Beach
Calm, swimmable, rarely crowded; the lighthouse across the water.
