A blunt Pacific peninsula on Mexico's Riviera Nayarit with several distinct breaks a short walk or boat ride apart, warm water year-round, and a coffee-and-agave drink culture of its own.
The wave
Punta Mita sits at the northern tip of Banderas Bay on Mexico’s Pacific coast, a peninsula with several named breaks — El Anclote and La Lancha among the better known — within a short walk or boat ride of each other, each with a slightly different character depending on swell direction and tide. The water here stays warm for most of the year, which makes it a genuinely easy place to surf without heavy neoprene, and the breaks tend to be gentler and more forgiving than the Pacific’s bigger-wave destinations further south.
The area has grown into a resort peninsula over the last two decades, but the fishing village at its centre and the surf breaks around it predate that growth by a long way.
The tea note
Mexico’s drink culture runs deep and doesn’t need a Chinese tea kit to complete it — coffee, particularly from the country’s southern highlands, and traditions like agua de jamaica are the real local pours. Warm water means no post-surf chill to counter here, so what we’d actually pack is the pre-surf side of this ritual instead: a short, low-caffeine cup before an early paddle-out, timed to a morning that’s already warm enough not to need a jacket by the time you’re back on the sand.