The Sayulita nightlife guide

Sayulita goes out later than you think and ends earlier than you hope. That is the whole guide in one sentence, but here is the useful version.

The shape of a night

7pm — the plaza and the beach. Sunset is the actual event. People collect on the sand with a beer from a shop, watch it, and then go and get changed. Nothing is happening in any bar yet and anybody sitting in one is a tourist who arrived today.

9pm — dinner, and the street. This is when the town wakes up. The main streets fill, the papel picado is lit from underneath, somebody is playing music badly and somebody else is playing it very well, and the taco stands are at full tilt.

11pm — the bars. Now. Not before. A bar that looked dead at nine is three deep at eleven.

2am-ish — it ends. Sayulita is a small town with neighbours who have to work. Things wind down earlier than in a city, and the real last act is usually somebody’s rooftop, or the beach, or a hostel common room.

What it costs

Sayulita is more expensive than the rest of Nayarit and the nightlife is where that bites hardest. A beer in a bar costs several times what the same beer costs from the shop on the corner. A cocktail at a beachfront place with a view costs what a cocktail costs anywhere with a view.

The way everybody actually does it: drink at the hostel or from a shop early, go out later, and buy the drinks you are buying for the atmosphere rather than for the alcohol. Our own bar starts at $3, which is roughly why our common room is busy at ten and empty at midnight.

Budget $15–25 for a normal night out if you are careful, considerably more if you are not.

Where people end up

Rather than sending you to specific places that may have changed hands by the time you read this — Sayulita turns over fast — here is what to look for:

The beachfront places are for sunset and early evening. Great view, higher prices, emptier late.

The street bars in the centre are where the night actually happens. Small, loud, spilling onto the pavement, and the ones with a queue at midnight are the ones that are good.

The live music is worth planning around. There is almost always something on somewhere, and it is usually better than it has any right to be in a town this size. Ask at reception — whoever is on the desk went out last night.

The beach afterwards. Free, endless, and where every good night in Sayulita ends. Take your shoes. Do not take anything you would mind losing.

The week at the hostel

The reason this guide exists at a hostel is that the hardest part of a night out when you are travelling alone is the first forty minutes. Our week is built to make that part short:

• Monday — beach volleyball at sunset.
• Tuesday — music quiz.
• Wednesday — the beach bonfire. The one people describe when they get home.
• Thursday — Latin rhythms. A dance class that becomes a dance.
• Friday — karaoke.
• Saturday — beer pong, with a bracket and far too much ceremony.
• Sunday — family dinner. Everybody cooks, everybody eats, the week closes at one table.

None of it costs extra and none of it is compulsory. The point is not the activity. The point is that by nine you know six people’s names, and going out stops being a thing you have to organise.

Practical things nobody tells you

Take cash. Cards work in restaurants, sometimes in bars, and never on the street. The cash machines run out at weekends in high season — take money out on a Thursday.

The streets are cobbled and unlit in places. Sensible shoes beat impressive shoes here more than in most towns.

Do not swim at night. Warm water, dark sea, a few drinks and a shore break that pulls is a bad combination, and the beach is more fun to sit on anyway.

Walk home with somebody. Sayulita is a small tourist town and feels like one, which is exactly why people get careless. Normal sense applies.

High season is Christmas and Semana Santa. Both are enormous, both are excellent, both need booking a long way ahead. If a quiet town is what you are after, come in May or October instead.

And the morning after

The surf is best early, which is the single cruellest fact about Sayulita. Breakfast is included at the hostel, the coffee shop opens in the morning, and the wave at the end of the street will still be there at ten.

Just not as good.