Chacala is a picturesque beach-town set in small cove on the Pacific coast of Mexico in the State of Nayarit. It is located about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Puerto Vallarta. The name means "where there are shrimp" in
Náhuatl, and is part of the coastline known as the
Riviera Nayarita.
[1] The population consists of approximately 300 full time residents, but can swell to over 1000 during Mexico's most popular vacation periods such as Semana Santa, (Easter Week) and Christmas. Chacala is known for its physical beauty, unhurried lifestyle, and for the efforts of a small group of "socially conscious" and "proactive" Americans to change the lifestyle of the residents.
[2]The region encompassing Nayarit and Jalisco was originally home to the Texcoxquin (Teqectequi) indigenous culture millennia before the European conquest. The Altavista petroglyphs, not far from Chacala, are believed to date from 2300 BCE. This extensive group of rock carvings is still used today for ceremonial religious purposes by the native Huichol.[1]
The bay was first seen by Europeans when the Spaniard Francisco Cortés de Buena Ventura, a nephew of Hernán Cortés reached here in 1524.[1] Although Chacala was never as historically significant a port as San Blas to the north or Puerto Vallarta to the south, the sheltered bay saw a visit from Portuguese explorer Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeño, sailing out of Manila, who stopped in Chacala on January 07, 1596 en route to Alta California.[3] The notable but idiosyncratic Jesuit missionary Father Eusebio Francisco Kuhn, commonly known as 'Padre Kino', and his party departed from Chacala on his Atondo expedition in May of 1683. Many members of the expedition abandoned him after he proposed that his ship be pushed across the Sonoran Desert.[4]
After slumbering for decades as a small fishing village and coconut plantation, American doctor Laura del Valle's arrival in 1980 spurred a period of change which, in a relatively brief 15 years, transformed the town into one of Mexico's more distinctive destinations. Del Valle first built simple accommodations at Chacala's south end, where dense virgin first-growth rainforest teeming with wildlife, including ocelot, margay and jaguarundi, grows down the flanks of a small collapsed volcano and plunges into the Pacific. She built the lodge to house visiting American medical students volunteering at the local health clinic she founded to serve the Mexican poor.
