Casa Colibri

Casa Colibri is located on a point, known as Punta el Custodio, jutting into the Pacific Ocean and 30 feet above the water. The point is on a hill above the oceanside town of Playa Platanitos, in the Mexican state of Nayarit.

We are about 75 km. north of the Puerto Vallarta airport. It will take about 2 to 2 ½ hours for the drive, depending on the traffic. Our property manager can arrange for you to be picked up at the airport by a van, or you can rent a car.

If you rent a car, enter Playa Platanitos, Nayarit in Google Maps or the equivalent app. You may be directed to start on a new, high-speed toll road that begins just a few km. north of the airport.

This high-speed highway will bypass lots of local congestion — as well as the opportunity to purchase sunblocker, bug dope, liquor — and hit an ATM. When you finally exit the toll road onto the local roads, you will have extremely limited shopping opportunities.

So we recommend that you enter the toll road after driving through some congested areas, where the last “US style” shopping is found. The big-box stores are the Mega, La Comer, WalMart and others, most of them on your side of the highway. Then enter the toll road as you leave the Puerto Vallarta basin.

After leaving the toll road,  local roads will get narrower and narrower as you approach your destination. You will finally reach a left-hand turn down a steep cobbled road to Playa Platanitos, which consists mainly of a string of beach-side, palm-roofed restaurants on your right. Pass all of them, take no turn-offs, and go more or less straight up a steep dirt road, with some fairly big rocks, so take it slow to avoid banging the undercarriage of the car.

You’ll level off after about 1 kilometer and will shortly arrive at a double wrought iron gate. You’ve arrived!

Important Driving Tip: If you exit the airport in the late afternoon, depending on the time of sunset (and darkness falls very quickly, as your literally in the tropics), it is likely that you’ll end up on our local roads after dark.

The local roads are often narrow, sometimes in poor repair, and usually unlit. They have narrow to non-existent shoulders on which you will find people walking in dark clothing, bicycles without lights or reflectors, stray dogs and sometimes even loose livestock — sheep, cattle and horses, sometimes not alongside, but in the road itself.

Enough said.