🇲🇽 Mexico · Pacific Coast
Manzanillo is the most laid-back face of the Mexican Pacific: a golden, affordable family beach destination whose rhythm is set by two big twin bays —Manzanillo and Santiago— separated by the Santiago peninsula. There is none of Acapulco's hard partying or Vallarta's glamour here, just wide beaches, warm water, orange sunsets and a port life that gives the place an authentic, working character.
The city has two identities. On one hand it is the most important commercial port on the Mexican Pacific, its traffic of ships and containers always in view from the waterfront. On the other it is the 'Sailfish Capital of the World', a title won in the 1950s thanks to the abundance of this billfish in its waters, which turned it into a sport-fishing paradise. Its monumental Sailfish sculpture, by Sebastián, presides over the entrance to the bay as the city's emblem.
This guide runs through the essentials of Manzanillo with a practical eye: which beaches to pick depending on whether you want waves or calm, how to move between the two bays, where to eat the best pescado a la talla, how to go fishing or diving, and how to combine the beach with trips to the volcano, to Colima and to the dazzlingly white pueblo mágico of Comala. An ideal destination for anyone who wants sun and sea without crowds or crazy prices.
Manzanillo's origins go back to the pre-Hispanic peoples settled around the old port of Salagua, known as Tzalahua, where shell and ceramic workshops flourished. In 1522 captain Gonzalo de Sandoval reached Salagua, and on 24 July 1527 Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón surveyed the bays of Manzanillo for the first time; expeditions to the Philippines set out from here. In colonial times the bay was a refuge for pirates and privateers: in 1587 the Englishman Thomas Cavendish captured the Manila galleon Santa Ana and used Salagua as a hideout, and in 1685 William Dampier prowled the area hunting the Philippines galleon. By around 1700 the port of Salagua had fallen into abandonment, stirring only when the Manila Galleon passed on its way to Acapulco, and the name shifted from 'Salagua' to 'Manzanillo' (after the beach manzanilla trees that grew thick along its shores). In the 19th century Manzanillo consolidated as a port, and in 1873 the arrival of the railway and, later, its link to Guadalajara, drove it forward as western Mexico's commercial outlet. In 1957 it earned the title of 'Sailfish Capital of the World' for its sport-fishing records. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The smallest province on the Pacific, between the imposing Volcán de Fuego and the sea: cradle of the cultures of the West with their shaft tombs and their clay xoloitzcuintle dogs, setting of Juan Rulfo's mythical Comala and home to Manzanillo, the largest container port on the Mexican Pacific.
Read the history of Colima →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before the Spanish arrived, the region of the Manzanillo bays was inhabited by indigenous peoples settled around the old port of Salagua. A village called Tzalahua stood there, and its inhabitants developed a remarkable craft economy: they worked ceramics, made clay figures and set up shell and conch workshops to produce necklaces and ornaments. The sea and the coastal lagoon were the base of their economy, with fishing, mollusk gathering and trade between the settlements along the shore.
The Colima coast was part of a cultural mosaic in which different groups coexisted over the centuries, tied to the traditions of western Mexico. The region is famous for its shaft tombs and for the ceramics of the Colima cultures, with their well-known little dogs (xoloitzcuintles modeled in clay), evidence of complex societies and intense craftwork long before the conquest.
The name 'Salagua' (sometimes written Zalahua or Tzalahua) came to be attached to the sheltered natural harbor the Spanish would later use as an anchorage. Out of that indigenous substrate the city of Manzanillo would be born over the centuries, though its face would change completely with the arrival of the conquistadors and the strategic role the port would play in Pacific navigation.
After the fall of Tenochtitlan, the Spanish conquistadors pushed west looking for outlets onto the 'South Sea', as they called the Pacific Ocean. In 1522 captain Gonzalo de Sandoval, one of Hernán Cortés's lieutenants, reached the port of Salagua and travelled the Colima coast, identifying the bay as an anchorage fit for shipping.
The founding milestone of that exploration came on 24 July 1527, when Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón —Cortés's cousin— surveyed and explored the bays of Manzanillo for the first time. Expeditions would set out from these Pacific ports for the Spice Islands and, later, for the Philippines, as part of the Spanish effort to find a sailing route across the ocean. The Colima bays, alongside other ports such as Acapulco, formed part of that early maritime network of New Spain.
Through the colonial period, Salagua and the fledgling Manzanillo played a modest but strategic role: they were anchorages where ships were repaired and timber and provisions loaded, and above all they offered shelter along a long, thinly populated coast. That same emptiness, however, would expose them to one of the great dangers of the Pacific in the 16th and 17th centuries: the pirates and privateers lying in wait for the fabulously rich Manila Galleon.
The bays of Manzanillo, hidden and sheltered, became one of the stages of the privateering war in the Pacific of New Spain. For more than two centuries the Manila Galleon (the 'Nao de China') crossed the ocean loaded with Asian silks, porcelain and spices bound for Acapulco, and its immense wealth drew European pirates and privateers who prowled the coast waiting to intercept it.
In 1587 the English pirate Thomas Cavendish worked the coasts of the South Sea with two ships, burned shipyards and pulled off his greatest coup: near Cabo San Lucas he captured the Santa Ana, the Manila galleon, choosing the port of Salagua as the hiding place for his loot. Almost a century later, in 1685, the English buccaneer and navigator William Dampier —famous for his travel journals— also worked the coasts of New Spain hunting the Philippines galleon, and threatened the Colima area with several landings.
This age of raids left a deep mark on the coast's memory. To protect themselves, the inhabitants withdrew inland and the ports sat half-abandoned for much of the year. By around 1700 the port of Salagua lay almost completely abandoned, stirring only now and then when the Manila Galleon passed on its way to Acapulco. It was in that period that the port's name began to change: from 'Salagua' to 'Salagua-Manzanillo' and, in the early 19th century, simply Manzanillo, a name that took over the whole of the great Colima bay. The new name is said to come from the 'beach manzanilla' trees (Hippomane mancinella) that grew thick along its shores.
With Mexican independence and the country's consolidation in the 19th century, Manzanillo went from forgotten anchorage to a formal, strategic Pacific port. Its position facing Colima and western Mexico made it the natural sea outlet for the region's goods. Over the course of the century, money went into docks, lighthouses and port works that gradually modernized it.
The great leap came with the railway. The rail link between Manzanillo and the interior —and finally with Guadalajara and the center of the country— turned the port into a key piece of national trade. The train made it possible to move large volumes of cargo between the Pacific and the heart of Mexico, driving the local economy and population growth. Manzanillo established itself as one of the most important ports on the western coast.
Through the 20th century the port kept growing and modernizing until it became the country's leading container port and the busiest cargo port on the Mexican Pacific. That industrial and commercial calling now sits alongside tourism: a visitor walking the waterfront sees, at the same time, the golden beaches and the constant movement of container ships, an image that sums up the city's two souls.
In the mid-20th century Manzanillo discovered another of its great riches: the waters off its bays were extraordinarily rich in sailfish, the majestic billfish with the sail-shaped dorsal fin that is one of the most coveted trophies in sport fishing. The first official sailfish tournament opened on 3 November 1954, driven by the American Leroy H. Dorsey, a promoter of sport fishing in the country.
The results were astonishing. In 1957, thanks to the enormous number of catches recorded, Manzanillo earned the title of 'Sailfish Capital of the World', a mark confirmed again in later tournaments —in 1967, 487 fish were caught by 154 participants. Since then the Manzanillo Fishing Club has organized the International Sport Fishing Tournament year after year, today one of the oldest and most prestigious in Mexico, with more than seven decades of tradition. The monumental Sailfish sculpture, 25 meters tall and 70 tons, by the sculptor Sebastián and unveiled in 2002 facing the waterfront, immortalizes that title and has become the city's symbol.
The fame of the fishing drew the first big tourism investments. On the Santiago peninsula rose the spectacular Las Hadas complex, with its white Moorish- and Mediterranean-inspired architecture, which gained worldwide exposure as the setting for the film '10' (1979), with Bo Derek. From then on Manzanillo established itself as an affordable family beach destination on the Pacific, with two big bays, sun almost year-round and an identity of its own, far from the bustle of other destinations. Today it combines the character of a working port with that of a quiet seaside resort, true to its double inheritance of sea and trade.