🇲🇽 Mexico · Pacific Coast
San Francisco —which everyone calls San Pancho— is the quiet, elegant neighbor of Sayulita, on the Riviera Nayarit. Just a few kilometers from its bustling surf-town sister, this small coastal village offers a calmer, more sophisticated and more genuine experience: a single main street running down to a wide golden beach, palm trees, colorful houses and a relaxed mood that wins over anyone looking for peace facing the Pacific.
San Pancho has a reputation as the 'bohemian and chic village' of the Riviera Nayarit, with a cultural and food scene that is remarkable for its size. The local Nayarit community lives alongside foreign residents and visitors, in a balance that has produced admirable community projects, such as Entreamigos, a cultural and social center that is the pride of the village, along with chef-driven restaurants, galleries, a polo field and cultural events.
San Pancho's beach is wide and beautiful, perfect for walking and for spectacular sunsets, although the surf tends to be stronger than in Sayulita (more for enjoying than for swimming without care). The village is also a sea turtle conservation point and a base for exploring the nature and the beaches of the area. This guide tells you what to do, where to eat and how to enjoy this serene corner of the Mexican Pacific.
San Francisco (San Pancho) was for a long time a quiet village of fishermen and farmers on the coast of Nayarit, in a region culturally tied to the Huichol (Wixárika) people. Its modern history has one singular chapter: in the 1970s, Mexican president Luis Echeverría Álvarez chose San Pancho as the seat of an ambitious integrated rural development project, the 'Centro de Capacitación para el Desarrollo de la Comunidad' and associated schemes, giving the small village infrastructure that was astonishing for its size: a hospital, a school, plants, and even facilities meant to turn it into a development model (which is why some nicknamed it 'the president's village'). Once that six-year term ended, many of those projects were left unfinished or abandoned, but they left their mark on the village. Over the following decades, and above all with the tourism boom of the Riviera Nayarit in the 2000s, San Pancho turned —like its neighbor Sayulita— into a destination, though it kept a quieter, more cultural and more sophisticated profile. Today it is known for its relaxed mood, its food and cultural scene, and community projects such as Entreamigos. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Pacific province between the Huichol sierra and the Riviera Nayarit: Cora and Wixárika land, home of the mystical island of Mexcaltitán —the possible Aztlán— and of surf beaches such as Sayulita and San Pancho.
Read the history of Nayarit →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
San Pancho's main street is called 'Tercer Mundo' —Third World— and the others are named after developing countries and continents: Asia, Africa, Latin America, Nicaragua, Palestine. It isn't hippie eccentricity but the mark of one of the strangest political experiments in twentieth-century Mexico, when a president set out to turn this fishing village into the model settlement of the 'third world'. But to understand that story you have to start at the beginning, when San Pancho was nothing more than a forgotten corner facing the Pacific.
San Francisco —San Pancho— was born, like so many villages on the coast of Nayarit, tied to the sea and to the land. For generations it was a small community of fishermen and farmers facing the Pacific Ocean, in a tropical region of jungle, palm trees and beaches, culturally linked to the Huichol (Wixárika) people, whose worldview and art run through the whole area of today's Riviera Nayarit.
The village's traditional economy revolved around fishing and the crops typical of the Nayarit coast. It was a modest, isolated settlement, far from the main routes and from development, with a simple life set by the rhythm of the sea and the seasons. The name San Francisco comes from its patron saint, an inheritance of the Catholic evangelization of the region during the colonial period.
For much of the twentieth century, San Pancho remained a quiet, little-known corner of the coast, without the prominence of the great ports or resort towns. That condition of a peaceful, discreet village would change unexpectedly in the 1970s, thanks to a singular chapter of Mexican political history.
The most singular episode in San Pancho's history took place in the 1970s, during the presidency of Luis Echeverría Álvarez (1970-1976). Echeverría fell in love with the beauty of the village, went as far as buying a property to use as a holiday home, and decided to turn it into an experiment: the model, self-sufficient village that other 'third world' countries could copy. Hence the name of the main avenue, 'Tercer Mundo', and those of the other streets, christened after developing countries and continents.
With federal funds, San Pancho received infrastructure that was astonishing for its size: electricity, drainage, a hospital, schools, a museum and even a short-lived 'Universidad del Tercer Mundo'. At the heart of the project was an agro-industrial complex of several sheds where food would be processed for Conasupo (Compañía Nacional de Subsistencias Populares), the state company that supplied the population with basic goods. The idea was that the village would produce, process and sustain itself, as a showcase of Mexican rural development. With all that presidential attention, many began to call it colloquially 'the president's village'.
However, as often happens with projects tied to a single six-year term, once Echeverría's mandate ended and the government changed, much of this was left unfinished, underused or abandoned. The university closed, the agro-industrial sheds emptied out and the facilities gradually fell into disuse. Even so, that physical legacy —buildings, infrastructure, even the street names themselves— marked the village forever and, in time, some of those spaces would find a new life, such as the building that today houses the Entreamigos community center.
After decades as a quiet village, San Pancho began to change from the end of the twentieth century and, above all, with the tourism boom on the Nayarit coast in the 2000s. The success of Puerto Vallarta and the development of the whole coastal strip in the south of the state put the neighboring villages on the map, among them San Pancho and nearby Sayulita.
The creation of the 'Riviera Nayarit' tourism brand in the first decade of the twenty-first century drove promotion and investment across the region. San Pancho, however, took a different path from neighboring Sayulita: while Sayulita became a fashionable surf and party destination, San Pancho cultivated a quieter, more elegant and more sophisticated profile, drawing people who were after rest, good food and a more restful atmosphere.
A community of foreign residents (Americans, Canadians, Europeans) settled in the village and, instead of overcrowding it, helped give it a cultural, bohemian character: chef-driven restaurants, art galleries, cultural festivals (music and film festivals at different times) and community projects appeared. San Pancho earned a reputation as the 'chic corner with soul' of the Riviera Nayarit.
Today's San Pancho is an example of how a village can grow through tourism without entirely losing its soul. One of its greatest sources of pride is Entreamigos, a non-profit community center founded in the 2000s and housed in one of the buildings inherited from the old 1970s development project. Entreamigos offers the local community education, a library, workshops, programs for children and young people, and a recycling and reuse system, funded by volunteering, donations and a second-hand shop. It has become a symbol of the village's collaborative spirit, where the Mexican community and foreign residents work side by side.
That community and cultural vocation defines San Pancho. The village keeps its calm, its human scale and its natural beauty —the wide beach, the sunsets, the surrounding jungle— while offering a notable food and arts scene, cultural events, sea turtle conservation and even a surprising polo club (La Patrona). It's a destination betting on a slower, more conscious and higher-quality kind of tourism.
Today San Pancho is one of the best-loved corners of the Riviera Nayarit for anyone looking for a serene alternative to mass destinations: a village where you eat well, actually rest, breathe culture and feel the warmth of a community that looks after its identity. From fishing village to 'the president's village' and, finally, to a bohemian and sustainable refuge, San Pancho has managed to reinvent itself while keeping its character.