By Laurel Kallenbach (for Life Time Fitness Magazine)

Dreaming of sun and sand? Mexico’s hidden Pacific and Caribbean beaches lure visitors ,but it’s the adventure and natural wonders that hook you.

Descending a steep, jagged set of stairs to the beach, a gringo offers a helpful arm to an abuela, a grandmother, as she navigates the knee-grinding steps. She smiles a mostly toothless grin, burbles in Spanish and waves him away. She’s been making this trek down to the sandy beach of Yelapa, a tiny fishing village on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, for decades.

Despite my comparative youthfulness, I want to yell to this polite American, "Hey, what about me?" My calves are certainly complaining. You see, in Yelapa there are two modes of transportation: burro or foot. Wherever you go in this hilly town – to a bodega, restaurant, or just to the beach and back – you get there on your own steam, trudging over rough dirt or concrete pathways requiring mountain-goat abilities.

I learn, after collapsing on Yelapa’s long stretch of sand, that the abuela has come to the beach for spiritual commerce: She earns a few pesos by giving blessings to tourists. About all I understand of her rambling, rhyming prayer to me is "May the veil of Our Lady protect you from hardship and death." *note, Guadaloupe died a year ago...

Though I could bemoan the hardship of Yelapa’s rough roads, instead I’m grateful to spend a week in this sleepy Mexican village, which is accessible only by boat from Puerto Vallarta. I’ve come to participate in a yoga retreat and to dance in the moonlight with both locals and ex-patriot American artists at the Full Moon beach party. I’ve come to absorb Yelapa’s rich beauty and harsh contrasts – where women wash laundry in the river, where electricity is just a year old, where the jungle and sea collide in a place once sacred to long-vanished native peoples. And every night when I climb into the suspended bed under a cloud of mosquito netting in my palapa, an open-sided thatched roof structure, I remember the old woman and feel blessed.

Jungle Love
Yelapa is but one of Mexico’s colorful coastal spots where you can do more than soak up rays. Most people dream of sandy, sun-drenched playas shaded by softly swaying palms, especially at this time of year. But lolling on a towel gets boring, and it doesn’t scratch the surface of the rich culture, natural habitats and adventures: exploring Mayan ruins, snorkeling or diving coral reefs, paragliding over a bay, biking to quaint mountain towns, or horseback riding through the jungle. Within a short distance of two easily accessible tourist meccas – Puerto Vallarta and Cancún – lie plenty of off-the-beaten-path opportunities. And, after some adrenaline-pumping experiences, you have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve earned a beach-side siesta.

To me, Yelapa is a place to feel at home in Mexico, where locals greet everyone with a friendly "hola" as you pass on the street, and you haven’t tasted pie until you’ve succumbed to the homemade delights – lemon meringue, pecan and chocolate – peddled by The Pie Ladies along the beach. In this get-away-from-it-all town with only three telephones, there are two waterfalls to hike to, swimming, and paragliding over the bay from cliff-top launch spots. And there’s always a yoga instructor available to coach you into some surf-side poses. For good snorkeling at a nearby cove, hop a water taxi to picture-perfect Posota beach and scan the waves for the wings of jumping giant manta rays.

As remote as Yelapa is, you can take yourself even farther off the tourist map, as did Steve O’Halloran, a poet and bookseller from Northampton, Mass., and two friends. On a backcountry horseback safari guided by Canadian equestrian coach Pamela Arthur, O’Halloran had a "36-hour whirlwind adventure" into a world few non-Mexicans experience. He made the rough, five-hour journey up the steep, wild terrain above Yelapa on the back of El Guapo, "the handsome one," who, he learned while fording a boulder-strewn stream, was nicknamed "The Stumbler."

His group stayed the night in Chacala, a plateau-land village where they encountered a rodeo. "We were the only foreigners there among about a thousand people from all over the region," O’Halloran says. "The bull-riding was amusing, since some bulls really got into it, but others refused to buck and ran directly to the corral’s exit gate. Between rodeo events, people danced, drank beer and passed around raicilla, the local moonshine. After the rodeo, there was a big dance in the corral, so we got out there and danced for hours with dust billowing around us," he laughs. "For saddle-soreness, I highly recommend dancing – it really loosens tight muscles."

Two-Wheel Adventures
If you’re exploring Yelapa or the region around Puerto Vallarta, you’ll need to spend a night or two in the "gringo-fied" city, which fortunately still has a few quiet beaches. It’s also the departure point for excellent cycling treks into remote areas. For starters, BikeMex Adventures gives advanced riders two-wheeled transportation to Yelapa, a four-to-five-hour cycle culminating in a steep downhill single-track to the beach. The trip includes a boat ride back to Vallarta, or you can opt to stay overnight in the village Less arduous excursions go to hidden beaches along the way to Punta Mita, north of Puerto Vallarta.

BikeMex tours include all mountain-biking gear and a trained guide who informs visitors about local flora and fauna, history, and culture, says BikeMex guide Oscar de Diós. "Bikers who come in good shape love our tours and learn a lot," he says. One popular overnight trek into the mountains flies bikers in a small plane to the 6,000-foot, old-world town of San Sebastián, where de Diós teaches about the area’s silver-mining history. Bikers climb La Bufa mountain and spend the night in a restored hacienda, then make the steep descent the next day.

"We take bikers across rivers and suspension bridges, past donkeys and turkeys, and help them talk with locals," says de Diós. "This is a way to discover the real Mexico."

To arrange mountain-bike rental and tours from Puerto Vallarta, contact BikeMex Adventures:
011-52-322-223-1680