We watch with fascination as two iguanas entertain us with a head-bobbing mating dance not more than 10 feet in front of the small stone patio of our little palapa (hut). The one making all the moves is the obvious male. He is large, about half a metre long, with fine spikes that run from the back of his magnificent head to the base of his muscular spine. The smaller female does not appear to be impressed, and she soon turns and scuttles back under a pile of dried palm fronds — the same type of palm fronds that make up the thatched roof of our little stick-and-stone palapa at the north end of the beach in Yelapa.

Yelapa, a sleepy little west-coast Mexican town that hugs the hillside above the Bay of Banderas, lies a mere 45-minute boat ride south of Puerto Vallarta in the state of Jalisco (pronounced ha-lis-ko). After four days too long in Puerto Vallarta, my husband and I have managed to escape to this little paradise where there are no roads, no cars and no Hooters bar. Instead, the balmy air is alive with the squawk of bright green and blue macaws calling from up high in the jungle canopy and burros braying across the bay. There is a perfect crescent beach wre turquoise water slips into the shore in a petticoat foam of white lace. Sandwiched by the Sierra Madre Mountains, Yelapa lies in a small valley where the Tuito River trickles in the dry winter months down behind the beach, forming a lagoon where ibis, egrets, laughing gulls and vultures congregate to fish and scavenge. At the far end of the bay, stairs lead up to the village where horses, donkeys and bare feet provide all the transportation needed.

About 1,500 Mexicans and ex-pats live in Yelapa, which is a delightful muddle of ice-cream-coloured houses, small shops, restaurants, a tortilla “factory” and palapas that crowd the narrow cobbled streets. In true Mexican style, many of the buildings appear to be only half finished with bits of steel rebar jutting up out of unfinished concrete walls. Chickens scratch in dusty gardens for insects, dogs sleep in the shade, horses and donkeys laden with riders or huge sacks of ice and anything else that needs to be transported, clip-clop along the uneven stone paths.

A simple life behind the storefront
Most visitors only ever see the “storefront” Yelapa. A flood of day trippers boats in from Puerto Vallarta, arriving on the beach by 11 a.m. and leaving by 3 p.m. We sit smugly on our stone patio, watching them come in, then go out like the tide, feeling somewhat like a couple of locals. A few tourists quickly walk through the village or to the waterfall, then swim and sun themselves on the pretty beachfront festooned with small restaurants where blue, wood and canvas lounge chairs are set out in the coarse tawny sand under umbrellas. They drink cervezas (beer) or eat thick slices of pie — coconut cream, chocolate pecan or lemon meringue — purchased from one of the women who walk the beach, pies perched jauntily in containers atop their heads. Yet, a mere 20 feet (around six metres) behind this “set” is the real Mexico and although we do love the beach and its tourist facade, the real Mexico is what we have come to see.

Before exploring, we have a decision to make. Do we have breakfast on the beach at Hotel Lagunita (fresh papaya, mango, pineapple, pears, yogurt and homemade granola served at a table in the sand under a blue-striped umbrella)? Or should we walk across the beach to Rosy’s to buy cinnamon buns and cookies sold through her kitchen window? We revel in the luxury of this simple, unhurried life. We opt for Rosy’s and head out, our pace leisurely in the heat of the now late morning. After stocking up on bottled water, oranges, avocado and tostadas from the local store, we pack our cinnamon bun carefully on top and head east along the path that takes us away from the beach and back along the river.

The path is dusty and dry. We pull over to let the locals pass by on horseback, brushing the bougainvillea, hibiscus and frangipani blossoms that colour our way. Pendulous prickly guavas hang heavy on slender branches next to trees that are loaded down with small mangoes. The riverbed has only a small trickle of water running toward the sea. We carry on toward the pump house and the waterfall beyond — a 90-minute hike from the beach – but after hearing from a local that there is little water coming over the falls, we change our plan and drop in to the remote Riverview Café along the trail for a cool drink of Jamaican tea and the best bowl of black bean soup we’ve ever had. Owned and run by ex-pat Christina from Houston, Texas, since 1972, the cafe nestles in the midst of a lush, carefully tended garden. Later, back on our end of the beach, we collapse into chairs and order up a bucket full of ice-cold cervezas and watch a rainbow-coloured flock of paragliders hang in the air above us.

Taylor and Burton launch tourism
Yelapa has seen dramatic changes in the last two years: electricity arrived in 2002, and a recycling program has begun to deal with the garbage. The first gringo didn’t visit Yelapa until the 1950s, and rumour has it that John Huston once spent three days and nights on the beach, drinking and telling stories. It was Huston who brought Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton to Puerto Vallarta to film “Night of the Iguana,” which launched the commercialization of what had been a quaint fishing village.

Yelapa is a magnet for ex-pats drawn to the laid-back lifestyle who often spend four to six months here during the winter months. A handful live here full time, like Canadian-born Gloria, who arrived in 1963 on the day U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. She has since handed her gallery and house over to her son and his girlfriend, who have turned it into the Galeria Restaurant. Gloria has moved to a palapa higher up on the hillside where, at 85, she still sleeps on her deck in a mosquito-covered cot. Francis, a former journalist and black American activist who survived the Second World War and racism in the south, was friends with Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin. Joe, an ex-marine, artist and world traveller, was once chauffeur to Mama Cass Elliot and also made a film with Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

The inevitable last day in Yelapa arrives. We’ve yet to explore the trail out to the point of the southern headland or hire a boat for a day trip to the Las Tres Marietas Islands (an uninhabited wildlife reserve with pristine beaches, caves, colonies of blue-footed boobies, pelicans and cormorants). Tempting adventures. But we choose to savour the last day walking the beach, reading our books and watching pelicans skim the surface of the bay before dramatically diving like B-52 bombers to scoop up fish. As the sun goes down through a blood-red sky, we are content and recharged before heading back to our reality.