The coastline near Chacala is indented by a series of small bays. The town itself is located on the southernmost bay, while the middle bay hosts a ring of beautiful oceanfront houses nestled into the jungle.
Angie and one of the most-stoked locals we’ve met anywhere – he drove an hour each way over dirt roads to surf here most days
The northernmost bay is about 2 miles from Chacala, and it is home to a high quality left point break called La Caleta (or The Cove). It’s a well-known spot – surfers travel from far and wide if there’s a good swell to ride the long, consistent waves.
Like many spots south of the mid-point of Baja, La Caleta is really best on a south swell. Since south swells are generated by southern hemisphere winter storms, the best surf season in Mexico is the summer. We’re here in the winter, so we take what we can get – sometimes a small south swell will still arrive, or the largest northwest swells (from the northern hemisphere winter storms) can generate some good surf.
The only downside of La Caleta for Mike is that it’s a left instead of a right
Our timing for arriving in Chacala turned out to be very lucky. A decent sized swell had just arrived, and La Caleta came to life with what were probably the best waves either Mike or Angie had ever surfed. While only head-high or so, the wave broke cleanly, consistently, and with the most power of any waves we’ve seen so far on our trip.
Our friend John leaning into a small one – he plans to stay anchored in Chacala the entire winter just to surf this wave
What made the day even more special is that we almost had the place to ourselves. We shared the waves with just three other folks. John is a fantastic surfer from northern California; we anchored right next to his boat Summer, and he invited us to surf with him. Ed and Adrian are father and son – they live near Malibu but were down in Chacala at a shared vacation home for the holidays. The five of us had a fantastic time, hooting and hollering whenever someone picked off a big set wave and enjoying the idyllic beauty of jungle-ringed bay.
We stayed in Chacala six days, and we were lucky enough to surf for five of those. While conditions were never quite as good as that first day, we feel lucky to have surf at all in such a beautiful location.
Unfortunately, all of our pictures are from the small days – we were too excited to surf when the waves were bigger to take time for photos…
