Mark Albert Holt always craved fame, not fortune. He never really achieved either in Hollywood, where he worked behind the scenes in a series of horror flicks with such titles as Hellraiser and Warlock.
But he eventually made a name for himself after drifting down the Pacific coast a decade ago and stumbling upon Sayulita, then a grungy Mexican village with rutted roads, barely 100 phone lines and no more than 20 vehicles. Only fishermen and a sprinkling of expatriates populated the town in Nayarit state, 40 kilometres north of Puerto Vallarta. Surfers and hippies were the main visitors.
Holt, a friendly, unassuming man with a salt-and-pepper goatee, married into a local family and in 2001 opened the most basic of Mexican businesses, a fish taco stand, which featured just two tables on a road running past the town square.
He didn't just open any taco stand, though. Holt took locally caught dorado, dipped it in a perfectly spiced batter, served the fried fish in the softest handmade tortillas imaginable, then garnished his creations with cabbage, chilies and an original mango salsa. Holt humbly describes his
tacos as "an authentic taste
of Baja on the [Mexican] mainland."
Others have been quick to heap on the praise, and Holt's Sayulita Fish Taco restaurant became truly famous when Lonely Planet lauded him for making some of the "tastiest fish tacos" on the Pacific coast.
Similarly, Sayulita's reputation has grown over the past decade as a mix of hippies, yuppies and fashionistas have descended on the town. The influx has produced an unusual kind of place, where guests at a beachfront campground do yoga on a patio surrounded by Winnebagos, where a jewellery store sits next to a taco stand dishing up tripe tacos and where the local bread vendor sells artisanal crusty loaves from the back of a beat-up pickup.
Nowadays, beachgoers can also nosh on slices of broccoli-shrimp pizza made in wood-fired ovens. A cozy lounge mixes $8 lychee martinis. And black Tahitian pearls are sold at Pachamama, a boutique credited with attracting a rather stylish crowd to Sayulita. (An attractive Pachamama employee, speaking in a Valley Girl accent, happily points out, "There are a lot of pretty people in this town - not to be vain.")
Real-estate development has mushroomed as well, as tourists snap up pieces of paradise - often impulsively purchasing properties within days of arriving in town.
With the flurry of activity, Holt says that "when you come into town, you feel the energy of it."
In many ways, Sayulita still resembles a typical coastal pueblo, where packs of stray dogs roam the dusty streets, locals fete the Virgin of Guadalupe by releasing noisy bottle rockets in the predawn hours and men ride through town on horseback while clutching cans of Modelo beer.
But the expat community, composed of an eclectic bunch of characters who give Sayulita its real charm and are known throughout the area by their first names, has opened a series of landmark businesses.
Take, for example, Thies, a personable German fellow who often roams his impossibly tidy Sayulita Trailer Park and Bungalows in shorts, suspenders and white tube socks. He opened the park 25 years ago after purchasing two acres on the beach. In a sign of Sayulita's burgeoning appeal, developers have been making him increasingly sweet offers to sell.
Or Tracey, a gregarious blond English woman and the owner of Chocobanana, a breakfast spot in the town square often jammed with surfers. Her story is legendary: Tracey arrived in town after being fired from a cruise ship job in Puerto Vallarta for exposing an environmental offence in the early 1990s, and made a living hawking chocolate-covered bananas on the beach. She later founded Chocobanana, which flourished along with the town.
