A pair of recommendable hotels and a trailer park (also with hotel rooms) serve Tenacatita visitors. First choice goes to Hotel las Villitas (Av. Tenacatita 376, tel. 315/355-5353 or 315/355-7078, Barra de Navidad toll-free tel. 01-800/980-7060, brenda_ruenes [at] hotmail [dot] com), actually a petite boutique resort, where owners have spared little in providing a restaurant, oceanview pool patio, tennis courts, comfortably appointed deluxe rooms and spacious kitchenette suites. Rentals run about $95 for the rooms, $160 for the kitchenette suites, with fans, air-conditioning, a library of paperback novels, and plenty of ocean views. (At this writing, the only possible drawback to all this is the hotel’s isolation, about a mile from anything south along the beach, and the sometimes lack of sufficient electricity—it’s solar-powered—to run the pump and keep the swimming pool from being murky.)

A plainer but still acceptable closer-in choice is the beachfront Hotel Paraíso de Tenacatita (Av. Tenacatita 32, $30 d, $40 d with a/c, dobie [at] prodigy [dot] net [dot] mx), with 23 clean, simply decorated rooms, with fans, some with air-conditioning, and an oceanview restaurant and pool patio.

RVers and campers enjoy a good option at the Tenacatita Trailer Park (Av. Tenacatita, Guadalajara local cell 044/33-3115-5406, long-distance tel. 01-33/3115-5406, emmarortega [at] hotmail [dot] com) Here you’ll find around 20 spaces, about half of them shaded, with several big enough to accommodate large motor homes. Rates run about $20 for smaller RVs, $25 for larger, with all hookups, wastewater dump, a/c power, lavish showers and toilet facilities, all in a big, grassy, securely fenced-in yard, kept green by a private piped-in fresh water supply.

The trailer park’s four hotel rooms (out front, on the beachfront road) are equally well equipped and attractive. Here, you get a clean, comfortably semi-deluxe oceanview room with a pair of double beds, for $28 d, $46 t or q, with fan and hot-water shower bath, right across the street from the good Fiesta Mexicana palapa restaurant.

On the other hand, for some of the best food and highest standards on the beach, go to very well-established Fiesta Mexicana palapa restaurant, on the Tenacatita beach south end, across the beachfront from the trailer park. (Alternatively, you can also check out neighboring Restaurant Chito and Restaurant Cato, especially for the local fish specialty rollo del mar.)

If you want a diversion from the fare of Tenacatita’s seafood palapas and El Rebalsito’s single restaurant, you can drive or thumb a ride seven miles (11 km) to Restaurant Yoli (7 a.m.–8 p.m. daily) at roadside Miguel Hidalgo village (Km 30 on Highway 200) for some country-style enchiladas, tacos, chiles rellenos, tostadas, and beans.