Winding our way along the coast of Michoacan we felt like we were driving a tropical version of Highway 1 in northern California. Along the cliffs, the road hugged the rocky, wild beaches below, giving you glimpses at white sand that few people ever touch. It would be a place that would be perfect to explore in a sailboat where you could anchor inside all of the isolated inlets. It was stunning.

Further along the coast, more untouched beaches…

Playa Maruata

This beach is actually three beaches separated into coves. There is beach camping, but the vibe was a little too rasta backpacker for us (I am getting too old for Bob Marley music and clouds of pot at 10am), so we hung around for a while and then moved on. I would suggest stopping by though, one thing we have learned is a week later it could feel totally different.

Very blue water.

Titzupan

This beach was a surprise. It was not in any of our guide books, but we stopped because we saw an empty RV park next to a beach with a pool and a giant open air palapa restaurant. It ended up being a really great camp site with one of the best swimming beaches I have ever been on. There were waves, but they broke out far and there was zero rip tides. The ocean floor was totally flat with hard packed sand and zero rocks, the only thing in the sand was these bright orange starfish that were everywhere. The water was about 80 degrees and Sam and I swam for hours at a time. We stayed here for a few days and celebrated New Years completely alone on the beach, where we drank one of our last bottles of Russian River Pinot and ate spicy yam curry quietly toasting a great 2013 and an even better 2014.

Starfish on the beach.

Where I spent most of New Years day reading. It was too hot in the sun without being in the pool.

If you want miles of beach all to yourself, come here!

We found this giant puffer fish stranded on the beach by the tide. It was still alive so I made Sam save it for me. He did and when it swam away all puffed up we were so happy!

The beach was about a mile long.

Caleta de Campos

This was our last beach on the Michoacan coast and one of our favorites that was also a wonderful beach for swimming. Part of the beach is filled with Mexican tourists and beach front restaurants (which is an energy I love by the way), and just down the beach you have an entire massive stretch of beach that for some reason was always empty. We spent time relaxing and swimming on both beaches. For camping I asked this sweet old man if I could camp at the house next to their restaurant and he opened it up and Sam and I had beach front camping with a two story palapa all to ourselves for $8.00 a night. I am getting good at asking permission to camp in Spanish =).

View from the XP.

Our epic campsite on the beach.

We hung up our hammock in the upstairs part of the palapa and read during the hottest parts of the day.

This was the not so busy part of the beach.

The busier part of the beach. You can see the XP at the very end, it is the huge white thing. We saw turtles on this part of the beach near the rocks.

This beach had some of the clearest water I have ever seen.

Sam burning off the calories from the Big Gulp size pina coladas we bought on the beach.

After a wonderful week we tore ourselves away from the coast and headed to the interior of Michoacan to explore some of the smaller interior towns of this beautiful state.