In case you didn’t know, Gringo Hill is the hill directly behind the plaza, overlooking downtown Sayulita. The hill was named years back, when the first gringos to move to Sayulita bought property and built houses up there. At the time, property was cheap and so was construction, and so, those pioneer gringos are property-rich these days, if they held on to their homes and lands.
There are also some old school Mexican properties up there, like Rancho Manuel, a horseback riding concern with a big fat presence on a scruffy, pleasantly overgrown lot right in the middle of the top of the hill. We like these unmanicured places; they help keep Sayulita down to earth. It would be a shame if there was nothing on Gringo Hill but fancy-pants five bedroom houses with views and pools. Those you can find in Malibu or Puerto Vallarta, and in Sayulita too, but that’s not all there is.
There are just a few streets that lead up Gringo Hill, and there are also a couple of public stairways that link different parts of the hill. On a recent morning, my photographer, Donna Day, and I did a little walkabout up there, shooting some of the gorgeous mature plants and trees, the houses, the staircases, and the views. We thought it might be interesting to show some “backside” views of Sayulita—everybody always looks towards the ocean here, since that’s the entire orientation of the town, but there are some magnificent mountain and valley views as well. Have a look. These were all shot from various points on Gringo Hill.
(A little etymology: Gringo, which is how Mexicans and many other Spanish-speaking peoples refer to people from the US (or Canada or foreigners in general) is a word with a couple of possible sources. One, it derives from the Spanish word for Greek, “griego,” referring to people who could not speak Castilian Spanish and so speak greek, or gibberish. Another explanation is that during the Mexican-American War that began in 1846, a battalion of American soldiers consisting of a Catholic immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and elsewhere, questioning why they were fighting for “protestant” American against Catholic Mexico, decided to desert and join the Mexican forces. They were led by Captain Joe Riley from County Galway in Ireland. They called themselves St. Patrick’s Battalion and were known to frequently sing the Irish song, “Green Grow the Rushes, Ho;” hence the word “greengrow”, which evolved to gringo. There are other explanations as well, but enough. The term was once considered insulting, but really, for most of us it no longer stings to hear it. Gringos are all over Sayulita, living on Gringo Hill or elsewhere, or just visiting.)
Gringo Hill is a great place to rent a vacation home, but if you find that your house is way up on top, you might want to consider renting a golf cart. It isn’t quite as steep as Nanzal, but it is definitely a bit of a hike to get to the top.
