For many people, the sunset hour is the magical hour in Sayulita; the balmy evening breezes cool things down, and over the sea and Punta Sayulita, the setting sun paints the clouds in a hundred vivid shades of red and gold; on a cloudless evening, there might be a flash of green. It’s a wonderful moment to be in the water or on the beach, drenched in sensation. It’s cocktail time for sure, and all along the edge of Sayulita’s beaches, the bars fill up with happy souls, vacationers and locals alike. We love to see the sunset reflected in their eyes; to hear it in their voices, their laughter. When the waves are good late in the day, you’ll find a few dedicated surfers riding right through sunset into the night, eyes adjusting as darkness falls.
For those who don’t stay up too late (or do stay up all night), another mystical, magical hour is dawn, when the sun illuminates the clouds on the other side of the sky, to the east. The palms along the shore on the north beach are black silhouettes against those softly flaming dawn-clouds, with the bright virginal blue of the fresh morning sky glowing behind them. Birds are everywhere at dawn, flying tree to tree, hunting breakfast in the river and the rocks. A frigate bird swoops past, snags a fish off the sand. A few souls walk the beach, alone or with their loves, their spouses, their dogs. A fisherman wades in and throws a net, another casts a lure into the waves.
Last Monday morning after sending the kid off to school we wandered down and strolled the beach at dawn, to check the waves, to watch the sun rising on the birds poised in the river. The wind has been strange this week, blowing from the north, transforming the normally glassy, still, early morning waters into a bit of a storm-tossed tempest, a more dramatic version of the Sayulita sea. The sky was gorgeous.
