When you first step foot inside this eight-room villa on a beautiful Mexican white-sand beach in Punta Mita, 35 minutes north of Puerto Vallarta, Lalo escorts you to the pool and offers you a margarita. He’s the house manager, and that’s the extent of check-in at this luxuriously low-key retreat. From then on, Lalo continues to oversee every detail of your stay, from making sure servers magically appear at just the moment when you start to feel hungry to whipping a cigar cutter out of his pocket in the wee hours of the morning. “I’m prepared for everything, always,” he says. An entire day passes happily here with little more than a morning swim in the pool, an afternoon snorkel in the ocean, and a leisurely dinner while watching the sea change from turquoise to navy to violet.

Locavore’s delight
It’s a genuine pleasure to hear your waiter recite the ever changing lunch and dinner menus at the poolside restaurant. The focus is on fresh local fish and organic produce, prepared with Mexican and Mediterranean influences. The restaurant’s lemon-caper chicken, as basic as it sounds, is so good that you’ll ask for the recipe (the secret is dredging the chicken in dried mushrooms). For breakfast, they’ll simply tell you to order anything you want. A bacon-avocado omelet, hormigas, or a housemade croissant—whatever strikes your fancy.

Mix and mingle
Casa de Mita’s size makes for a very intimate setting, so even if you come here to spend quality time with your sweetie, you’ll prob­ably end up making friends with the other guests. (Many don’t even bother to lock their room doors.) People tend to spend most of their time hanging out together poolside, joining forces for dinner, or meeting at the bar or in the study for cocktails and a game of cards. But there are plenty of ways to be alone, too: Stake out your own white-linen cabana bed by the pool, or just spend downtime in your room. All six rooms and the two penthouse suites have private ocean-view decks, hand-carved wooden furniture, hand-painted tiles, and a resplendent mosquito net over the bed, plus the latest digital amenities: an iPod docking station and Wi-Fi.


The house manager can arrange a horseback ride on the beach.

Exploring water world
Aside from the occasional appearance of a few locals, the white-sand beach is practically deserted. All the action here is beneath the surface, where there’s great snorkeling, even in waist-deep water. The nearby Bay of Banderas is a nursery for humpback whales that return each winter with their newborn calves; for a nominal fee, you can seek them out in your own small motorboat with a local guide hired by the hotel. Down the steps to the right of the beach and around the cliff, you’ll find vibrant tide pools, scampering crabs, and an abundance of shells. 

The fresh alternative
As at Casa de Mita, the pool is the nexus of socializing at L'Auberge Del Mar, a seaside resort near San Diego. It's just a mile down the road from the see-and-be-seen Del Mar thoroughbred racetrack, and the aesthetic is more New England clapboard than Mexican villa. After a $25 million remodel completed in June, it's even cushier than before, with a new restaurant focused on local, sustainable food and a new crushed-shell pool deck with private cabanas. A 4,500-foot spa is set to debut in February.

Resources
Casa de Mita: +52 329-298-4114 or 866-740-7999, mexicoboutiquehotels.com/casademita
L’Auberge Del Mar: 800-245-9757, laubergedelmar.com

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Main photo: At Casa de Mita, you can enjoy your entire vacation without ever leaving the premises.