We’ve heard about the snorkeling at Playa Manzanillo. Our friends paid $40USD for a trip there last year and said it was great. Our friend that works in tourism here quoted us a price of 400 pesos per person, though. The day trip takes you there from the pier in Centro. But we wanted to see if we could get there on our own. We took the ATV to Escénica Riscalillo and essentially guessed at the spot where we could get down. About 3 km after leaving Playa La Ropa we saw two cars parked in a makeshift parking spot right before we saw a long guard rail. This spot is apparently the unofficial dumping ground for trash over the guard rail. We parked beside the cars and started walking downhill along a narrow makeshift dirt road.
It takes about 10 minutes driving from Plaza Kioto past La Madera and La Ropa to the parking spot.
The hike is mostly easy to find. If you have a good four-wheeler or car you could drive the entire way down. There are a couple of forks in the path, but stay to the right and keep walking downhill and you shouldn’t have much difficulty finding the beach. At one point you can see a house off to the left in another inlet from high above. The entire trek down was done in 20 minutes. The hike up is a little more strenuous, but only took about 3 more minutes to get back up the trail.
As we popped out of the tree line at the bottom of the trail, we saw thousands of hermit crabs roaming along the beach. The beach is mostly large rocks, but there are plenty of places to lay in the sand. For the first hour on our first trip we had the entire beach to ourselves. On our second trip we owned the entire beach for several hours. The rocks along the cliffside were really amazing. It felt like you could walk all the way around the cliffs to Playa Las Gatas on one side, and all the way to Playa Larga on the other side. It’s a great beach for hiking around the rocks and looking for interesting shells.
There are lots of great views of the Ocean from the road, through the hike and all the way to the beach. Bring your water shoes and snorkel gear, because this is a great spot. On our second visit we saw two boats drop snorkelers off in the water. They stayed about 100 yards from shore, so we were able to keep the beach to ourselves. Without water shoes it will be difficult to get into the water. Manzanillo is a popular scuba diving location as well. Almost every time we’ve been there has been a boat of snorkelers or scuba divers out in the water. We hiked down twice in the first couple weeks of discovering this spot and have been several times since!