The short answer
Stay in San Agustinillo if the water is the point: swimming most mornings, a first surf lesson, a beach you can walk end to end. Stay in Mazunte if you want the village itself, with the turtle center and the Punta Cometa walk on foot. Stay with us in El Torón Reserve if you want quiet land around you and both towns close enough to visit, not live in.
We get this question often, and we're not neutral. We are one of the three options. So the table below sticks to things you can check.
Two towns, one kilometre apart
Mazunte and San Agustinillo are neighbours on coastal Highway 200, about 1 km apart, both in the municipality of Santa María Tonameca. They are small. Mazunte counted 651 residents in the 2020 census; San Agustinillo counted 291 in 2010. Neither is a resort strip. Both grew out of the sea turtle trade, which Mexico banned in 1990, and both turned to low-impact tourism and fishing afterwards.
That shared history is why the turtle comes up everywhere here, and why Mazunte has a national turtle center at all.
San Agustinillo: three bays for swimming and surf
San Agustinillo's beach is three small bays, about 1 km long together, running from Playa Aragón on the east to Mazunte on the west. They're known for being calm enough for swimmers and still good for surfing, which is a rare combination on a coast where the Pacific usually picks one. Surf classes and boat trips to see marine life both run from here. From December to April, whales and orcas pass close to this part of the coast on their migration, and the boat trips are how most people see them.
It suits couples who want to be in the water every day and don't need much else.
Mazunte: the village, the turtles and Punta Cometa
Mazunte is the bigger of the two and the one with things to walk to. The National Mexican Turtle Center sits in the village, and it's the clearest way to understand why this coast matters to sea turtles. Punta Cometa is the rocky headland at the west end of the bay where people gather to watch the sun go down over the Pacific. The name Mazunte is often traced to a Nahuatl phrase meaning "please lay eggs here", though older residents say it comes from a local word for a crab.
It suits travellers who want restaurants and a village street outside the door more than they want silence.
El Torón Reserve: where we are
We're on Camino Mermejita, inside El Torón Reserve, a protected area of 30 hectares on the cliffs above Mazunte. Built into the reserve, not placed on the beach. We have ten suites across Casa Chicatana, Casa Cuachalalá and Casa Guayacán, plus Villa Pentágonos, the clifftop villa by Alberto Kalach with its own infinity pool. Our infinity pools are cut into the cliffside rock, and a path leads down to a private beach inside the reserve.
This is adults-only, from eighteen up. Breakfast is included, our restaurant cooks with local ingredients in open-air dining spaces, and bicycles are there when you want to ride into either town.
The honest trade-off: we are a hillside property with steps and stone paths and no elevators, and wildlife is part of daily life here. If either of those is a problem, one of the towns will suit you better.