Years ago, watercolorist Jorge Monroy took me to what he called a “river paradise” near the town of El Rosario in Nayarit, a two-hour drive from Guadalajara.
Here I found a gorgeous waterfall and a river with clean spring water winding its way through a narrow canyon with high, spectacularly colored walls. All along this 300-meter section of the river, tasteful pools had been built for swimming and diving—and there was no blaring music. The water temperature was neither hot nor cold and I fully agreed with Monroy that El Manto was a paradise.
Last weekend, I returned to El Manto with friends who planned to camp there. I found the swimming area along the river as enchanting as ever...and apparently so have throngs of others who now flock to El Manto by the busload.
As for the camping facilities, you can pitch your tent anywhere you want in a huge flat, grassy area the size of a football field. Here you will also find clean toilets, showers and big, roofed platforms with picnic tables… as well as a sign saying music must be turned off at 11:30 p.m.
Well, in true Mexican style, everyone at the campground soon got to know everyone else and the chatting went on until well after midnight.
Early the next morning, I woke to the crowing of roosters and the lowing of cattle...and to a spectacular sunrise which lasted only a few moments. Later that morning I struck up a conversation with a distinguished-looking old gentleman who wandered into the campgrounds.
“Excuse me,” I said, “Do you happen to know anything about the history of this place?”
Well, I had found the right man. He closed his eyes and stood there a moment as a big smile came over his face.
“It all started 50 years ago when I was just a boy,” he said. Lo and behold, I was talking to Don Salvador Quintero Bernal himself, owner of El Manto, and one of those people who, at the cost of years of hard work, had managed to turn his life’s dream into reality.
As a boy, Don Salvador had been just another kid from a poor family living in the nearby town of El Rosario. He managed to earn a few centavos doing odd jobs, he told me, “but I dreamed about doing something worthwhile with my life, something no one else had done.
Then, one day, I was sitting above the beautiful waterfall here on this river and I said to myself, ‘El Manto! I’m going to turn El Manto into a place unlike any other, into something wonderful!’”
The young Salvador then walked the length of the river and in his mind’s eye saw what it could become. So he went to the owner of the land with his idea.
“It’ll never work,” said the owner. “You can’t turn this place into a balneario because it floods all the time...but if you want to buy it, I’ll sell it to you for 300 pesos.”
“So,” said Don Salvador, “I raised the money, bought the land and in 1971 I started building the stairway leading down to the riverside. I never needed an architect because I had the whole plan in my head, and everything you see down there was built by the hands of people like me, hardworking folk from El Rosario.”
An important part of Quintero’s vision were strategic floodgates which could be opened quickly and easily to prevent water rising in the narrow canyon. As a result, “Not one single death, not one serious accident, has ever occurred here at El Manto during all these years,” according to Don Salvador.
Although it’s located in a rather remote corner of Nayarit, El Manto has become widely known and admired, “and all the profit we get, I turn right back into community projects here in El Rosario,” says the owner.
Apart from the swimming and camping areas, El Manto has two restaurants which, in theory at least, will make you a stack
of hotcakes as early as 8 a.m. You can also book a delightful villa (including a kitchen with a fridge) for four people at a cost of 1800 pesos, which includes access to the waterpark for two days. The “Villa Village” has, by the way, its own luxury swimming pool, in case you’d rather not walk all the way down to the river.
Check out El Manto’s website, www.elmanto.com.mx, and be sure to make reservations in advance if you want to stay in a villa. Note that during the rainy season (July through October) many of El Manto’s pools are kept empty. This greatly reduces the number of visitors during the rainy season, perhaps making El Manto all the more attractive to foreigners, especially those who can afford to stay in one of the lovely villas. The cost of entrance to the waterpark is 80 pesos for adults and 60 for children.
How to get there
El Manto is located at N20.89187 W104.48098. The easy way to get there is via Google Maps. Just head for “El Manto, Nayarit.” Driving time from Guadalajara: about two-and-a-half hours.