San Blas, Mexico

West of Tepic lies the coastal plain: sultry, marshy and flat, dotted with palm trees and half-submerged under lagoons teeming with wildlife. You have to go through this to reach SAN BLAS, as godforsaken a little town as you could hope to see – at least on first impression. It was an important port in the days of the Spanish trade with the Orient, wealthy enough to need a fortress to ward off the depredations of English piracy, but though it still boasts an enviable natural harbour and a sizeable deep-sea fishing fleet, almost no physical relic of the town's glory days remains.