Playa Escondida Private Tour - Marietas Islands

Overview

A private, exclusive boat tour from Punta Mita to the Marietas Islands, swimming through a natural rock tunnel to reach the Hidden Beach, plus snorkeling and a stop at Playa Nopalera.

Departing from Punta Mita Pier, this private and exclusive boat tour reaches the Marietas Islands in about 15-20 minutes. Access to Playa Escondida (the Hidden Beach) is by swimming 80-100 meters through a natural rock tunnel, always accompanied by a certified guide, with about 30 minutes on the beach itself. Afterward, the tour continues with snorkeling and a visit to Playa Nopalera, where you can walk and explore sea caves at your own pace.

Highlights

• Playa Escondida (Hidden Beach) The Marietas Islands' famous beach, reached by swimming through a natural tunnel.
• Playa Nopalera A second real beach stop with sea caves to explore.
• Snorkeling Equipment included for exploring the islands' marine life.

What Stops Does This Tour Make?

A popular starting point — every Voyzo itinerary is fully customizable, so we'll shape the order and stops around your group.

Important Information

Frequently Asked Questions

About This Tour

A private, exclusive boat tour from Punta Mita to the Marietas Islands, swimming through a natural rock tunnel to reach the Hidden Beach, plus snorkeling and a stop at Playa Nopalera. Departing from Punta Mita Pier, this private and exclusive boat tour reaches the Marietas Islands in about 15-20 minutes. Access to Playa Escondida (the Hidden Beach) is by swimming 80-100 meters through a natural rock tunnel, always accompanied by a certified guide, with about 30 minutes on the beach itself. Afterward, the tour continues with snorkeling and a visit to Playa Nopalera, where you can walk and explore sea caves at your own pace.

The Marietas Islands' famous circular beach, Playa Escondida (the Hidden Beach), has a real, well-documented origin tied to the islands' military history — though the exact mechanics are told slightly differently across sources, so it's worth treating as the commonly accepted account rather than a precisely dated event. Through the early-to-mid 20th century, the Mexican military used these then-uninhabited islands as a bombing and artillery test range. The repeated detonations over those decades are widely credited with destabilizing the volcanic rock on what's now called Isla del Amor, until a section of a cave roof eventually collapsed, opening the circular skylight that frames the beach today.

That military use ended largely because of a conservation campaign led by oceanographer Jacques Cousteau in the late 1960s, which pushed for the islands to be protected rather than used for testing. The protections that followed are genuine, dated legal designations, not informal conservation language: the islands were named a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance on February 2, 2004, formally declared Parque Nacional Islas Marietas on April 25, 2005, and later recognized as part of a UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Reserve in 2008.

Those protections come with real, enforced access limits, not just a marketing claim of exclusivity. A University of Guadalajara carrying-capacity study set the beach's own sustainable daily visitor cap at around 116 people, with the wider park capped further, and only licensed tour operators are permitted to bring visitors in at all — part of why access runs through a short, guided swim through a natural rock tunnel rather than simply walking onto the beach. The islands are also a genuine wildlife sanctuary, home to well over 90 recorded bird species, including the blue-footed booby, alongside the marine life divers and snorkelers come to see in the surrounding waters.

Departing from Punta Mita Pier keeps the boat ride itself short — the islands sit only about 15 to 20 minutes offshore — which is part of why this is the closest real departure point to the Marietas rather than a longer trip out of central Puerto Vallarta.