Banderas Bay

Bahía de Banderas opens onto Mexico's Pacific coast between Punta Mita in the north and Cabo Corrientes in the south. The bay is about one hundred kilometres across its mouth, and the Ameca and other rivers carry water from the mountains behind it into the bay. Cora and Huichol communities lived in the sierra behind the coast, while the lowlands grew maize and cotton and the shore supplied fish and shellfish. In the 1530s Spanish expeditions from the Pacific ports anchored in the bay, and its sheltered water made it a useful stop on the coast route.