Santa Barbara Suites - Not just the Suites,
a Lifestyle

Explore these pages to discover your next long stay term winter vacation where the weather is perfect, the food devine and the attractions are many - in Manzanillo, Colima.

The Staff at Santa Barbara Suites
look forward to welcoming you soon!

Beautiful Manzanillo Bay

You may rent our two bedroom, 2 bath suites with pool on a monthly basis. Six month and 12 month stays are welcome. Included in the suites are living and dining areas, fans, cable television with 55 channels - approximately 15 channels in English, a kitchen with gas range, refrigerator, sink and utensils for cooking.

Drinking water, gas, hot water, toilet paper, towels, and tidying up service are included in the price. Maid service is 3 times a week, sheets are changed once a week, and towels are exchanged every other day.

At Santa Barbara Suites there are 150 units with two pools on the premises.

Airport pickup and drop off service is included in your stay as well as an English-speaking coordinator on the premises who can help you learn about Manzanillo and Colima and manage the day to day tasks during your stay. Guests are encouraged to organize outings.

Manzanillo

Manzanillo - Right Now!

Several destinations on Mexico’s central Pacific coast are now well known to tourists looking for fantasy honeymoons and vacations straight out of travel agency brochures. Puerto Vallarta to the north, Ixtapa and pricey Acapulco to the south swell with tourists from December through March eager for the gilded-cage-pampering of the resort vacation.

Experienced, independent, and budget-savvy travelers looking for less glitz, smarter values, and the opportunity to meet Mexicans other than the waiter who takes their piña colada order, discover the beach towns in the middle of the coast: Mazatlan, San Blas, Tenacatitia, San Patricio-Melaque, Barra de Navidad and Manzanillo. Off the well-sandaled tourist track, these towns offer beach holidays without the wallet-draining price tag and the depersonalized programming of the tourist trap. The amount and variety of nightlife is apt to be the central difference between the two.

Like the rest of Mexico, businesses on the central Pacific coast were hit hard when the peso was devalued by half in 1994. But when an earthquake hit the coast in 1995 with a frightful 7.9 Richter reading, towns such as Manzanillo were literally broken - both financially and physically. Lives were lost, and homes, hotels, restaurants, and businesses crumbled. But what remained was the intense determination and spirit of the Manzanillo community.

Up until then, the city had relied on tourism generously provided by her lovely beaches, agriculture, and money gained from her prosperous port. But like a pretty girl with torn skirts, Manzanillo had always been a little seedy away from the city center.

Today, Manzanillo is solidly on the rise. Helped by an extensive hospitality infrastructure of more than 3,500 hotels, new highways, a very motivated business and tourism community, a new shopping center, a handsome archeological museum and the virtues of its home state Colima, it is rapidly becoming a sound destination for travelers and retirees.

Ask any traveled Mexican which state they’d choose to live in and inevitably 7 out of 10 will tell you Colima.

Why? "Because", they say, "its safe, affordable, beautiful and the best place to raise a family".

The third smallest of Mexico’s 32 states, Colima is nestled between Jalisco to the north, Michoacán to the east and the Pacific to the west. The state has virtually no unemployment, pollution or crime, corruption has been found to be extremely low, and the level of education among her citizens is two years above the national norm. At one million, her hardworking, conscientious people seem to know the value of what they have and are willing to share it with you at a reasonable price.

While Manzanillo retains the laid-back demeanor of a resort town, the groups orchestrating her comeback are not. They’re serious and they have a plan.

The International airport in Manzanillo has been in place for 25 years. The 'stay two nights, get the third night free' tourism promotion has been thriving since 1996 and the Archeological museum opened its doors in 1999. Six major hotels in the area offer excellent convention facilities. Tourism materials in English and Internet sites are exposing this jewel to the outside world. Manzanillo’s old port is being groomed for its new role as an artisan, restaurant, and day tour destination for the year 2003. A new shopping complex with Internet cafes, food courts, ATMs, a taxi stand, bus stops and other services crucial for the international traveler are in place.

In case reading this makes you fret that Manzanillo will soon resemble Eurodisney, don’t worry. The sail fishing, boating, and exquisite golfing, tennis, water sports and breathtakingly-blue waters of the Santiago and Manzanillo bays still remain the authentic draw they always were. But now they are enhanced by groups thrilled to take you into the jungle and the lagoons, up to see the extraordinary volcanoes, into the night to release turtle hatchlings, aboard ship to scuba and snorkel, and to help you hook and eat the delicious catch-of-the-day - all at a reasonable price.

So if you haven’t been to Manzanillo check it out, if you haven’t been to Manzanillo in the last year or so, go back.

Manzanillo Overview by Teresa Kendrick
Author, "Mexico’s Lake Chapala and Ajijic: The Insiders Guide to the Northshore for International Travelers"

Use the Menu Bars
to explore our facilites and Manzanillo!