Altata is a small town connected to the Pacific Ocean, located about 45 miles west of Culiacán, Sinaloa

Culiacán

Culiacán is a city in northwestern Mexico, the largest city in the state of Sinaloa as well as its capital and capital of the municipality of Culiacán. With 675,773 inhabitants in the city , and 858,638 in the municipality, it is the largest city in the state of Sinaloa...

 in Mexico. It has a very nice beach and much wildlife: octopus

Octopus

The octopus is a cephalopod mollusc of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms, and like other cephalopods they are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms...

, toninas, starfish, jellyfish

Jellyfish

Jellyfish are free-swimming members of the phylum Cnidaria. Medusa is another word for jellyfish, and refers to any free-swimming jellyfish stages in the phylum Cnidaria...

, shark

Shark

Sharks are a type of fish with a full cartilaginous skeleton and a highly streamlined body. The earliest known sharks date from more than 420 million years ago....

, birds, and many fish species. El Tambor and Nuevo Altata are nearby beaches. The area would like to grow as a tourist destination in coming years, modeling after Mazatlán, Sinaloa

Mazatlán

Mazatlán is a city in the Mexican state of Sinaloa; the surrounding municipio for which the city serves as the municipal seat is Mazatlán Municipality. It is located at on the Pacific coast, across from the southernmost tip of the Baja California peninsula.Mazatlán is a Nahuatl word meaning...

. Altata currently has many residents who fish

Fishing

Fishing is the activity of trying to catch wild fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping....

 for a living. People from Culiacán usually go there in motorcycles, to enjoy riding in "Dunas"

Dune

In physical geography, a dune is a hill of sand built by wind. Dunes occur in different forms and sizes, formed by interaction with the wind. Most kinds of dunes are longer on the windward side where the sand is pushed up the dune and have a shorter "slip face" in the lee of the wind...

which are sand piles.

Altata is a beautiful little town that used to have a nice beach until influence-buying merchants and vendors established permanent stands to sell tacos, seafood, fruits and plenty of alcohol. These stands form two parallel rows facing each other, one occupying the old beach and the other, occupies portions of the water, the narrow space between them is used as a road.

Behind the beach side stands, there are Restaurants specializing on seafood cocktails and fried fish which are very popular with families from the vicinity.

The new private development 'New Altata' is taking shape just north from here. Nice beaches but not free or open to anybody.