If the former Mr. Roseanne Barr hadn't turned the old "McHale's Navy" TV series into such a miserable movie five years back, more people might have tuned in to the swaying palm trees, the inviting blue sea and the beaches unpolluted with drunken tourists that kept appearing in the background, just behind Tom's smarmy mug.

Had it been a decent movie, cinema buffs might have been awake by the time the credits rolled. That's where they would have learned that the 1997 movie was shot in the towns of Tenacatita and Barra de Navidad and at the golf resort El Tamarindo. Then, darn it, they would have called their travel agents.

So the Costa Alegre -- Spanish for "Happy Coast" -- happily remains off the beaten path for most Mexico-bound tourists. Those poor souls actually pay to spend their precious week marinating in the frat-party charm of Cancun or the time-share chic of Cabo San Lucas.

Costa Alegre, a name marketed in travel circles but not on local T-shirts, describes a swatch of the Pacific Coast in the southwest corner of the Mexican state of Jalisco.

This is a place of small towns, with names like Tenacatita and La Manzanilla, tucked into crevices between soft sand beaches, rocky headlands and coconut and banana plantations. A place that takes an hour's drive to reach from the nearest airport in Manzanillo to the south, or three times that from Puerto Vallarta to the north. A place where Mexican fishermen push rusty boats off the beach to net fish, where most clerks at abarrotes (tiny grocery stores) and waiters at beach-side restaurants speak little English, and where time is measured by the beat of the surf rather than the ticking of a wristwatch.

For tourists, Costa Alegre is a place where uncrowded beaches meet pristine waters, where you can soak up temperatures in the 80s while soaking up the friendly culture and seafood-heavy cuisine.

The adventurous can prowl some of the best sailfish, tuna and dorado (mahi mahi) waters in the world, rent a sea kayak to paddle among gray whales and porpoises or snorkle among protected reefs.

There's a bit of shopping here and there, but this Mexico is no haggle-hungry Tijuana. And, naturally, there's cerveza and plenty of shade in every beach town.

'Bring a flashlight'

It wasn't Tom Arnold that lured my girlfriend, Karen, and me to Costa Alegre. Maybe it was the moss growing between paste-white winter toes that convinced us that a semi-tropical getaway was just the cure for the winter blahs.

A coworker handed me a sticky note with a Web site address, www.coconutsbythesea.com, which led to an e-mail correspondence with Cissie Jones, who owns Coconuts with husband Bob. Her descriptions, Bob's pictures, a little Internet research, and we were hooked. This was the place.

We questioned that decision, briefly, two times. The first was after Cissie sent an e-mail with some suggestions from past guests. No. 3 on her list was: "Bring a flashlight." We thought we were getting a modest level of luxury, after all.

The second time was when we followed her directions -- including a sign toward "Los Angeles Locos" from Tom's crazy movie -- and turned down their rutted dirt driveway framed in brush. I've been down worse roads during steelhead fishing trips, but not many. I could sense Karen's fingers tightening on the door handle.

Undeterred, I bumped the rental Nissan along until the short safari gave way to a postcard oasis. Coconuts, a single building carved into our hosts' living quarters and four comfortable condominiums, each with kitchens and stunning views from the cliffs above deep blue Tenacatita Bay.

Paved pathways trail through lush gardens, a pool clinging to the hillside and the inviting beach below -- and a flashlight came in handy when our stomachs guided us to the palm-frond restaurant across the sand.

Crocodile hunters

Pancho seemed to have a vendetta against esta planta, "this plant" that grew a centimeter a day to block a narrow passage through dense growth. Why else would he be swinging his machete with such fervor during the middle of our "jungle cruise"?

Karen and I sat, only slightly nervous, as he wood chips, leaves and branches sank into the murk. Finally, after a "garden tour" crack from another boat, Pancho motored his panga -- an open boat -- through the a jungle. Karen and I ducked as branches brushed overhead.

When the river, called La Vena ("the vein") opened up again and spilled into the Pacific near a "McHale's Navy" set-turned-restaurant, I got up the nerve to ask Pancho, in my best Spanish, whether there were crocodiles around. "Si, si," Pancho assured me, keeping an eye out on the trip back. We saw plenty of exotic birds but no crocs as La Vena constricted back around Pancho's panga.

In the densest jungle, where termite nests clung to tree trunks, Pancho stopped the boat and told us in Spanish to get out of the boat, motioning us toward gnarled roots. I knew the hour was up, but this seemed a little harsh in crocodile-infested waters. Then Pancho put his hands up to his face with a big grin and pretended to click the shutter of a camera, signaling his intentions.

Still without a crocodile sighting, Bob directed us back to La Manzanilla, the bay's fishing village a few miles away where we already had whiled away an afternoon or two eating seafood and drinking Sol cerveza (local beer) in shaded outdoor restaurants. There, in a pond on the edge of town, at least a dozen crocodiles sunned themselves or paddled about in the water, just on the other side of a low barbed wire fence with several gaping holes.

As we snapped pictures, a Mexican woman and her small children arrived with a wheelbarrow full of fish skins and started tossing them over the fence. The crocodiles from all over the pond made wakes as they swam toward us, stopping to fight over the fish just 15 feet away.

A world-class view

A decade ago, Eastern Airlines went belly up and grounded Bob Jones' job as a senior-level pilot. Instead of starting over in his late 40s, the couple became "Geritol hippies," left their Florida home and drove a motor home.

They arrived at an RV park at Boca de Iguanas (or "mouth of the Iguanas," a seasonal river) one night, nerves frazzled from travel and beating rain. Cissie cried in the motor home as Bob stepped out under coconut palm trees and followed the sound of the waves.

"And I walk out there on the beach and go, 'Damn!' " Bob said, recalling his first sight of a view he wakes up to every morning.

"We've been here ever since," Cissie added.

Later, a tsunami destroyed their motor home while the couple was in the states, leaving dead fish inside, but paradise lost no appeal. They bought the brushy hill above the RV park, cleared it and built Coconuts.

"I would put this view up against any view," Bob said, sitting on his deck, a cold drink and binoculars handy, "not only in Mexico, but anywhere in the world."

Most of the Joneses' visitors don't expect swim-up bars and wild nightlife. There are few places with such things on the Costa Alegre, although one is Blue Bay Resort just up a cobblestone drive from Coconuts.

"If you're looking for love, go someplace else," Bob likes to say. "Here, you'd better bring it with you."