Zipolite to Barra de Navidad
Trip Start
Jan 12, 2007
1
23
29
Trip End
Nov 19, 2007
Melaque, Mexico
Friday, October 26, 2007
The "ticking-clock" problem was heightened by the fact that the southern half of Mexico´s Pacific coastline is a beach lover´s paradise and includes many of Mexico´s well-known (and not so well known) top beach towns, like Zipolite, Puerto Angel, Huatalco, Puerto Escondido, Acapulco and Zihuatenejo/Ixtapa. This left us with a lot of ground to cover in less than 10 days.
Highway 175, which we drove from Oaxaca City through the mountains and out to the coast, spit us out close to Puerto Angel, a compact fishing village that is slightly more developed than Zipolite, it´s even tiny neighbour about 10 minutes to the north.
We opted for Zipolite - at the beach-side parking lot of the La Habana guesthouse - and were happy we did as there are few locations in Mexico as beautiful as this tiny bay. Along with maybe only 20 other tourists, we soaked up the blissfully blue sky and the golden sand. The ocean was a little colder here than in Costa Rica and Panama. But given that the air was hotter and stickier than it had been inland (for the first time in weeks we slept just under a sheet, as opposed to our sleeping bags), we weren't complaining, as it was refreshing to go for a swim.
Huatalco is 45 kilometers south of Ziplolite and, like Cancun and Ixtapa, is a planned resort town, meaning that the Mexican government dispassionately assessed the best geographic location to lure tourists, and then went ahead and built the town. We had planned on spending the night there but it is sill being built out and we found it so lacking in soul, authenticity and life - both of the local and tourist persuasion -that after dinner we drove back to Zipolite. But not before, to Adrienne´s chagrin, we saw a tarantula lurking on the pump at the gas station we stopped at. To be honest, I thought it was a "gag" until Adrienne convinced me otherwise.
From Zipolite it is only about 50 kilometers north to Puerto Escondido, which has a reputation for great surf beaches. Puerto Escondido was interesting to us because it was the first place we had been to in Mexico since Sayulita (back in April) where gringo beach culture (mainly couples, mainly wearing smallish bathing suits, mainly sun tanning) and Mexican beach culture (mainly extended families, mainly wearing shorts and t-shirts, mainly picnicking) were more or less equally represented on the beach.
Our campsite in Puerto Escondido - the Trailer Park Palmas de Cortes - was, by day, one the best of our trip: a shady palm grove 50 metres back in one direction from Playa Principal - the main beach - and 100 metres in the other from the main restaurant/shopping street (which included an Italian Coffee Co., the most prominent coffee chain in Mexico). All for $8 a night.
But by this point in our trip we should have known that there is no such thing as a perfect campsite in Mexico; the thumping music at a nightclub (also a 100 metres away, it turned out) thumped until 5:30 am. We were left with little choice but to move on after 1 night.
It took another huge day of driving - 380 kms, which down here feels closer to 700 kms - to reach our next destination, Acapulco.
Acapulco, which is in the state of Guerrero, was probably the largest (pop. 2 million) and most congested city that we drove through on the trip, and it took us close to 2 hours to drive across town and out to Pie de la Cuesta, the small community north of Acapulco where most of the campgrounds are located.
There is a different approach to environmental protection in Mexico and Central America than at home, and for part of the cross-town trek we were behind a guy who threw probably between 200 to 300 sheets of scrunched up white paper out of his window onto the street. It kinda broke our hearts, but also made us thankful that we have made some progress in Canada in relation to littering and keeping our cities clean.
In the end, the lengthy drive to the campsites turned out to be for naught, as they were too far out to be attractive to us, and none were really ready yet for the winter camping season anyways. So we headed back to the historic centre and found a $30/night hotel (Hotel Casa Amparo). It turned out to be a good move - and not only because we had A/C - as the hotel was only half a block away from the world famous La Quebrada cliffs where the muscular clavadistas (cliff-divers) throw themselves several stories off the cliffs into the narrow, craggy channel below.
The historic part of Acapulco has a tired, 1970s feel to it but the hotel district - Zona Dorado - on the south end of the bay is full of modern, expensive hotels and malls and reminded us of Honolulu. The bay itself, which is almost a completely-closed circle, is magnificent to look at.
After two nights in Acapulco we needed to keep moving, this time 240 kms up the coast to Zihuatenejo/Ixtapa. These twin cities sit on neighboring bays a 10 minute drive apart. Zihuatenejo is the real Mexican town, and we really liked the little beach - Playa de Ropa - close to our functional (but not much else) campsite at Camping Las Cabanas. Ixtapa is another planned resort town that has the nice hotels and a beautiful beach, but not too much else that held our interest.
Two days after Zihuatenejo/Ixtapa - and after driving up the spectacularly scenic Michoacan coastline - we pulled into the same campsite in Melaque that we had stayed in on the way down. This meant we were only 20 minutes away from completing the overarching mission of this leg of the trip: walking along the beach to the next town over - Barra de Navidad - and finding the cake-lady who sold over-sized pieces of delicious choco-flan. We went to bed that night with a full harvest moon perched just over the lagoon that was beside the campsite
Lowlights:
- Highway 175 from Oaxaca City to the coast is reputed to be the "good road" (as compared to Highway 135) and on the map it looked to be a relatively easy 240 kms. This 240 kms stretch turned out to be a 7 hour marathon. Part of this can be attributed to a 100 km leg that is so windy that we were in 2nd gear, rarely went over 40 km. Part can be attributed to persistent rain and fog that made it difficult to see.
And a large part can be attributed to the fact that we were stopped for 1.5 hours in the middle of the mountains because the residents of a small nearby village had blockaded the road with trees. We think they were unhappy about a recent local election, and while apparently this is a common form of political protest in Mexico, especially in the south, we hadn´t seen it before. It gave us an opportunity to talk to the people in the other cars -including international hippies of bygone eras-who provided us with bullshit to pass the time. I also gave Adrienne a "quick-fire challenge" and she managed to create a delicious 'huevos rancheros' in the back of the van.
Our sympathy for the protesters increased after we were waved through the blockade (one of four cars), as we became less worried about our own situation - i.e. we wanted to get to Puerto Angel before dark. But it was still hard to see what positive effect blockading the highway would have unless the media were called to cover it (which it appeared they hadn´t). We wondered what the people in the 30 or 40 cars would do for food if they were forced to stay through the night.
