Part 8: Puerto Azul to Bahia de Huàtulco
550 miles southeast

From Playa Azul, we’re now heading for the Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo twin-resort cities. Ixtapa is another project created by the Fonatur, the Mexican Tourist Agency that has also created such resort paradises like Cancun, Bahia de Huatulco and Cabo San Lucas.

While Ixtapa indulges its visitors with luxurious amenities, Zihua, as the locals say, beguiles them with century-old traditions and a relaxed-village feel. Artefacts and stone carvings in the vicinity of Zihua offer evidence that the region was inhabited 3,000 years BC. Spanish Conquistadors began sailing to Bahia de Zihuatanejo in 1527 with coconut palms brought from the Philippines, the graceful fronds of this palm now are a common sight up and down the Mexican Pacific Coast.

As the new Ixtapa grew, Zihua followed suit, albeit at a slower pace. Although restaurants and boutiques give the malécon a touristy look, Zihua to a large degree has managed to hold on to its charm.

We are now installed on the beautiful "free beach" of Playa Linda in Ixtapa, 100 feet from the water. Gorgeous! Lots of palm trees too; we planned to stay for two days, we’ll now stay eight days!

What a place. Just can’t decide to leave! The 450-acre Marina Ixtapa complex, where luxury villas and condominiums share space with a 622-slip marina, also offers a great deal of beautifully planned resort amenities. The most well-known playas (beaches) in Zihua are La Madera and La Ropa, which are next to each other.

One thoroughly Mexican dish that has not been overlooked by Caroline and I is pozole. It is a hearty, hominy-thickened stew containing chicken or pork. Toppings include chopped onion, lettuce or cabbage, and the herbs and spices vary depending on who is making the pozole. The addition of chilies gives pozole three different colours — red, green or white. Since Thursday is the traditional day for pozole, Caroline and I went to El Profe (the Professor), the favourite local pozoleria in the village of Coacoyul a few miles out of town. A steal at 22 pesos for a huge bowl!

While in Ixtapa, we had the opportunity to meet a very special couple, Chantal and Marco De Wit from Holland. They’re not ordinary 26-year-old people! Leaving from their home in Amsterdam in June 2000, they landed in Alaska, with their bikes! Since then, they are cycling at a pace of 50 miles per day. Their unbelievable odyssey that will take them from Anchorage Alaska to Tierra del Fuego island in Argentina’s Antartica, a remarkable 25,000 kms. They GOT MARRIED last November the 13^th, while cycling through Nevada, and visited the Hoover Dam for their honeymoon!

We met them 12,000 km into their trip. They seem happy to be on the beach with us! They will follow the Pacific Coast to Guatemala, then to El Savador, Honduras, and to Nicaragua, where they will stop for a couple of weeks in mid-March to welcome their parents, who will fly from Holland to be with them. Finally, in order to avoid Panama and Colombia for security reasons, they will fly with their bikes to Ecuador. Then, a last stretch thru Peru, Bolivia, Chile to Buenos Aires, Argentina by December 2003. They are planning to be back to their Dutch hometown for Christmas and the New Year! How’s that? 15,000 miles! Wow! And sometimes we’re complaining after a three-hour bicycle ride!

One hundred and sixty miles south of Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, we’re now at the most famous city of Acapulco! One million people and full of life! We are happily surprised by the cleanliness of the town, no abandoned dogs everywhere, quiet beaches without dozens of walking merchants annoying you. The town have put order into that, it shows. A lot of taxis though, and a lot of traffic too. But hey! Acapulco is Acapulco, right? The most notorious Mexican resort of all! We’ll spend a week at the Playa Suave Trailer Park, right in the middle of the action on the center of the bay, although quiet because protected with a lot trees and a wall. And it is hot! 105°F/ 35°C! Great week!

With regrets, we have to keep going our route, and this time it will be to Puerto Escondido, a beautiful little Mexican town on the ocean, 250 miles southeast of Acapulco, probably the southeastern point of Mexico. And it’s still hot! How about 110°F when boondocking? But the nights are cool, thank goodness! And the sunsets are so great! Nice little town and free beach parking!

Two hours further east, and we are now at Puerto Angel and its cluster of villages with such names as Mazunte, San Agostillitto and Zapolite, the latter a nude beach. The village of Puerto Angel itself is a fishing harbour on a calm sandy bay with a lot of moored fishing "pangas."

One day and two hour’s drive further, we’re in superb Bahia the Huatulco, 52,000-acres scheduled to be totally completed in 2018 when the resort is expected to have some 30,000 hotel rooms, expected to bring in two million visitors annually and generate nearly 25 percent of the Oaxaca state’s total revenue!

In Bahia Tangolunda and Bahia Santa Cruz, there are miles of nice, luxurious hotels, villas and condominiums, sandy beaches, marinas, shops, boutiques and stores, all located on immaculate streets and manicured golf courses. It’s like home! We’re parked on a (free) public concrete parking lot, 150 feet from the beach, surrounded with great restaurants and palm trees! The scenery is spectacular, with dark, jagged peaks offset by white sand and the deep blue bays, and the year-round warm waters are excellent for snorkeling.

Life’s a beach!