Zihuatanejo and Ixtapa: Tales of two cities
Story and photos by Bob Schulman
Spanish explorers first came ashore on the beaches of a little village in western Mexico called Cihuatlan in 1522, records show. They scoped the place out, figured it didn’t amount to much, tagged “ejo” (meaning “of little importance”) on its name and then sailed off, presumably to look for more important spots.
Back in Cihuatlan-ejo – or Zihuatanejo as it ended up on the Spanish maps – things remained fairly quiet for a hundred or so years. Until the pirates moved in.
The brigands, mostly Englishmen, found the town’s cozy “U”-shaped bay was a great place to hang out when they weren’t off looting Spanish treasure galleons. Among familiar flags at the bay were the Jolly Rogers of Sir Francis Drake, “Wild William” Dampier, ex-admiral George Anson and others on the Who's Who list of the era's famous buccaneers. The last of the scofflaws moved out in the mid-1700s, and Zihuatanejo (pronounced zee-wha-tah-NAY-ho) went back to its existence as a sleepy seaside village.
Until big-time tourism came this way.
In 1970, the Mexican government announced plans to build a luxury resort on a nearby coconut plantation. It was going to look out at the Pacific from a two-mile-long strip of golden sands called Ixtapa (eeks-TAH-pah).
A new neighbor
The 1,500 or so indigenous villagers may have had concerns about busloads of tourists invading their tiny town and worries that their youngsters would run off to the new resort's glittering discos.. But that didn’t happen. “We put a priority on growing very, very slowly,” says Guillermina Camarena, tour and travel manager for the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Ixtapa and Zihuatanejo. By growing at a snail’s pace, she explains, the resort has been able to stay snuggled into the area’s environmentally-sensitive master plan.
As it turned out, the youngsters were too tired to go disco-ing: Local officials headed them off by setting up a night basketball league in which hoopsters from Zihuatanejo and the surrounding villages exhausted themselves competing for coveted awards.
Ixtapa debuted in 1974 with just one hotel. Five years later, there were six. Today, some 15 tropical palaces dot Ixtapa’s palm-lined beaches including suchupscale brands as Las Brisas, Melia Azul, Barcelo, Presidente Intercontinental and NH Krystal -- all told with around 7,000 rooms. That’s big enough to rank Ixtapa as a major resort, but small enough (Cancun, opened about the same time on the other side of the country, has close to 30,000 rooms) to attract the kind of visitors who’d rather rest up on the beach than line up at the discos.
Rounding out Ixtapa’s attractions is a half-mile-long shopping center along with two designer golf courses, a 450-acre marina, a children’s park (complete with a pirate village), miles of bike paths and a “dolphinarium” where visitors can swim with the bottlenose sea animals.
The only thing that’s really soared through the roof at Ixtapa is its crocodile count. Records show there were only a handful of the reptiles living here (on one of the golf courses) in the early days of the resort. Today there are 60 (at last count), most of which can be found slithering through the marshes of a nearby ecological reserve.
The charm of Zihua
Zihuatanejo, or Zihua (zee-wha) as the locals call it, ended up with trickles of tourists, rather than rivers – except on days when the city is flooded with cruise passengers who’ve come ashore to sample “the real Mexico.” But the town did experience something of a commercial boom as a by-product of all the action next door at Ixtapa. The hotels, for example, needed everything from workers to watermelons. If it couldn’t be made or grown locally, outsiders were called in to help out – many of whom wound up moving their businesses and homes to Zihua.
Remarkably, despite its growth, Zihua has retained much of its small village charm. Its vegetable stands, bakeries, barber shops and other everyday businesses commingle with T-shirt stands, handicraft stalls and other touristy shops in a cobblestone area of several blocks running inland from the town’s main beach, the Playa Principal. You'll find some of Zihua's better restaurants there, for instance Coconuts, where customers dine in a patio lit up like a tropical fantasy.
Along the beachfront are dozens of al fresco eateries where visitors can enjoy some cool ones, snack on ceviche (marinated raw seafood) and soak up Zihua’s crown jewel: its picture-postcard bay. Meandering outward for miles from both sides of the village, much of the bay’s shoreline is overlooked by foliage-covered hills peppered by small hotels, bungalows, condos and vintage villas.
It’s about a 15-minute ride by water taxi from the city’s municipal pier to the secluded swimming and snorkeling areas (and not-so-secluded wall-to-wall restaurants) on Las Gatas beach at the southern tip of the bay. Along the way you’ll skirt La Ropa Beach, the home of a number of “Special Category” hotels (Mexico’s supreme luxury rating). One, La Casa Que Canta, is where Andy Garcia and Meg Ryan burned up the screen in the 1994 hit movie,When a Man Loves a Woman.
Andy and Meg were here.
Said to have the largest concentration of über luxury hotels in Mexico, La Ropa is also home to Club Intrawest, the Tides, Villa Luz and Casa Buenaventura. Villa Vera Puerto Mio, another property in the top category, is located on the other side of the bay. How much does it cost to stay in places like these? Well, if you have to ask, you probably can't afford it.
Most of the other four dozen hotels in Zihua and around the bay are more modest two- and three-star properties. All told, they offer around a thousand rooms to visitors on tighter budgets.
About the names...
Ixtapa means “white place,” after a nearby stretch of salt-bleached beach. Cihuatlan (now Zihuatanejo) translates to “land of women,” possibly because its first known rulers, the Cuitlatecas, operated under a matriarchal society. One legend has it that the tribe was entrusted by the Aztec gods to watch over a special temple on a beach next to Zihua called Playa Madera. There, the spirits of women who'd died in childbirth returned to earth after five years of having acted as a sort of honor guard for the rising sun each morning.
Women “cacicas” (chiefs) ruled these parts for hundreds of years until about 1400, when the Cuitlatec lands were invaded by fierce Tarascan warriors. Spanish troops conquered the Tarascans in 1522.
Four centuries later, Zihua and its picturesque bay saw still another invasion; this time, by foreign celebrities. Bunking down in hillside villas, they included movie stars, business titans, world-famous models and even an ex-king. Another visitor was Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the Tarzan books – among which were stories of a supposedly fictitious tribe of Amazon women. Old-timers around Zihua will tell you that Burroughs got the idea for his Amazons right here, from tales of the Cuitlatec matriarchy.
Zihua goes to the movies
Millions of moviegoers heard about Zihua in The Shawshank Redemption, a 1994 blockbuster about friendship and spiritual survival in prison. A key scene shows wrongly convicted Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) talking to veteran inmate “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman) about Andy’s dream of going to M
exico:
Andy: Think you’ll ever get out of here?
Red: Sure, when I got a long, white beard...
Andy: Tell you where I‘d go, Zihuatanejo.
Red: Zihuatanejo?
Andy: Mexico...little place right on the Pacific. You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. There’s where I’d like to finish out my life, Red...open a little hotel right on the beach...buy some worthless old boat and fix it up like new...take my guests out charter fishing.
In the picture’s closing scene, Andy, having escaped from jail, is working on a boat on a long, gorgeous beach (presumed to be Zihuatanejo). The camera pulls back for a long shot, and we see Red, who’s been paroled, walking down the beach toward Andy. The two pals embrace as the film’s credits start to roll.
The beach scene portrayed Zihuatanejo as a sort of tropical paradise (even though it was actually shot in the Caribbean), and it sparked a sharp upturn in visitors to Zihuatanejo in the mid-1990s. Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo marketing official Guillermina Camarena says, “For a while, it seemed like everyone who came here wanted to know where the Shawshank beach was...I told them, it’s like Shangri-La, it’s a state of mind, not a place.
“Every once and awhile the question comes up again from lots of visitors...which tells me re-runs of the picture are being shown on the satellite and cable networks.”
The film, based on a short story by Stephen King, scored seven Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and a nod to Freeman as Best Actor. (The respective Oscars went to Forest Gump and Tom Hanks.)
Visit www.visit-ixtapa-zihuatanejo.org or the Mexico Tourism Board at www.visitmexico.com.
Reader's Responses
Confessions of a spice-challenged traveler
By Bob Schulman
First, let's get this straight: I really like spices. The trouble is, they don't like me. Anything with even a tiny chile in it gives me an instant heartburn. So when I'm in Mexico, enchiladas are out. So are quesadillas. Ditto for huevos rancheros. I can't even be in the same room with chipotles a la poblana.
Where does a spice-challenged traveler chow down in Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo?
I've been there dozens of times since Ixtapa opened in the mid-70s. Over the years I've learned to look for hotels that cater to families – and Ixtapa has lots of them – because their restaurants tend to offer simple fare for kids. Like hamburgers, hot dogs and pepito (steak) sandwiches.
While not all Mexican hamburgers are wonderful, I've found some pretty good ones at the snack bars of hotels such as the Ixtapa Barcelo and the NH Krystal. What about side dishes? I order papas fritas (French fried potatoes) to go with my burgers. Can't go wrong there. Well, usually.
Snack bars ring the pool at the Barcelo.
At night, I make a bee-line for restaurants of the Carlos 'n Charlies ilk (there's one at the far end of the Ixtapa hotel strip and four or so wannabe C'nC's in the shopping center across the street). Places like those tend to serve up stateside-type burgers and fried chicken and even fairly tame barbecue dishes.
On special occasions, I drop in at a few upscale spots where I've made exciting discoveries for the spice-impaired. For example, the Presidente Intercontinental in Ixtapa serves a wonderful broiled lobster (if you ask, without incendiary stuff on it). And Coconuts Restaurant in Zihuatanejo, a favorite hangout of the city's international set, serves a fantastic breaded shrimp plate (for this dish, all the spicy things come on the side).
Other than all that, I can get by with tortilla soup.