[Travel & Leisure]
March  1997 Issue

Mexico:
"From Z to Shining Sea"

By Jean Nathan

Zihuatanejo was once an idyllic beachside town on Mexico's Pacific coast,
where the high-rises of Acapulco seemed a continent away. Thankfully, that's still the case.

In the movie The Shawshank Redemption, the two convicts know where they're
going if they ever get sprung: Zihuatanejo. My first visit to Z, a nickname
for this fishing village on Mexico's Pacific coast, did not coincide with a
prison break unless you consider a tough New York winter doing time.

One freezing night I called a friend who recommended an escape that would
include plenty of beach, sans skyscrapers. I couldn't spell the name of the
spot, let alone pronounce it (though I soon figured out it's
"see-whah-ta-nay-hoe"), but I phoned the number she gave me anyway. I
reached Casa Loma, a string of bungalows just above and a bit behind  Z's white-sand Playa La Ropa beach, and a lovely American woman told me she'd just had a cancellation. If I FedExed a check, a $60-a-night hideaway would be mine.

It was one of the best checks I've ever written. It brought sunny blue
skies, deserted beaches and snorkeling coves, and what seemed like an
unending chain of serendipities, such as stumbling upon a seaside hut where
a family with a fishing rod and a gas stove produced magnificent lunches of
grilled red snapper for only $10. For two heavenly weeks I explored the
area, going wherever my rented VW bug would take me (once, that was into a
ditch on a dirt road at sunset). The next year, I returned to sample
Zihuatanejo's rustic and refined sides, and found that the low-key fishing
village hadn't changed a bit.

One of Cortés's captains discovered Zihuatanejo, whose name means "land of
women," in 1524. Three years later, Spanish conquistadors launched a trade
route from here to the Orient. The ships returned laden with silks and
spices. It is said that British admiral George Anson and his crew planted
the first coconut palms in the area in the 18th century, having brought the
trees from the Philippines. In the 1940's, John Wayne and his cronies
shuffled down to Zihuatanejo to fish and hunt jaguar and boar. Timothy
Leary, who knew paradise when he saw it, took refuge here in the 1960's,
holding seminars for his International Foundation for Internal Freedom.

High-profile writers, artists, and actors continue to find their way to
Zihua-tanejo, an hour by plane from Mexico City, 150 miles northwest of
Acapulco, and four miles south of Ixtapa, a high-rise resort area. "It's a
real town," says the writer Carlos Fuentes, who vacations here, "not an
ersatz Miami, like Cancún. It has real people, real restaurants, real
stores, and one of the most beautiful beaches in Mexico: Playa La Ropa,
named for the clothes that supposedly drifted ashore from a shipwreck
centuries ago." (Note: Since this article was written, many more
scheduled and charted flights are now available.)

There's something comforting about practicing hedonism in a place where the
everyday surrounds you, where housewives shop in the market and children
take after-school splashes in the sea. How could you be anything but charmed
when an enterprising woman selling gasoline from her house by the road asks
you to hold her baby while she fetches a five-gallon can?

And how can you resist places like Casa Loma, where I fell in love with
Zihuatanejo? It's perched on the hilltop Zona Hotelera, just above and a minutes walk behind boat-filled, crescent-shaped harbor. I drove up past groves of mangoes,
tamarinds, coconut palms, and banana trees and was relieved to find Casa Loma just as I'd left it in 1995. The four adobe bungalows trimmed in cobalt, lavender, and turquoise are designed for the simple life. Each has a kitchen and living room facing the bay breezes, a wonderful place for coffee at sunrise (the roosters make sure you're in attendance) or a sunset drink.

My bedroom, occupied just before me by Lauren Hutton, was always siesta-ready. Unfurl the mosquito netting, more an aesthetic than a real necessity, switch on the ceiling fan, and dissolve into golden slumber.

Casa Loma's owners are Patsy and Joe LoGiudice, an American couple who have
made Zihua (another nickname for the town) their primary residence since
1973. They also rent out Casa Luna, their stylish house just down the road.
How tempting to enter the gates of one of Zihua's private villas and call it your own for a few days (or even a month). When the LoGiudices bought it in 1972, Casa Luna was only a four-room adobe hut. Joe, a former SoHo art dealer trained as an architect, transformed it into a showplace, where the boundaries between outdoors and indoors blend seamlessly.

Casa Luna blooms inside and out, thanks to the flower beds that Joe says are the closest thing to an Italian garden in Mexico. The tiled eat-in kitchen is the heart of the house, where you can throw together a great meal after dipping into Joe's fruit and vegetable garden stocked with six designer lettuces, 14 varieties of tomatoes, and papaya and mango trees.

Down the hillside from the Zona Hotelera, Zihua's town is little more than
12 -15 square blocks, so it's easy to find your way around. In from the water,
its stores, restaurants, and houses are cheek by jowl, and the crowded
sidewalks are often impassable. If you walk south just a few cobblestoned
streets to the town pier, which sits on Playa Municipal, you can watch
fishermen bringing in red snappers, still flapping from their struggle.

Nearby is the Mercado Central, more than a square block of stalls selling
everything from food to makeup and frequently at the same stall. A little boy will wave you down with a rag to help find a parking space (one peso) or to circulate through the market with you, carrying your purchases (twopesos).The displays of fruits, vegetables, and fish are dazzling. Mostvisitors pick up huarache sandals, bags of coffee and sea salt, and the plaid vinyl tote bags that fashion magazines deemed must-haves this past
season. A little harder to transport, but worth it: honey in a wine bottle
with a corncob stopper.

At Casa Marina, a two-story mall run by another expat family, you can browse through El Embarcadero for hand woven cotton clothing; Manos for serapes and embroidered dresses and shirts; and La Zapoteca for Oaxacan rugs, wall hangings, and hammocks. Also visit Arte Mexicano Nopal, which sells custom-made wood and rattan furniture, and Galería Maya, for copper candelabra and carved masks.

If you're in the mood for a late breakfast, head to Nueva Zelanda, a café in town. Their hot cakes are world-class. Not to be confused with pancakes, these are sweet buns sliced in half, grilled, and drizzled with honey.

If you got an early start and it's lunchtime, check out La Sirena Gorda, a lively restaurant near the town pier famous for its fish tacos. Taking their cue from the name, which means "the fat mermaid," the owners packed the place with oil paintings and sculptural renditions of zaftig mermaids.

For something with a bit more glamour, try Coconuts for lunch or dinner, owned by Patsy and Joe LoGiudice. The adobe building, remodeled by Joe, began life as a weigh-in
station for coconut growers in 1865. Ask for a table in the lantern-lit garden, and dine on spicy red snapper with garlic sauce. The margaritas, made with fresh lime juice and Sauza Hornitos tequila, are the best in town.

For dessert, stop at Paletería La Michoacana, where the specialty is exotically flavored ices: piña colada, guava, tamarind. Then wander across the street to see one of the ever-present games on the basketball court, or stroll to the beach to watch the fishermen's cleanup crew of  huge pelicans.

My favorite restaurants are on Playa La Ropa. La Gaviota is at the beach's southern end, and across the road is Rosy's. The two places have similar menus: shrimp, squid, and octopus; breaded, fried, a la plancha (grilled), or mojo de ajo (with garlic). At the opposite end of the beach is La Perla. In 1975, when the Rivera family started it, the restaurant was simply their kitchen table, which they hauled to the beach each day from their house up the hill. Raquel Rivera still cooks her simple seafood dishes with the
freshest ingredients. If you're into cigars, ask their son, Francisco, toshow you his stash of Havanas.

Farther along, La Casa Que Canta, its name Spanish for "the house that sings," is cantilevered on the hillside above Playa La Ropa. Zihua's most romantic hotel is the creation of Jacques Baldassari, a French executive who was sent to Mexico City on business in 1975. Like the LoGiudices, Baldassari and his wife, Yvonne, first came to Zihua on vacation. La Casa Que Canta, a five-year-old terra-cotta-colored pleasure palace, reflects the couple's good taste.

Of its 24 rooms each named for a Mexican song and individually decorated with hand-carved, hand-painted furniture from Michoacán, eight have a private pool and a terrace. But all come with sounds of the sea and flower-petal mosaics that the maid "paints" on your bed every day. In the morning, coffee, fruit, and freshly baked breads are delivered to your room.

After breakfast, go for a swim in one of the hotel's two pools. One freshwater and one salt, they must be among the most beautiful in Mexico. The freshwater pool, lined with a mosaic of blue and green tiles, sits suspended over the sea, with views to infinity. It made its movie debut in When a Man Loves a Woman, which Andy Garcia and Meg Ryan shot here in 1994.

Zihua was abuzz last winter when Alain Delon and Lauren Bacall rolled into town and stayed at Villa del Sol, La Casa Que Canta's beachfront neighbor. They were here to film Le Jour et la Nuit, a movie about an expatriate French writer retired in Mexico. It's no wonder the crew chose to stay at Villa del Sol. Helmut Leins, an order-obsessed German who has lived in Zihua more than 20 years, runs the resort like clockwork and offers every comfort.

The hotel's private section of beach, where attendants will set up your chair and umbrella and bring you meals, calls to mind a Riviera beach club. Curved footpaths lead to the split-level suites, which resemble Mexican cottages and are filled with rattan furniture.

On my first visit to Z, I wondered what the hilltop mansion across the harbor from Playa La Ropa could possibly be. I've since discovered it's a wonderful new place to stay called Puerto Mío, managed since 1996 by Helmut Leins. It has the look of a Mediterranean villa, a gorgeous free-form pool, and 22 bay-view rooms, some in the mansion and others lower down the cliff in cottages.

If you want to get away from everything, take a day trip to Troncones, a remote town about 20 minutes north of Zihuatanejo, with a three-mile-long unspoiled beach bordered by coconut palms. Seafood restaurants with tables and hammocks dot the sand.

In the last few years, several places to stay have sprung up in Troncones. The best is Casa de la Tortuga, a six-bedroom open-air villa on two acres owned by Dewey McMillin, a former commercial fisherman from Alaska, and his girlfriend, Karolyn McCall. In search of warm weather, McMillin found his way here 12 years ago. He camped with friends in an abandoned house that he subsequently bought and refurbished. Their first guests were poached from town, and since then, word of mouth has kept Casa de la Tortuga full.
One of Casa de la Tortuga's more famous guests was Alice Waters, of the Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse. She spent a week at the hotel last winter with her family and friends, venturing out only to visit Zihuatanejo's market. There she marveled at "the day's fish in rigor mortis, beautiful dried beans, fantastic little sweet bananas, lots of oranges and avocados, and great pork." Every day the group gathered coconuts on the beach, drank the milk, and tossed the meat in with the meal's rice.

Lying on Troncones beach in front of Casa de la Tortuga at sunset, I watched the sky progress from blue to pink and thought of another progression, the one that had landed me here. The LoGiudices "were in Cozumel when it started raining," Joe answered when I asked what brought him to Zihuatanejo. I wasin New York City when it started snowing. And I just happened to call a friend who happened to be a friend of the LoGiudices. Isn't that the essence of travel? It's one part serendipity, one part knowing whom to ask, and one part being open to adventure.

And then my thoughts landed for a moment on Alice Waters, who had cooked
joyfully in the kitchen at Casa de la Tortuga. It's all recipes for enriching existence, I thought, whether through food or travel. As recipes go, Z is a good one.

Note!! The prices quoted are from the 1997 Publishing date.
Check with hotels for Rate updates:

Hotels

Best value is Casa Loma at Playa La Ropa beach; Tel. Mx.  52-755/554-2743,  or, in the United States, 310/657-2003 E-mail Parkec123@aol.com; Bungalow Suites w/ kitchen.  $65 $80 a day on season, $50 $55 a day off season. Daily maid service

Villa Casa Luna Playa La Ropa ( Private Villa with swimming pool); tel. Mx 52/755-554-42743, or,in the United States, 310/657-2003 or fax 310-657-9779, E-mail  Parkec123@aol.com:  Daily rates starting from $550 on season and $350.00 day off season, including full time maid service and 24/7 on site caretaker.

La Casa Que Canta Camino Escénico, Playa La Ropa; 52-755/47030, fax
52-755/47900; doubles from $295.

Villa del Sol Playa La Ropa; 52-755/42239 or 52-755/43239, fax 52-755/42758
or 52-755/44066; doubles from $280, including breakfast and dinner.
Puerto Mío 5 Playa del Almacén; 52-755/43239, fax 52-755/42758 or
52-755/44066; doubles $144-$200 (no meals).

On the Web (updated)
Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo (http://www.zihuatanejo-Ixtapa.com) The official
Internet home for these twin resort towns with all the information you need , including Hotel and accommodation, restaurant and activities web pages, maps, phone numbers, beaches, and other useful information, including a very useful message board.