TRAVELING IN STYLE : LAST CHANCE MEXICO : Puerto Escondido and Puerto Angel on the Oaxaca Coast Are Mexican : Beaches as They Used to Be--Cheap, Beautiful and Real

THE MEXICAN BEACH EXPERIENCE IS THE STUFF of my Southern California youth--stretches of pearl-white sands where the best views weren’t from a balcony in an air-conditioned high-rise but from a hammock strung underneath a palapa (palm-frond) roof; villages where the best meals weren’t combination plates served by bilingual waiters around pools with swim-up bars but platters of fish cooked simply by the wife of the man who had caught them, set down on rickety wooden tables tilted in the sand. This old beachfront Mexico is now disappearing--at least along the country’s Pacific coast--swamped in the wakes of endless cruise ships, obscured by rows of elaborate resorts, nearly finished off by the Mexican government’s own relentless efforts to develop tourism. The list of lost paradises stretches ever southward--Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, Ixtapa, Acapulco.

As a traveler, I usually don’t like to hear about changes in the places I love (although I certainly don’t mind taking advantage of the benefits of change). I don’t like finding out that the charming little pension I discovered in Morelia is now a Best Western, or that I have to book my hotel in Patzcuaro a year in advance for the Day of the Dead.

Things are to the point in Mexico, in fact, that I had seriously started studying maps of Costa Rica in search of an old-fashioned beach. Then a friend suggested that I might like Puerto Escondido, the “hidden port” on Mexico’s Oaxaca coast, about 200 miles southeast of Acapulco. It sounded good, so off I went.

For 30 years, Puerto Escondido has been something of a legendary name to surfers around the world--home of the Mexican Pipeline, said to be the best break on the Pacific coast, with waves of a size, shape and consistency to rival those on Hawaii’s fabled North Shore. Until 1985, in fact, about the only non-Mexicans who came to Puerto Escondido were surfers. It took real dedication to get there; most tourists got there on a torturous 16-hour bus ride over twisting mountain roads from Oaxaca. Now, however, a new airport nearby puts it within an hour’s flight of Mexico City--and though the facilities in Puerto Escondido are still mostly surfer-simple, this Shangri-La, this rare surviving example of an old-fashioned Mexican beach town, is now within reach of any mildly adventurous traveler.

Transportation from the airport into Puerto Escondido, I soon found, is an informal affair. A van waited for town-bound passengers at the curb outside the terminal. The windows of the vehicle’s cab were plastered with surfing decals from around the world-- Rip Curl, Billabong, Ikea Surfboards, Sex Wax, Revista de Surf do Brasil. The van’s driver, wearing a Mexican Pipeline T-shirt, squeezed his fingers together as we climbed aboard and said, “ Ahorita ,” “Right away”--then scrambled off to find a few more passengers. He soon returned with two Brazilian surfers who had lagged behind and loaded their boards onto a rack on the top of the van, and we headed for town.

After a 10-minute ride through the old part of Puerto Escondido, we turned down a bumpy dirt road to Zicatela Beach, the main surfing area, and the place where most foreign surfers stay. As we inched over washboard ruts, I noted a profusion of broken surfboards in the distance, too shattered to be repaired, some stacked like so many foam and fiberglass tombstones waiting to be set up. “They break lots of boards here,” said one of the Brazilians with a grin. “The waves are so strong.”

Zicatela is a dangerous beach, from the shore break that snaps boards like pretzels to the undertow that sucks swimmers sideways and seaward. Many an unwary bather has been deceived by Zicatela’s warmth and calmer moments. This is one reason I’m glad I decided to stay at the Santa Fe, the nicest hotel on Zicatela. The fact that it was fairly new helped, as did its reputation for having “the best crepes and the friendliest iguanas in town.” More important, it was convenient not only to Zicatela but also to Playa Marinero, the fisherman’s beach--a quiet little cove close to town, shaded by palm trees, far friendlier to swimmers than its dangerous neighbor. I could see this beach from my balcony at the Santa Fe, complete with multicolored fishing boats bobbing at anchor in the cove. I could also see Puerto Escondido itself, which looked like a waterfront village on some Greek island from this distance.

The beach crowd at the Playa Marinero turned out to consist of some local families, a few scraggly American hippies and a large assortment of European tourists--mostly Italian. Kids walked up and down the sands hawking cold Snickers bars and fresh copies of the Mexico City News--two essential indicators of Puerto Escondido’s rising tourist profile. In the middle of the beach, a panga , or fishing skiff, was pulled up onto the sand, water still dripping from its sides. The boat was packed with just-caught red snapper, yellowtail and small tuna. A crowd of women in aprons clustered around it, haggling with the fisherman who had just brought it in.

At the edge of the sand, three other women in blood-splattered aprons were busily hacking up fish at a line of tables set up underneath the coconut palms, surrounded by an enormous pile of fish heads, backbones and viscera. This was the local fish market.

Above the Playa Marinero, beyond the Avenida Perez Gasga--the main tourist strip behind the beach--is “old” Puerto Escondido, complete with rutted dirt roads, the smell of burros and pigs rooting in overgrown vacant lots. Here, I ducked into the Iglesia de la Virgen de la Solidad, the Church of the Virgin of Solitude, a mixture of new brick and old adobe. The floor was sand and the pews were folding chairs wired together, but against one wall sat an elaborately carved confessional. Next to it was a large plastic-covered casket containing a wooden image of Christ. A squadron of flies circled in the still air above it.

Leaving the church, I took a cab to Puerto Angelito, known as “the bathtub”--a small sheltered bay popular with locals, just 10 minutes by car, or panga , from the Playa Marinero. Here the scene was like something out of a Corona beer ad from the 1950s: Kids splashed in the calm waters, Indian women sat on the sand in their slips, a group of middle-aged men perched nearby, passing bottles of beer around and singing old songs as one of them strummed a guitar.

The next morning, I took the bus to Pochutla, on my way to Puerto Angel--which had been described to me as an even more unspoiled beach town--about 36 miles south of Puerto Escondido.

It took two hours to cover this short distance. From Pochutla, I caught a taxi into Puerto Angel, still seven miles away. The farther we got from the main road, the more jarring the ride became and the more rustic the houses next to the road. Finally we left pavement completely and descended down a rocky dirt lane that hugged a compact harbor composed of two tiny bays. In one direction was the beautiful little cove of Estacahuite. In the other was Puerto Angel.

PUERTO ANGEL IS AN ENCLAVE OF 7,000 INhabitants, most of them farmers or fishermen, and most of them apparently related to Mateo Lopez. Lopez and his wife, Suzanne, who is originally from Los Angeles, run the Posada de Canon Devata, a simple inn in a semitropical rain forest. “ Devata is a Hindu word meaning the time of man’s life when he starts his interior life, or turns into an angel,” Suzanne explained as she handed me a hammock to hang on the porch outside my bungalow. The Posada is a model of an ecologically conscious hostelry. By avoiding the slash-and-burn land-clearing techniques all too common to this region, the Lopezes were able to revive part of the forest around the inn, which raised the water table and gave them an abundance of sweet well water--a precious resource in this town. And when I trudged up to my quarters, at the top of the hill, the rest of the inn was invisible, hidden beneath a canopy of mango, cashew, mahogany, coconut, ebony and teak trees that echoed with the calls of magpies, orioles, quetzals and jackals.

Near Puerto Angel is the only quasi-sanctioned nude beach in Mexico, Zipolite, also a major outpost on the Gringo Trail--the well-traveled but off-the-beaten-track route through Mexico and Central America favored by backpackers on a budget and the culturally correct.

The taxi driver who took me to the beach from the Canon Devata obviously knew the beach’s reputation: “Zi-po-li-te,” he crooned. “ No ropas (clothes), no problema .” Despite all its notoriety, though, Zipolite turned out to be a remarkably unassuming place. The main road wound past a few houses and curved around a small coconut plantation, hugging the steep hills. There were a few small stores selling bottles of coconut oil and soft drinks, and in front of one house a group of men and women were busily weaving large hammocks. A pair of scruffy-looking dogs sauntered up, gave me a sniff and wandered off. Nobody else paid the slightest attention.

Small palapa -covered restaurants line the southern edge of the bay. Beyond them, to the north, is El Rincon, a small protected cove at which, interspersed with the restaurants, there are several hammock hotels--some with wooden fences around them and small private rooms, others defined only by poles stuck in the sand underneath the palm fronds.

While the southern part of the beach was occupied almost exclusively by Mexican families, the northern part was peopled with a mixed bag of foreigners and locals, about half of them nude. I stopped for a beer at one hammock hotel on this end of the beach and talked to a young woman named Katrina, from Berlin, who warned me about the water: “The currents near the rocks are very strong. The Indian name for the beach means Beach of Deaths.”

Another young woman, Andrea, from London, offered, “This is definitely the most beautiful place we’ve been--as far as beaches go. The Caribbean was nice, but it was very touristy and expensive. We enjoyed Puerto Escondido, but there are discos and restaurants there. Here you get away from all that. I like the idea of eating just rice and beans and then beans and rice. I just eat when I’m hungry, sleep when I’m tired. I see the sunrise every morning from my hammock.”

Things operated on an honor system here, she added. The Mixtec family that ran the palapa and rented out the hammock spaces ($2 per night with a hammock, $1 if you have your own) trusted the guests to keep track of their food and drink bills and to settle up at the end. The guests in turn gave their valuables to the family to keep safe away from the beach. The lifestyle was totally communal, like any European youth hostel. The hammocks were arranged under one palapa roof, all meals were taken at one short table, and the only bathing facility was a bucket next to an open well.

Walking back along the beach to catch a cab back to Puerto Angel, I stopped at a small restaurant and ordered lunch-- huachinango mojo de ajo , red snapper fried in garlic oil. It took a long time to arrive, but when it did, it was the best meal I’d had in days. I made fish tacos out of the meat, scooping in black beans and rice and washing everything down with cold Corona. The fish was so wonderfully crispy that I seriously contemplated eating the head along with the tail and fins.

Continuing my walk toward the road, I paused briefly to talk to a woman leaning against a rough bush-pole fence enclosing another hammock-hotel compound. She introduced herself as Maria de Carmen and said that her guests were almost entirely European. When I asked her about the nudity on the beach she shook her head slowly. “It isn’t correct,” she said. “Before they would be naked only at the north end, but now they’re starting to be all over the beach. It’s not right that families come here and see this. I believe they are very intelligent people, and where they come from it’s OK and proper to do this. But this is not where they come from. This is Mexico.”

We both stared out to the beach. A pair of very tan blond women were strolling down near the water’s edge. As we watched, they both stopped, disrobed completely and walked slowly into the shore break. De Carmen shook her head. “That’s life,” I said. She nodded at the pair and smiled in rueful agreement. “That’s true. That is definitely life.”

That evening, over dinner at the Canon Devata, the Lopezes agreed that the nudity produced a certain “cultural confusion” in Zipolite--but that wasn’t what worried them most. They were more concerned about the recent grading of the road leading there by the Oaxacan government. They fear development is on the way. “The new Cancun, Huatulco, is only 36 miles south of here,” said Mateo Lopez. “Puerto Escondido is 36 miles north. We’re in the middle. Something is going to happen here before long. I talked to the governor and told him that if the government wants to do something here, they should look to the local Mixtec and Zapotec people for inspiration. The Mixtecs and Zapotecs could build nice small adobe houses for the tourists. They could have gardens and recycle the water. They could do it right.”

Back in Puerto Escondido, I met some friends for a dinner of fresh tuna at La Perla Flameante, an open-air palapa -covered restaurant that offers a great second-story view of the evening’s activity on the street below. From here, sipping margaritas, we watched the nightly promenade begin. Snatches of conversations drifted up from the street below--Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese and, occasionally, English. Both sides of the street were lined with temporary refugees from the Gringo Trail, hippies of many nationalities, their wares set up on blankets in front of them.

Richard Henderson, one of my dinner partners at La Perla Flameante, knew all about the changing times. He first came to Puerto Escondido in the mid-1970s, after nearly 30 years of bouncing around Mexico from his base in Northern California. (He owned an art gallery on the Russian River.) Now he was slowly completing work on a house on Zicatela Beach. Having lived in most Mexican beach towns at one time or another, Henderson has a connoisseur’s eye. “A lot of the places I used to love have changed too much,” he told me, staring out at the crowds on Perez Gasga. “Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco, Barra de Navidad, Mazatlan, Zihuatanejo. I spent time in all of them and loved them all, but they go through this evolution that can happen quite quickly. If the growth is too rapid, then pollution gets out of hand, and the place loses its flavor.” Puerto Escondido might succumb to progress, too, he admitted--but he thinks the town has at least another five years of peace ahead.

After dinner, we visited Henderson’s half-completed beach house, beyond the lights and the hammock hotels. He still hadn’t been able to get the electricity approved, so we were bathed in soft candlelight as we swung in hammocks suspended from the wooden beams in the open-air main room. On the hills behind the house were Henderson’s neighbors, a handful of squatter families who lived right on the ejido , or common public land they’d appropriated for corn and beans. As we swayed gently back and forth, the wind blew in softly over the bamboo railings, and overhead the massive palapa roof rustled. Every now and then, I saw the shadow-flutter of a bat in the candlelight, whisking between the ragged edge of the palm fronds and the darkness like the memory of a dream.

GUIDEBOOK: Secrets of the Mexican Pacific

Getting there: Delta, United (starting June 4), Mexicana and AeroMexico fly daily from Los Angeles to Mexico City. Mexicana has daily connecting flights to Puerto Escondido most of the year (there are fewer flights in summer than the rest of the year). It is also possible to fly to Puerto Escondido from Oaxaca on Aerovias Oaxaquenas and several smaller local airlines. There are hourly buses between Puerto Escondido and Pochutla and taxis available to Puerto Angel and Zipolite.

Where to stay: Among the best-equipped hotels in the area is the Santa Fe, Calle del Morro, Puerto Escondido (mailing address: Apartado Postal 96, Puerto Escondido, 71980 Oaxaca), (52-958) 2-01-70, fax (52-958) 2-02-60, rates about $50 to $75 per night for two. A less expensive alternative is the Hotel Arco Iris, near the Santa Fe, Calle del Morro, Puerto Escondido (mailing address: Apartado Postal 105, Puerto Escondido, 71980 Oaxaca), rates about $25. The Posada de Canon Devata is next to the Playa Panteon in Puerto Angel. It has no phone and no street address, but local taxi drivers know how to find it (mailing address, Apartado Postal 74, Pochutla, 70900 Oaxaca), rates about $35 for two, including two meals a day. The hotel is closed in May and June. There are numerous highly informal hammock hotels in Puerto Escondido, Puerto Angel and Zipolite. They have no phones and do not accept reservations; rates about $2 to $3 ($1 if you bring your own hammock).

Where to eat and drink: In Puerto Escondido, the best seafood restaurant is La Perla Flameante, Perez Gasga, no telephone; the view of the street is one of the attractions, and if you go fishing, you can bring your catch here and have it cooked to order. The restaurant at the Hotel Santa Fe (see above) is also highly regarded. For breakfast, and the best coffee in town, try Il Cappuccino. La Michoacana has excellent fresh fruit juices. Both are on Perez Gasga. There are numerous palapa -roofed restaurants--most of which serve nothing but fresh fish, rice and beans, tortillas and beer--on the beach in Puerto Escondido, Puerto Angelito, Puerto Angel and Zipolite.

For more information: Mexican Government Tourist Office, 10100 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 224, Los Angeles 90067; (310) 203-8191 or (800) 262-8900.