The Next Cancun? : More hotels have sprouted at the Pacific resort of Huatulco, but its beaches remain quiet--for now

What could ever happen here? Not much, it seems from the sands of Chachacual Bay. The tide comes in, the tide goes out. Mangrove trees bend in the breeze. Maybe someone puts up a palapa of woven palm fronds, maybe not. In the summer rainy season, the foliage grows thick and green. Then it fades as the dry 80-degree days parade through fall, winter and spring. And then the cycle circles again.

But there are other cycles at work at Huatulco, and change is the way of things. Decorative palms rise among the mangroves. Kayaks repose in the sand. And luxury suites climb the hillsides. This 22-mile stretch of coastline, about 240 miles southeast of Acapulco, is the focus of one of the most ambitious tourism-development projects in North America, and the Mexican government, hoping to repeat past successes in Cancun, Ixtapa and Los Cabos, is its principal sponsor.

Eleven years ago, when the building began, most of this 52,000-acre area was one scene after another of paddling fishermen, cornstalk rows and houses with dirt floors. The permanent population was somewhere around 1,000, and the government was just starting to buy families out of their waterfront lots and relocate them inland.

Twenty-four years from now, if FONATUR, the Mexican government’s tourism-development agency, sticks to its long-term plan, Huatulco will be a resort with 2 million tourists a year, nearly 30,000 hotel rooms, a permanent population of 345,000 and all the accouterments of full-service, we-speak-English tourism. (It’s likely that the resort will run a few years behind schedule; not-yet-completed facilities at Chahue and Cacaluta bays were originally to be done by this year.)

For now, however, Huatulco is suspended between extremes. Visit and you find warm weather, uncrowded beaches, a profusion of water sports, grateful entrepreneurs, several high-end hotels and a few advantages that are almost certain to vanish as the government’s plans draw nearer to completion.

For instance: Eight years after the opening of the airport, paved roads have only reached three of the nine bays--Tangolunda, Santa Cruz and Chahue. As a result, the remaining six bays are the domain of dirt-road adventurers and boat passengers who arrive on day trips from the marina at Santa Cruz.

Seven years after the opening of the first hotel, a Club Med, there are 17 in business, from rustic to post-modern, with a combined capacity of roughly 1,800 rooms. The fancy, pricey places far outnumber the budget lodgings, but the overall occupancy rate is only about 50%, perhaps because most Americans probably can’t pronounce Huatulco ( wah-TOOL-co ), let alone find it on a map.

Government figures show that fewer than 32,000 of the 181,000 visitors who came last year were from the United States, a figure far surpassed by U.S visitors to Cancun, Ixtapa and Los Cabos. Not much English is spoken, and most of the tourists I met here were from Mexico City.

I was in Huatulco for three days in May--the off-season, when room prices are lower, and temperatures a little higher, than in winter. After the hour-long flight from Mexico City, I stepped into 90-degree heat, boarded a shuttle for the 12-mile ride to the Sheraton ($7) and watched as brittle, gray foliage flashed past and finally yielded to the turquoise Pacific.

Santa Cruz, busiest of the bays and the center of village life before the resort-makers came, includes a handful of smallish hotels, several modest but inviting waterfront restaurants, a souvenir market and a post-FONATUR marina with about 200 slips. At its edges, fishermen mend nets, sort their catches and lay out severed dorsal fins to dry in the sun. Nearby, chartered motorboats await customers, and tourist-ferrying cabin cruisers collect passengers.

You can hire a boatman at the marina for about $20 and have him drop you off on an empty beach and return a few hours later. For those less inclined to trust strangers to keep such appointments, there are day trips in cabin cruisers. I paid $27 for one of those, climbed aboard a 30-foot fiberglass-shelled vessel with three crew members and seven other tourists (all Mexican) and set to practicing my Spanish and trying to keep straight the names of the bays.

Conejos, a collection of three empty beaches (targeted for a large hotel soon), is the easternmost along the east-to-west coastline. La Entrega is not a bay but a popular beach within Santa Cruz Bay. Chahue Bay is to be the site of a second marina, now under construction.

Up the coast we puttered, pausing to swim ashore or snorkel here and there, applauding when a stationary fishing pole jerked and crew member Roberto Carreno pulled aboard a gleaming green and yellow dorado that seemed nearly a yard long.

At Organo Bay, where FONATUR hopes foreign investors will soon put up an all-inclusive resort, I saw one palapa and several tons of creamy sand.

At Maguey Bay, palm-frond-shaded entrepreneurs sold seafood lunches for $8 and rented out jet skis. I paid $10 for daylong use of a mask, a snorkel and fins, and found perhaps half a dozen varieties of small fish--interesting but not overwhelming. (Still, locals say the best snorkeling areas are at Maguey, La Entrega beach and San Agustin Bay.)

At Cacaluta Bay, a heart-shaped inlet with an island in its middle, FONATUR envisions a 200-boat marina, an 18-hole golf course (to complement the existing 18-hole course at Tangolunda Bay), 1,500 hotel rooms, 1,000 condominium rooms and 805 houses.

I saw sand, foliage and no people.

Chachacual Bay was much the same--but, unlike the others, it’s likely to stay that way: Federal tourism officials have set this bay aside as a nature reserve. (FONATUR officials are quick to point out that more than 40,000 of the resort zone’s 52,000 acres will be left undisturbed or “regenerated” in an effort to sustain ecological balance.)

At the northernmost of the nine bays, San Agustin, we steered around rocky outcroppings and put ashore for a late lunch of very fresh ceviche (our crew’s dorado was the featured ingredient) at Restaurante Bahia San Agustin. Afterward, I strolled up to a tiny wooden chapel on a hill and back down past half a dozen restaurants, a few of them festooned with hammocks, in which young people relaxed.

The hammock people were from Mexico City, about a dozen of them, and most looked to be about 17. They brought the hammocks. They paid the restaurateur about $8 a night and agreed to eat meals at his establishment. He let them sleep there, on the bay, under the stars, and they felt entirely safe.

The way Huatulco is growing and changing, it’s hard to imagine that happening for much longer. Those who suspect that Mexico won’t follow through on all these grand plans should consider Cancun. Cancun, which had an estimated population of 117 before FONATUR made it a development priority in the late 1960s, drew nearly 2 million visitors last year, more than any other Mexican resort.

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There is more to the Huatulco area than new buildings. The Sierra Madre del Sur mountain range rises near the coast, and the old inland towns of Santa Maria Huatulco (north) and Pochutla (northwest) are each about 20 miles away. Along the coast, quiet Puerto Angel lies about 30 miles west and Puerto Escondido, less quiet and famed for its surfing, lies another 50 miles beyond Puerto Angel. Oaxaca City, the state capital known for its folk art and traditional observances such as Day of the Dead, is a 170-mile drive north of Huatulco.

But for most travelers, local civilization is dominated by the cluster of resort hotels and five beaches at Tangolunda Bay, and that’s where I did most of my exploring.

I stayed at the Sheraton, a large property on a long beach with a shaded poolside restaurant and prices I came to believe were too high. (Standard rates run $90-$160 nightly for a double room, depending on the season.) I arrived to find an unfinished bottle of club soda in my room. My shower nozzle greeted me each day with a burst of rusty brown water. The main bar was closed for repairs. And one evening, a maid entered my room without a word and turned down my bed--which would have been fine, had I not been in the room, showering.

North of the Sheraton sits the first major tourist development to open in Huatulco, the 7-year-old Club Med. Like most of its Huatulco brethren, it sits above a beach, but it covers more ground, with about 1,000 beds in 554 rooms, and all sorts of sports facilities, from the usual aquatic equipment to a trapeze. Adult guests pay from $1,129 to $2,200 each for a week, depending on season, which includes air fare from LAX, all meals and beer and wine with lunch and dinner.

Even if a traveler has no intention of staying at Club Med, the place can be a resource: For $30, an outsider can buy 9 a.m.-5 p.m. admission to the property and full use of its resources. For me, that meant an hourlong solo ocean kayak ride and a filling lunch--not a great bargain. But a shrewd traveler with more time could show up for breakfast, spend an hour or two in a kayak, return for lunch, head back out for a wind-surfing lesson, then pass the rest of the afternoon poolside.

The Mexican version of Club Med is the Royal Maeva, just south of the Sheraton. It charges $105-$135 nightly per person, double occupancy for lodgings, all meals and all the wine and beer you care to drink from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. daily. (Rates vary by season and do not include air fare.) The Royal Maeva shared the Sheraton’s stretch of beach, but was busier. During my stay, staff members were urging merry guests (all Mexican or European) through volleyball games, theme nights and various other entertainments. In the winter, staff members said, many guests are from the U.S. and Canada.

Across the street, the bright pink Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza Resort climbs the hillside, its balconies dotted with yellow flowers. A funicular carries guests downtown from the lobby, up to their rooms or all the way up to the pool and the Cielito Lindo restaurant and its broad views. The beach, however, is an awkward distance away for a guest on foot. Rates at the hotel, which opened in 1992, run $115-$141 nightly for a double room, depending on the season.

Huatulco’s most striking hotel is the Omni Zaashila, an architectural collection of angles, curves, burnt sienna archways and cobalt blue walls that stands just south of the Royal Maeva. The Omni opened last summer with 130 rooms, 32 of which feature four-foot-deep private splash pools. Rates run $210-$250 nightly for a double room, depending on the season. There’s a common pool too, if you can call a 400-foot-long beachfront expanse common. After I saw the lushly landscaped grounds, the pool and a few rooms, I came for dinner at Chez Binni, the hotel’s fancy restaurant. The food was excellent, but the place has a notable flaw: On a hot, breezeless night, the restaurant’s setting in open air beneath arched ceilings made both air conditioning and ceiling fans impossible. It’s a frustrating thing to sweat over a $30 meal when you’re not the cook.

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Travelers who want to spend less on their lodgings are likely to land in the towns of La Crucecita or Santa Cruz, where there are several smaller and more modest hotels. One in La Crucecita is the Hotel Flamboyant, with 67 rooms in the middle of downtown La Crucecita. Near Santa Cruz is the Hotel Binniguenda, a pleasant, tile-roofed 100-room property. Double rooms at both hotels run roughly $55-$85 nightly, depending on the season.

La Crucecita has the closest thing to traditional culture in Huatulco, and lies a short drive from the major hotels. Now a town of roughly 10,000, the place was built in the 1980s to house the workers who run Huatulco’s hotels, restaurants and other tourist operations.

La Crucecita looks like a hundred other Mexican small towns: a grid of one- and two-story buildings, tree-lined streets, creeping bougainvillea, laundry flapping in the breeze, a handful of open-air cafes and a central square where birds chirp, children scamper and sleeping dogs lie. I walked around the plaza three times before I realized what was odd about the place.

No church. Or rather, there was a church, but the building was still in its middle stages of construction. In all of Catholic Mexico, there may not be another town where the principal church looks so much like an afterthought.

There is plenty of commerce in Crucecita, however, much of it aimed at visitors. The spot that attracted my attention most was the modest marketplace just off the central square on Avenida Guamachil the shops on the square displaying brightly painted wooden animal carvings (a Oaxacan specialty) and a silver shop on Calle Bugambilias.

I remember the craft shops because I spent $22 in one on a Oaxacan painted wooden porcupine with radiating toothpick spines of red, blue, green, yellow and pink, and am happy with the transaction. I remember the silver shop because, as I strolled past, its proprietor, Gabriel Vasquez Alonzo, flagged me down, handed me a card that said MANTIHOLL and dragged me in to see his goods. He told me he came from Acapulco two years ago, to get in on the early stages of this burgeoning thing called Huatulco. I asked him where the name MANTIHOLL came from.

“We got it from TV,” he explained. “You know--’Let’s Make a Deal’? Manti Holl? It’s a name to bring Americans to see our jewels.”

GUIDEBOOK

Huatulco Bay Watch

Getting there: Huatulco lies on the Pacific coast of the Mexican state of Oaxaca, about 242 miles southeast of Acapulco.

Most visitors arrive by plane via Mexico City. Mexicana Airlines offers a daily direct flight from LAX to Huatulco with heavily restricted round-trip fares beginning at $384.

Where to stay: Most hotels set their rates highest in the winter season (typically December-April), when demand is strongest, and lower them in the hot summer months. Huatulco Sheraton Resort (Paseo Benito Juarez bS/N, Bahias de Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico, C.P. 70989; telephone 800-325-3535 or 011-52-9-581-0055) has a big pool, 348 rooms, a beachfront site, spotty service. Double rooms run $90-$160 nightly, depending on the season. Omni Zaashila Resort (Bahia de Tangolunda Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico, C.P. 70989; tel. 800-843-6664 or 011-52-9-581-0460) has striking architecture, a big pool, lush landscaping, a beachfront site and 130 units. Double rooms are advertised at $210-$250 nightly, but a special promotion that ends Sept. 11th offers doubles for $149, based on availability. Hotel Binniguenda (Blvd. Benito Juarez No. 5, Bahia de Santa Cruz, Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico, C.P. 70900; tel. 800-262-2656 or 011-52-9-587-0077) features lots of Spanish tile, a pool and 100 rooms. Double rooms run $70-$80 nightly.

Where to eat: Restaurant Avalos Dona Celia (local tel. 587-0128) and Restaurant Ve El Mar (tel. 587-0364) on Santa Cruz Bay. Dona Celia’s dinner entrees run $6-$33; Ve El Mar’s, $6.75-$20.

In La Crucecita, Don Wilo (tel. 587-0623) is a pleasant sidewalk cafe; dinner entrees $6-$15. At the Omni Zaashila, the stylish Chez Binni offers dinner entrees for $8-$24.

Exploring the bays: Several companies offer cabin-cruiser trips to the bays, advertised in hotel lobbies and at the Santa Cruz marina. I used Bahias Plus, No. 5, Blvd. Benito Juarez, Bahia de Santa Cruz, Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico; tel. 587-0932.

For more information: Mexican Government Tourism Office, 10100 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 224, Los Angeles 90067, tel. (310) 203-8191.