This trip was a bit different from my usual fare, since I had my parents visiting. Since this was their first time outside of Europe, the plan was finding something that looked proper exotic (i.e. with warm weather, a nice beach and palm trees), but that was also easy and quick to reach from Mexico City.
Asking my Mexican colleagues, the default answer was “go to Cancun”, but as usual, I wasn’t able to bring myself to book some soulless American chain hotel on a beach surrounded by more concrete resorts. So I was looking for something a bit off the beaten track, but something that was still family friendly, and which would be compatible with my 80+ years old father.
I wasn’t to keen to go to the carribean, which has a lot of Sargassum Seaweed washed up at the beaches this time of the year making it impossible or at least unappealing to swim (also, I wasn’t really looking forward to experiencing the carribean temperatures so soon after my last trip). My Spanish teacher soon came to the rescue and proposed to visit Zihuatanejo on the pacific coast of Mexico.
The town is only 300km (as the bird flies) from Mexico City in the state of Guerrero. And while it’s possible to go there by car, I was advised by my colleague that the land route is not really safe, especially at night. There’s also a Bus, but from the little research I did, it seems to be quite slow (10h+ drive per direction). The main problem seems to be that there’s no direct highway, and with all the necessary detours the actual route is more like 700km. But luckily, Zihuatanejo has a tiny Airport located about 20 min by taxi from the City Center. The Airport is well served by 3 Aeromexico flights from MEX per day. The flight from Mexico City takes about 40 minutes.
Since I wanted my parents to experience something special, I booked a small luxury hotel called “La Casa Que Canta” (translated “The House that Sings”). Normally, I’m of the opinion that 5-star hotels are not really worth the extra money – they usually just provide amenities that I do not tend to use, and most of the times the rooms are indistinguishable from their 4-star counter parts. But this hotel turned out to be by far the most beautiful and remarkable hotel that I’ve ever stayed in. From the check-in experience, to the actual rooms, the large, terrace-like balconies that each room featured to the extreme attention to detail, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
The hotel’s restaurant (called Mar y Cielo) was excellent, but a bit pricey for the dinner. The breakfast on the other hand was also good, but reasonably priced (we never went above 20€ per person per meal). We tried a few other dinner options nearby, but event hough they were a bit cheaper, none of them reached the quality of the hotel restaurant.
With the hotel being so great, and temperatures being about 35°C (95°F), we seldomly left the premises. Most of the time there we spent on our balconies (which came with sunbeds, an outdoor sofa, a table with chairs as well as complementary cold beers) and enjoyed the view over Zihuatanejo bay. Now and then, we went to one of the two pools – a conventional, large infinity pools and, our clear favorite, a seawater pool.
The only times we left the hotel (besides for food) was to visit the beach, which is located less than 100 meters from the hotel entrance. The beach was almost empty all days we were there. It was generally possible to swim, but on the last days, the waves were too strong to make that an appealing proposition. We were also warned of strong currents in the bay, so it’s probably better to stick to the pool. Other than that, the water is warm, the beach is sandy and clean, and it has lots of palm trees for that exotic holiday feeling.
And after a few days of doing… pretty much nothing, our mini vacation in paradise was already over. While a sudden activity of Mexico City’s resident Volcano Popocatepetl threatened us with having to involuntarily extend our time at the pool for a few more days, in the end we made it back to the big city with only a few minutes of delay.
The Guerito 