Tourism Observations

We are on Playa la Ropa pretty much every day from 6am to 9am. We really watch and observe because it's fun.

There aren't many tourists on la Ropa, at least yet. Villa Mexicana doesn't appear to have many guests, unless they aren't using the beach loungers. Same for The Thompson and Embarc. Yes, there are people, but not what we have seen in the past post COVID years.

Had breakfast at Daniel's on playa principal this morning about 10am. Absolutely my personal favorite for the quality of the food, the service, and OMG the location. By the time we had a leisurely breakfast, there was one other table filled.

The beach? Absolutely packed!!! Saw a wonderful white dog that self entertained, chasing birds and swimming. Seriously swimming. Went out to check a swimmer passing by. What a good guy.

So, are the international tourist hotels going to pick up? Sure hope so. This is our home and we want everyone to flourish.

Anyone have a good crystal ball??

Ixtapa is packed. The parking lots are filled with double parkers. Lots of people walking around. I get a sense there are fewer international tourists and more domestic. I've seen fewer of the all-inclusive wrist bands out in the restaurants. It will be interesting to see what it will look like after new years when the crowding subsides.

We are on Playa la Ropa pretty much every day from 6am to 9am. We really watch and observe because it's fun.

There aren't many tourists on la Ropa, at least yet. Villa Mexicana doesn't appear to have many guests, unless they aren't using the beach loungers. Same for The Thompson and Embarc. Yes, there are people, but not what we have seen in the past post COVID years.

Had breakfast at Daniel's on playa principal this morning about 10am. Absolutely my personal favorite for the quality of the food, the service, and OMG the location. By the time we had a leisurely breakfast, there was one other table filled.

The beach? Absolutely packed!!! Saw a wonderful white dog that self entertained, chasing birds and swimming. Seriously swimming. Went out to check a swimmer passing by. What a good guy.

So, are the international tourist hotels going to pick up? Sure hope so. This is our home and we want everyone to flourish.

Anyone have a good crystal ball??

I'm constantly seeing (and answering) questions on social media about the beaches and what is allowed. The Blue Flag rules and the practically forced use of expensive restaurants because of those rules is more of a deterrent than an attraction. So the party is on the downtown beach where there's no Blue Flag. But, as if to phonily try to prove their point, the ayuntamiento only puts one old couple to clean the downtown beach, and even on an easy day they do a poor job. The city government knows they do a poor job because it's been brought to their attention over and over, and they have personnel constantly taking photos. Lots of neighbors try to help out, but right now it's simply overwhelming, and it's downright sad the city government doesn't put more people to clean the downtown beach and walkway at this time of year.

According to SECTUR Guerrero's cifras alegres, the hotels in Acapulco, Ixtapa AND Zihuatanejo were all above 70% occupancy. While that may be true of the hotels they count, it doesn't reflect the true number of hotels, cost of the hotels, the purchasing power of the tourist or how much money they spend on average, though they'll also put out a statistic after the vacation season declaring that amount, a statistic many of us will laugh at and wonder why we aren't all millionaires by now.

Our municipal and state governments's tourism departments mostly just simulate their jobs and try to take credit for things they don't do.

One thing they claim to be doing is interviewing tourists to see what they want. Another waste of time. The national tourists will tell them they want "los 3 Bs": Bueno, Bonito y Barato. I know what they want because they tell me, and I also have a pretty good idea of some things they could use such as free and plentiful public restrooms so they aren't peeing and crapping all over the place like they are now. I also think more conveniently located trash receptacles would be a big help as well as better public transportation with maps showing the routes for local combis (since we don't use buses anymore). Not unlike what they are accustomed to in the cities where most of our visitors come from. Secure parking for all the folks who drive here would be nice. Lots of vehicles get stolen and broken into at this time of year. The most common thing folks want is PUBLIC SECURITY, and that's pretty much nationwide, but they think it must come from the federal government: a near impossible task because the safety and security of a community begins with a LOCAL PROFESSIONAL police force that knows the local area, something we've never had here in Mexico. The nation's justice system was created over decades by people who wanted to get away with their own crimes, and we still have a ways to go to overhaul it and come up with a working justice system. What we currently have is over 99% of all crimes going unpunished.

The flights are coming, but it seems like more and more of their passengers are staying in places like Troncones, La Salidita, Playa Blanca and places that are affordable without all the elitist beach rules.

Ixtapa is packed. The parking lots are filled with double parkers. Lots of people walking around. I get a sense there are fewer international tourists and more domestic. I've seen fewer of the all-inclusive wrist bands out in the restaurants. It will be interesting to see what it will look like after new years when the crowding subsides.

Apart from the predominantly all-included crowds, many of those tourists stay in rentals in the Casas Geo development behind Ixtapa, rentals owned by people from Morelia and other places. They do much of their "shopping" at Oxxo and complain about the high prices everywhere else.

A big complaint about the Blue Flag area of la Ropa. There are now at high season, 4 sets of trash containers. The main one, the one at the beach end of the Artisans Market, between The Thompson and Villa Mexicana, are removed at night!!!! In the morning, aside from trash on the beach, there is a GIANT mountain of garbage of all descriptions just mounded on the cement at the end of the market area. The workers come about 9, but first they have to spread it all out, sort it and photograph it before they can bag and take it up to the street. This usually takes a full hour.

We are out there paddling and swimming and people tend to think we belong here. They complain bitterly about the lack of trash cans and the performance of spreading all the garbage out and photographing it before making it go away. They ask us why something hasn't been done. We have no response.

Somebody needs to do something. Holding our breaths? Nope.

A big complaint about the Blue Flag area of la Ropa. There are now at high season, 4 sets of trash containers. The main one, the one at the beach end of the Artisans Market, between The Thompson and Villa Mexicana, are removed at night!!!! In the morning, aside from trash on the beach, there is a GIANT mountain of garbage of all descriptions just mounded on the cement at the end of the market area. The workers come about 9, but first they have to spread it all out, sort it and photograph it before they can bag and take it up to the street. This usually takes a full hour.

We are out there paddling and swimming and people tend to think we belong here. They complain bitterly about the lack of trash cans and the performance of spreading all the garbage out and photographing it before making it go away. They ask us why something hasn't been done. We have no response.

Somebody needs to do something. Holding our breaths? Nope.

It's all a dog & pony show. Taking away the trash containers at night and only having FOUR to begin with just goes to prove how serious they aren't. This is the same problem on La Ropa as FOREVER. Except that now they've run off most of the people who used to go there, so it's all for APPEARANCES sake.

We went to Troncones and Saladita today. We were going to have lunch at Manzanillo Bay, but they were closed for a private event. We then wanted to try the Thai restaurant in Troncones, but they are closed on Wednesday. Lots of people walking around and on bicycles. Ended up at Loot in Saladita. The beach was quite busy and lots of people in the water, both with and without surf boards. Really a lovely view of the bay to the north. Lots of recent development up there in both towns.

Just the same old same old. People are pigs and there is no place to put the garbage.

Ixtapa is packed. The parking lots are filled with double parkers. Lots of people walking around. I get a sense there are fewer international tourists and more domestic. I've seen fewer of the all-inclusive wrist bands out in the restaurants. It will be interesting to see what it will look like after new years when the crowding subsides.

Starting the 3rd of Jan. Ixtapa will have the lowest amount of people until after easter in March. Will start increasing on Jan. 12th. until after Easter.

The beach? Absolutely packed!!! Saw a wonderful white dog that self entertained, chasing birds and swimming. Seriously swimming. Went out to check a swimmer passing by. What a good guy.

As a dog owner, I’m sorry to read this part of your posting. Dogs ought not to be “harassing” wildlife. That is the kind of irresponsible dog owner behaviour that creates animosity toward dog owners. The other aspect is the poop on the beach.

I don’t suggest my dog is never off-leash. In fact, he is off-leash during every morning walk and during every evening beach walk. As soon as there is wildlife around, he is back on his leash. There are other dogs on the beach, some with people and some apparently on their own. Not only am I picking up my own dog’s poop, I’m picking up other dogs’ poop as well.

I hope we dog owners will behave responsibly so that we don’t end up with more initiatives for blue flag beaches.

The beach? Absolutely packed!!! Saw a wonderful white dog that self entertained, chasing birds and swimming. Seriously swimming. Went out to check a swimmer passing by. What a good guy.

As a dog owner, I’m sorry to read this part of your posting. Dogs ought not to be “harassing” wildlife. That is the kind of irresponsible dog owner behaviour that creates animosity toward dog owners. The other aspect is the poop on the beach.

I don’t suggest my dog is never off-leash. In fact, he is off-leash during every morning walk and during every evening beach walk. As soon as there is wildlife around, he is back on his leash. There are other dogs on the beach, some with people and some apparently on their own. Not only am I picking up my own dog’s poop, I’m picking up other dogs’ poop as well.

I hope we dog owners will behave responsibly so that we don’t end up with more initiatives for blue flag beaches.

THANK YOU! While I've picked up some extraneous dog doo, I don't carry enough bags with me to do so frequently, though like most of my neighbors I pick up quite a bit of human trash. Unfortunately, because the public restrooms CHARGE and they CLOSE at night, whatever my dog does on a tree is nothing compared to what humans do on them. I know this is an unheard of practice here, but if we want people to use public restrooms, they need to be FREE OF CHARGE, and they need to be OPEN 24 hours, especially because so many bars and convenience stores sell alcohol all night long and there are people on the beach many nights all night long, including a young lady who has been living on our downtown beach for several months now and apparently has gig going. #PuebloMágico

You sound like us. Our girls walk 3 kilometers daily, slower now that Karma is 13. Near the end, they go off leash and run, swim and chase their balls. We always clean up the poop and we carry extra bags to share. There is a 1.5 year old lab type that lives at Restaurante Mary's. Vincente has learned that if we are around, he needs to clean up the poop, and also has learned that we carry extra bags. We share, and at least he cleans up.

We are extremely careful around other's dogs and wildlife. In the last two days we have had both an injured boobie and pelican. We leash up and it looked as though everyone else with pets did too.

Being a responsible pet owner isn't tough, just important.

Thanks for caring too.

For decades I have told friends that the best two winter weeks in the area are the two weeks after New Year’s Day. The weather is predictably wonderful. Beaches are uncrowded. Restaurants are not busy. I haven’t looked for years, but I remember in the past some hotels offered a 50% to 100% discount for the second week of a two-week stay at that time.

It seems that people who don’t vacation during the two holiday weeks decide they can put up with two more weeks of northern winter, but then they have to get away.

Just the same old same old. People are pigs and there is no place to put the garbage.

That's an insult to the pigs! An apologies to porcines everywhere is in order, in my humble opinion.

Pigs are not dirty animals

You are so right, I should be ashamed. My mother grew up on a hog farm in the 1920's.

I think it should be the legal system , not the justice system, where is the justice