Zihuatanejo-Ixtapa Message Board - Tourism down winter 2014?

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We'll be coming to Zihua over Xmas for the first time. We like to hit different places in Mexico every year. Our decision was rather late so didn't look into it until mid-November. We found that most of our hotel choices could not accommodate us which seemed to suggest it would be a busy time to visit.

Because we wanted to be able to walk into town we changed our focus to Madera Beach and found that we could get in at Aura del Mar. Their available rooms have lessened over time so I guess they are filling up.

We are using Alaska Air from LAX and both flights were pretty full: our seats aren't even together. Our rate was $520 each incl. tax, which was cheaper than to other places like Cancun.

From these basic observations we figured Xmas would be a crowded time this year. We like it that a place does well and like it when there are enough people to make it a bit lively too. Our actual worry was that it might be too crowded: hard to get into restaurants, crowded beaches etc. Yet many of you (who would know better) seem to think otherwise. I hope we both are right: nice amount of people, but not too many. I will make a report once we get back.

Thanks to all who contribute to this forum----I've learned a lot!

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I think you will enjoy seeing the people who will be here over Christmas. We have never had any problem getting into restaurants, etc. Some feel the beach is crowded, but compared to our beach in Canada during the summer, this is definitely not crowded here. I guess it depends what you are used to. I'm sure you will enjoy your Zihua time- how could you not??

--
Linda from Canada
check out my books at www.livingthedreaminmexico.com AND please have a look at www.cookingwithclaudiainzihuatanejo.blogspot.com as well as www.albertoinzihuatanejo.blogspot.com

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Welcome, you are coming to Pardise. You will find just the right amount of tourists beaches not crowded, friendly people good food.

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We'll be coming to Zihua over Xmas for the first time. We like to hit different places in Mexico every year. Our decision was rather late so didn't look into it until mid-November. We found that most of our hotel choices could not accommodate us which seemed to suggest it would be a busy time to visit.

Because we wanted to be able to walk into town we changed our focus to Madera Beach and found that we could get in at Aura del Mar. Their available rooms have lessened over time so I guess they are filling up.

We are using Alaska Air from LAX and both flights were pretty full: our seats aren't even together. Our rate was $520 each incl. tax, which was cheaper than to other places like Cancun.

From these basic observations we figured Xmas would be a crowded time this year. We like it that a place does well and like it when there are enough people to make it a bit lively too. Our actual worry was that it might be too crowded: hard to get into restaurants, crowded beaches etc. Yet many of you (who would know better) seem to think otherwise. I hope we both are right: nice amount of people, but not too many. I will make a report once we get back.

Thanks to all who contribute to this forum----I've learned a lot!

Christmas has been busier than Easter the last two years [at least] So if you do survive and find it acceptable.....well your golden.

Dave

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For those of us who have been coming here for years and years, I no longer find Christmas to be crowded. Zihuatanejo could use many more tourists for me to think crowded. I have never been to a restaurant here where I had to take a number to be seated. We have to do that all the time in Alaska. All this is of course just my opinion.

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On our first trip to Ixtapa in 1987, we had to stand in line and wait to get into a couple of the restaurants we liked. (There were way fewer restaurants there at that time). I remember on one occasion after we had been seated and served and had our meal, we thought we should ask for our bill so we could make room for others still waiting. The manager came over and asked why we wanted to leave so quickly. I told him we didn't want him to lose any customers still waiting to get in. He said: " No no senior. Please sit and enjoy yourselves. Have dessert, or coffees, or drinks. There is no rush. Please enjoy my restaurant".
It was so much different than the " get them in and get them out" mentality of so many North American restaurants. So refreshing and a great introduction to part of the Mexican way of life. :-)

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If I have to take a number in Zihua to be seated, I go to another restaurant. There are lots of good ones all over the place.. I remember when you had to wait at the Captain's Table to be seated. That was in the heyday of Zihua and there were not as many restaurants then. I have not eaten enough in Ixtapa to have a clue on what happened there.

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When was the heyday of zihua?

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You took the words of my mouth, err, of my keyboard ...

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When was the heyday of zihua?

Pretty much throughout the 80's and 90's. The real decline started here about 12 or so years ago, at about the same time our then mayor decided he wasn't going to enforce the law against stealing public lands on our hillsides, and now we have tens of thousands of squatters, many of whom apparently weren't ever as poor as they pretended to be in order to get title to the land they stole. His infamous words giving a green light to land thieves were "I didn't put them up there, and I'm not going to bring them down". In the 3 years of his term the number of land thieves more than doubled, crime began to rise notably, pollution in the bay quickly became an acute problem, pretty much everything began to deteriorate at once. Oh, and of course that pretty much coincided with the period of the attacks of 9/11 when the mindset in the USA took a severe nosedive and fear & loathing took over.

[image]

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Holy crap, ZihuaRob----Zihua sounds like a horrible place now. You make me want to cancel my vacation plans (all online weather charts show poor weather Xmas week anyway!). Playa del Carmen here we come?

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Yup Stace, with all those "squatters" up there in them there hills, you should cancel your trip. I've been coming to the area since 1987 and Rob is the only local person that I've heard that is so obsessed with the poor people who have taken up residence in the hills. Oh, I'm sure there are many others who are not thrilled with it either, but I've never talked to anyone who has said they will no longer go there because of the squatters or feel that the area is no longer desirable because of them.

By the way, this is not unique to Zihua. It happens all over the world including the occupancy of city owned abandoned homes in the US in addition to bridge overpasses and government owned parklands. These aren't animals invading your turf, eating your crops or kill your livestock. They are people who get up every day, trying to survive till the next and protecting a family if they have one.

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Yup Stace, with all those "squatters" up there in them there hills, you should cancel your trip. I've been coming to the area since 1987 and Rob is the only local person that I've heard that is so obsessed with the poor people who have taken up residence in the hills. Oh, I'm sure there are many others who are not thrilled with it either, but I've never talked to anyone who has said they will no longer go there because of the squatters or feel that the area is no longer desirable because of them.

By the way, this is not unique to Zihua. It happens all over the world including the occupancy of city owned abandoned homes in the US in addition to bridge overpasses and government owned parklands. These aren't animals invading your turf, eating your crops or kill your livestock. They are people who get up every day, trying to survive till the next and protecting a family if they have one.

I really have to wonder why you pontificate so on things you don't understand and make such statements with the intent to disparage me? Here in Guerrero most groups of squatters aren't the poor needy people you seem to believe they are. It's a profession. Professional "organizers" manipulating poor folks along with providing proxy squatters to get their piece of the free pie. Get title, sell and move on. On lands recently titled there are now multi-story apartment buildings and even some luxury homes are being built. Where's that poor squatter? Oh, they've sent their proxy squatters to a different area to steal more land because it's an election year.

This is a major local problem that is discussed regularly by citizens everywhere and is frequently in the news, including local morning radio talk shows. Pretty much everyone except the politicians and the squatters are strongly against the theft of our hillsides. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but in the Zihuatanejo-Ixtapa area there are no squatters in Ixtapa or on ejido lands or on more easily habitable and serviceable lands off the hillsides and outside of the bay. It's a SCAM. And it happens thanks to greed, corruption, simulation and intentional bureaucratic impossibility in our government.

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Yes, agreed the squatters are a major problem. But, I also, agree that the squatters are absolutely no reason to cancel vacation plans here. For most visiting tourists, I doubt that they even realize that there is an issue with the squatters. For residents, si, but someone here for one or two weeks, no. I would be rather appalled that someone would even consider changing their plans to come here to switch to somewhere like Playa del Carmen which is much more touristed, and most probably has similar, if not the same issues, with squatters on public lands.

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My point exactly. More of a local issue that the rest of us could care less about and 99.9% of the time haven't a clue that it's even a local problem. So definitely "not" a reason why Zinuatanejo and Ixtapa don't get the action they once did.

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My point exactly. More of a local issue that the rest of us could care less about and 99.9% of the time haven't a clue that it's even a local problem. So definitely "not" a reason why Zinuatanejo and Ixtapa don't get the action they once did.

No? Then why am I reading complaints about pollution, noise and crime? Why is there no money to fix the walkway between La Madera and Playa Principal? Why have so many things deteriorated or gone unattended?

Because the local politicians use the squatters and pander to them for their votes, spending what little money the city has on providing costly services to areas where it was determined decades ago it would be prohibitively costly to supply water and drainage. But their votes are apparently more important to the municipal government than the law or those of us who make up the commercial and tax-paying sector of the community.

And now more scarce resources are going to be spent to build a road directly from La Ropa to the police module on the outskirts of town so that our visitors don't have to see all the poor shanty homes on the hillsides.

Locals have no problem with providing affordable housing and helping poor families find a place to live, but we have been royally screwed by allowing the ecological zones that were our hillsides to be stolen by scammers allowed to break the law on a massive scale to serve the whims of unscrupulous politicians.

It's madness on a psychotic level, but it's our daily bread, as we say colloquially.

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stace , Que la vaya bien.

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"Holy crap, ZihuaRob----Zihua sounds like a horrible place now. You make me want to cancel my vacation plans..."

Well, I was actually trying to be sarcastic in my reply (above). Rob's picture of Zihua was so grim (increased pollution and crime), who wouldn't think twice about visiting?

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"Holy crap, ZihuaRob----Zihua sounds like a horrible place now. You make me want to cancel my vacation plans..."

Well, I was actually trying to be sarcastic in my reply (above). Rob's picture of Zihua was so grim (increased pollution and crime), who wouldn't think twice about visiting?

I know it sounds alarming the way I phrased my comments, but compared to the idyllic Zihuatanejo prior to the mass land invasions fomented by politicians looking for votes, things changed drastically for us in a very brief span of time. It's all relative. I still wake up every morning grinning like a fool and feeling like I want to shout to the world how wonderful it is to be in this tropical paradise! I am still the luckiest man alive in one of the most beautiful places in the world!

[image]

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That you are Rob, where are you from originally?

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Tocayo, it's a little complicated. I was born on a horse farm called "Fancy Farm" in Prospect, Kentucky on the banks of the Ohio River owned by my uncle Paul MacLean. I grew up in Louisville, the US Virgin Islands and Florida with a brief stint in Marblehead, Massachusetts which almost ruined my beautiful "sophisticated Southern" Louisville accent. ;-)

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Rob, how bad did the shark attacks of 2008 affect things in ixtapa/zihua?

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The 80's and part of the 90's. Were you not here then? And if you were not...for the amount of businesses and restaurants that were open then...everybody had business.

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The 80's and part of the 90's. Were you not here then? And if you were not...for the amount of businesses and restaurants that were open then...everybody had business.

The common worker is finding it harder to take time off much less travel. Lets ship a few more jobs to China and tear apart those horrible unions. Then we can all have a right to work for less............Which it turn give us everything less......

Dave

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And in 1980 the average cost of a car was $7,210.00, a house $68,714.00, average income $19,170.00.

It is now 2014 soon to be 15, things have changed, vacation costs, our expectations etc. Etc. One thing hasn't we need to work hard to supply our needs and wants, and if one way isn't doing it we have to try another direction.

Please can we all move into the year 2015 with more optimism and an open mind!

On our vacation we intend to visit as many local vendors as our 14 days will allow us, visit the market, commercial, mega, buy fish and shrimp on the beach, ride the public transit, speak as much Spanish as we can and have some fun!!!

Maybe, just maybe have a few drinks and stagger back to the condo!!!!

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:megusta:

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:/ this is the heyday heh heh goodby :-)

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Tourism is down this season as relates to Canadian and US tourists. There is always a fair influx to this area by Mexican's from other parts of Mexico for their Holiday vacations. School is out soon and the beaches will be more full than they are at present and that will be a happy change for the businesses here. You should NOT find the beaches TOO crowded but as another poster has stated: "it depends on you definition of crowded". There are a lot's of beaches around here within a short bus, taxi, or combi ride: Barra de Potosi, Playa Larga, Playa Linda- well you get the idea. All close enough for a day trip.

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Restaurants at La Barra (at least La Condessa) were doing a booming business today. We were enjoying the beach scene, the food, and all the people. Even got to talk to almost everyone there so I could get vehicles to move so I could leave. There were only two that had to reposition themselves so that two others of us could leave the parking lot.

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That makes me smile. I'm glad they were busy. :-D

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There are bad and ugly things about any city, just take a look at your own or neighbouring communities, hell here in little medicine hat we had a triple murder a few years ago, and just last night a shooting at a night club.

It is the beautiful things we should be concentrating on and Zihua has many , can't wait til Feb. 27!!

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If you're flying Westjet out of Calgary on the 28th, We're on the same plane!

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Hi Paul, we are on the 27th, 9:30 a.m.

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