First time visitor!

Ola! I'm considering a June visit with my spouse and child (age 10). I found your message board and thought I'd see what I could learn from those that clearly know their way around Zihua.
What do we need to know as first timers coming from the U.S.?
Thanks, and I look forward to learning more. From what I gather, it looks like a beautiful place with friendly people and excellent food and drink. We've traveled in Europe some but this will be our first visit south of the border.

#1 rule: Don't overplan. There's much more to see and do here than anyone visiting for a few days could possibly see and do. You're here to relax, no? Make that priority number one.

With that said, a good starting place, besides reading back through the posts here and in my older Message Board Archives, is my ACTIVITIES page.

Also, you may want to bookmark my AUTHORIZED TAXI RATES page, and learn about the exceptions to those rates explained on the same page.

My BEACHES page will help also help get you oriented, and it has several webcams that are usually working that are a lot of fun to watch sometimes.

Stick with fresh local foods to avoid any problems, and stay hydrated. Tip: most shrimp at local restaurants is imported, not local, though there is a local shrimp farm that supplies a few restaurants, but it's also had occasional problems with health concerns. I recommend many restaurants, and there are too many for me to include them all, but my RESTAURANTS page with its locator map is a good place to start.

You will want to see the following places, but there simply may not be enough time, so pick 2 or 3 and leave the rest for a future visit: Barra de Potosí, Troncones, Isla Ixtapa, Playa Las Gatas, the archaeological site at La Chole (Xiguacán), Petatlán, Puerto Vicente Guerrero, Playa La Saladita, Mesas de Bravo. Some people who visit here also take a day or 3 to visit Pátzcuaro and the surrounding region about 4 hours away by car or bus in the highlands of Michoacán. The evenings are cool there, there are several archaeological sites, and it's a refreshing change of pace from our beach destination. There are frequent luxury class buses to make it an easy trip.

On my MAPS page I've put together a Google Earth Fly-By Tour that will help orient you to our region, and you can also click on any destination marked and get additional information. I think it's a pretty cool part of my website, though I believe it's also way underappreciated.

My daily posts with "ZIH" included in the title as sort of a play on words include a song (mostly Mexican music), a daily photo, and hopefully some interesting local info about things that are going on. Please explore this website. There is no better local source of information for Zihuatanejo-Ixtapa and our region.

Oh, and if you're a mushy romantic type, you may find the story of how I ended up here interesting. I consider myself the luckiest Gringo in Mexico.

¡Bienvenidos!