Mexico's Puerto Escondido used to be a quiet fishing village known only to surfers for its legendary waves, but now a more cosmopolitan crowd is beginning to ...
Wanderlust | The Crowds Swell on Mexico’s Pacific Coast
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Mexico’s Puerto Escondido used to be a quiet fishing village known only to surfers for its legendary waves, but now a more cosmopolitan crowd is beginning to discover this unspoiled stretch of perfectly pristine beach.
In Puerto Escondido, on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, the biggest waves fall on the shores of Playa Zicatela, a wide beach bordered by cliffs blanketed in emerald jungle. The summer storms build huge swells here, enticing surfers from all over the world to wake up at dawn to stake their claim in the ocean. During the peak surfing season in August, legends like Laird Hamilton and trust-fund kids from Australia and New Zealand hire Jet Skis to save them the trouble of paddling out to waves against the heavy current. Back on shore, a motley crew of girlfriends, hangers-on and amateur surf photographers, leaning on their tripods, drink beer and wait for the perfect shot. But this is about as much commotion as this sleepy Oaxacan fishing village gets.
Even though its name translates as “hidden port,” it would be wrong to refer to Puerto Escondido as a true “secret.” For the last five decades, surfers who call this area the “Mexican Pipeline” have been migrating here from Sydney, Maui and Santa Cruz, all places known for their champion-making waves. While just a few hundred miles up the Pacific Coast, resort-filled Acapulco draws cruise ships and package tours, Puerto Escondido has remained the hideaway for this low-key bohemian crowd — a mix of surfers, expats and locals, who eke out livings selling fish tacos or fresh juices on the beach, any excuse to never leave this stretch of coast that doesn’t look that much different than it did a half century ago.
Up until a few years ago, it wasn’t so easy to get here. Navigating the road, with its washed-out sections and hairpin turns around the Sierra Madre del Sur mountain range, not to mention the occasional road bandits waiting in the fringes to rob unassuming tourists, was quite arduous. There were also the battering hurricane seasons (hence the spectacular swells) and inadequate infrastructure (Oaxaca is the second-poorest state in Mexico), which didn’t make the area appealing to tourists even if they could get here.
Now, with daily flights from Mexico City, Puerto Escondido is drawing a wealthier crowd, including foreigners looking for an easier life as well as the country’s newly minted millionaires who have colonized the beach’s cliffs with their hulking vacation retreats. The Hotel Escondido, courtesy of Mexico City’s design-conscious Grupo Habita, just opened its doors. The cluster of smart-looking oceanfront palapas, complete with Daliesque cactus gardens, private saltwater plunge pools and iPod docks are a far cry from the area’s typical ramshackle guest cottages. But the hotel’s setting — tucked behind papaya groves with horses and oxen grazing nearby — gives it a rustic feeling.
Nearby, Bosco Sodi, a Mexican-born painter who is now based in Brooklyn, has built a modernist destination. With the Japanese architect Tadao Ando, he’s created Casa Wabi, a concrete and wood compound that serves as his local home and studio as well as an artist residency with an exhibition area and meditation spaces. (Not too far away in Playa Roca Blanca, another Mexican artist, Gabriel Orozco, has built his own dramatic retreat based on an observatory in Delhi.) The idea was to collaborate with Grupo Habita to develop the hotel next door and create a getaway with cultural importance, “like a Mexican Marfa,” says Sodi, 43, who had been coming to Puerto Escondido on camping trips with his family since he was a teenager. “I fell in love with the wild nature of this place. It’s changing, but not too fast, and at least this part of Mexico retains the old magic and energy it always had.”
Robin Cleaver, who was living in Palo Alto, Calif., was also lured by the rugged beauty of the area. In 1975, during a visit to his parents, who had retired to Guadalajara, he stumbled upon the region. “The coastal highway was just being built back then, and before that there were just the dirt roads used by local fishermen and coffee growers that lived around the fertile coastal plains.” After having spent several holidays in Puerto Escondido, Cleaver and his family decided to put down roots. Mexico was hovering on the brink of economic collapse, but Cleaver decided to buy property and build a hotel. His Hotel Santa Fe is a sprawling Spanish colonial estate surrounded by tropical gardens, overlooking the ocean. “There was nothing but thorn bushes on the beach when I got here, not even a road to Zicatela Beach. I built the damn road,” says Cleaver, who also owns a farm a few hours away, which supplies the hotel’s restaurant.
Christopher SturmanA pier overlooking Manialtepec Lagoon just outside of town.
This kind of do-it-yourself spirit among the expats, who wanted to find a way to stay permanently, has created a micro-tourist industry. “If it wasn’t for the driftwood we found washed up the beach by Hurricane Carlotta, you literally wouldn’t be sitting here,” says Vicky Cano, who runs Lychee, certainly the only Thai restaurant in the area. She moved here about five years ago from Argentina with her husband, Luciano Venini, a trained chef, with whom she is expecting her second child. One suspects that if they hadn’t cobbled together their restaurant from the storm’s flotsam, the couple would have figured out another business venture. And the French-born Lihi Peretz didn’t set out to open Black Velvet Fish Taco & Beer, Puerto Escondido’s most popular restaurant. She came here to surf the Mexican Pipeline, and then married a professional surfer named Celestino Diaz. After Diaz died unexpectedly a few years ago, she opened a restaurant. The place, decorated with kitschy seashell-studded lamps and mobiles, and a flat-screen TV that plays an endless loop of surf films, is filled with tourists and locals alike. Next year, Peretz plans to expand with branches in Oaxaca City and Mexico City.
“When I first came here, I thought my mother was completely out of her mind,” says Brett Radmin, who now runs a vacation rental agency with his mother, Nancye. She came here in 2009 from New York City to switch gears after running the Forgotten Woman, a national plus-size clothing chain. “But after 24 hours I caught the bug and decided to stay. There is something about this place, something that is hard to put into words.”
For José Galán, a fisherman who owns the local seafood shack Restaurant Y Mariscos in Playa Roca Blanca, the area’s appeal is quite simple. Galán, who has been living shirtless under the sun for so long that his skin looks like it’s been stained a deep mahogany, can chat about anything: fishing trivia, surfing wisdom, regional politics. “I’ve been out here for 17 years, fishing and running this restaurant, and the government never did anything to help us when times were bad,” Galán says. “But Puerto Escondido always provides, and even when the season is low and the customers aren’t here, you can get by on waking up to this every morning.”
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