Guerrero

One of my best girlfriends from college came to visit last week.

I kept offering food to her and she kept eating, so over the course of a few days in Mexico City, she tried atole, tlacoyos, gusanos, mescal, pulque and tacos al pastor. After we had sufficiently ran around town and stuffed ourselves, we jetted off to the beach.

It fell to me as Mexico ambassador to come up with a good beach location. I didn’t have a lot of time to plan — been launching this thing called Eat Mexico — so after some quick thinking, I decided on Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo.
…

Read More

Joy and I had planned to stay at an upscale Acapulco hotel this past weekend, but at the last minute we ditched it in favor of staying in Pie de la Cuesta, a quiet, rustic stretch of beach about six miles northwest of Acapulco proper. The surf there is too strong to swim in, but you can sit under a palapa, drink a beer and gaze at the ocean. Plus the rooms pretty cheap. It’s pretty popular with Mexico City residents.

There is one road from Acapulco to Pie de la Cuesta, and it’s only two lanes wide. Consequently, the cab ride takes anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour. (To go six miles!) True to friends’ tales about Acapulco, the drive wasn’t exactly pretty, except for the occasional flashes of the sea in the distance. Buses and taxis crowded the roads and belched exhaust. Car mechanics and tire-repair shops lined the streets.

One thing I absolutely loved, though, were the tricked-out pesero buses. I was so obsessed I kept taking pictures of them. (The photos below represent maybe half of my tricked-out pesero-bus collection.)

We stayed at Villa Roxana, a clean, simple place with a pool, a small restaurant and air conditioning. We paid 600 pesos a night for two double beds, the equivalent of about $46 USD. I thought it was worth it: We had air conditioning, a ceiling fan. While the water wasn’t hot, it was warmish. The beach was about a two-minute walk away — we had to cut through the neighboring Villa Nirvana, a pretty place owned by two Americans.

We spent Thursday night watching the sun set into the water. Can’t ask for a better setting to ponder what you’ve been grateful for.

On Friday, we took a boat ride around the Laguna Coyuca, a large, lake-sized body of water nearby. It was absolutely beautiful — serene, quiet, full of wildlife. We saw pelicans and baby wildcats, and we stopped at a small wildlife preserve and saw iguanas, crocodiles, a javelina and a deer. Plus we trolled through a mangrove forest, which had eerie, thick roots that grew downward and sideways.

It really was a short visit, and I’d love to go back with a group of friends. Next time, though, I’d want to find out a little more about where to get fresh seafood, and fresh fruit. I was a little disappointed with the options near Pie de la Cuesta — canned-tasting ceviche at Tres Marias, overcooked fish at Coyuca 2000, and even canned mushrooms on our pizza at Vaymas, supposedly an upscale resort. Maybe my standards are too high. I was reading “My Life in France” the whole weekend, and salivating over Julia Child’s visits to the French countryside.