I love the beach, BUT

There is no place like home.

Zihuatanejo  is a hop skip and a jump nowadays since they finished the autopista, well most of it anyway, the road is in great shape, except for a 5 mile stretch where it forks either to Lazaro Cardenas or Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo

The total non stop trip takes about 3 and a half hours door to door.

We left last Sunday at 11:15 and where on the beach by 3:30.

We decided to wait it out after Semana Santa and the following week and we were glad we did. I must have counted at least a hundred cars going east with stuff strapped to the roofs of their cars. I know they were there for partying since most of them had their mandatory ice chest prominently displayed on the roof.

For those of you who may not know this but Zihuatanejo is an old fishing village which was transformed into a more popular destination when the Mexican Government decided to build a few new tourist destinations.

They built Ixtapa and Cancun about the same time.The plan was hatched in the mid 60's with completion in the mid 70's.

View from our back door of our unit.

Both Cancun and Ixtapa are nice beaches with high rise hotels and all the associated minutia that comes along with them. If you are laying by the pool, it is difficult to discern if you are in San Diego, Hawaii, Miami Beach or Acapulco.

Zihuatanejo  has retained its small town charm as well as it has been able to. We've been going here since the mid 80's and have seen changes most of which has been the build up of condos and a few new resort hotels.
The only problem is that the beach often gets closed because of contamination.
We enjoy staying in the LaRopa Beach area, simply for the quiet sunsets and the absence of high rise hotels and condominiums. Zihuatanejo  also has less expensive restaurants and hotels, something to match everyone's budget.

My only reservation to coming here more often is that I am spoiled. I am spoiled in living in an area where I don't need to run the air conditioning most of the time. While we were down here, there was one night out of 5 that we could go to sleep with just the windows open and the breeze and ceiling fans cooling us off. During the days if you are anywhere in the sun, man, it is warmish to hot. the temps were in the 90's with only a few days having humidity that made us enjoy sitting inside more than outside.

Meanwhile back at the ranch in Patzcuaro, mid 70's no humidity to speak of and cooling off in the night to the point of needed to use blankets instead of sheets.

One of the places we had our lunch at for cheap.

There is an abundance of restaurants both in town and bordering the beach areas.  You can spend anywhere from 10 bucks for lunch including a couple of beers for a large shrimp plate to $25 bucks if you go to one of the expensive resorts that serve the same shrimp only salute your plate to the tune of a 100% increase.....thank you!

Nice cool beers are usually either 20 pesos or 25 depending if the suds are in a can or bottle. If you walk into town you have your choice of pizza place, Chinese food, inside the Mercado are gazillion taco stands scraping up flavor from their well seasoned grills and flat tops.

Typical tourist stuff comprised of straw hats, t shirts and other non essential items festoon the walkways of the centro.

The place is a nice fast easy getaway which we enjoy doing about one a year.  Here at home the front and back doors are open, nice breeze comes through the house, all natural air conditioning, one of the benefits of living at 8500ft.