Zihuatanejo – Chapter 2 (Finally)

Well, I’m a tad behind on my second post about Zihuateanejo from last July. I must confess that I’ve been in a politically stressed-out haze since the tangerine sociopath took over our White House. I’ve been through a lot of presidents in my lifetime, but nothing compared to what we’ve gone through the past three years. They say you shouldn’t include politics in your blogs, but, hey…what the heck. I mostly do this blog for my own benefit so that I can look back on my travels, but with the constant tension of what perversion this president will come up with next, it’s taken some of the joy out of life. Enough about that.

This will mostly be a picture post because I’ll have to say that my trip to Zihau was about the laziest trip I’ve ever taken. There’s not a whole lot to do there other than snorkeling and boating. There are no golf carts, so you have to take a cab wherever you go if it’s not withing walking distance. They have a small ruins just to the south called Xihuacan, but I never made it there. It was pretty hot while I was there, which is conducive to doing very little. Besides that, my hotel room was so nice, I spent a lot of time there.

The views are the best thing about Zihau. It’s such a peaceful, beautiful place, I just couldn’t stop taking it in. There’s a very nice walkway that runs along the beach…it took me about 15 minutes to walk from my hotel to the downtown area.

This was the restaurant at my hotel which was really nice…definitely the best restaurant that I visited while at Zihua. It was pretty pricey, but well worth it.

This was their salad and surf n’ turf.

Here are some pictures of the downtown area.

Funny beer signs.

More of downtown.

Fishing boats…

Since I was there, I felt I needed to check out Ixtapa, which is about a 10 minute taxi ride north. I could immediately tell that it was the higher end of the two cities with high-rise hotels and fancy restaurants. It was easy to see that this is where most foreign visitors stay, while most native Mexican vacationers stay in Zihua. I’ll have to agree with them. I found Zihau much more relaxing and traditional. And I preferred the bay views to the open sea views of Ixtapa.

I only stayed there for a few hours, but I did have an interesting lunch. I wasn’t that hungry, so I opted for the fish sticks, which I thought would look something like this:

The waitress brought me this, which I thought was some kind of ceviche or appetizer. I waited and waited for the fish sticks, until I finally realized that this WAS the fish sticks. It’s fish cut up into tiny little “sticks” to be eaten with chips…haha. It was interesting, although I don’t think I’d order them again.

Speaking of food, here are some other dishes I had on the Zihua side…

The tuna shasimi on the bottom right was wonderful.

Cute towel art…

I’ll have to say that the Aura del Mar was a fantastic hotel and I would highly recommend it. Every room has a view and the employees are extremely friendly and helpful. My departing flight didn’t leave until 7:00 at night, but I had to check out of my room at 1:00. They allowed me to use their hospitality suite at no charge until I had to leave for the airport. After staying in my beautiful room for the week, the hospitality suite didn’t quite have the same amenities.

In fact, it kind of conjured up images of a monk’s quarters…haha! But I was totally appreciative of their hospitality and just used it to store my luggage while I had a final margarita (or two) at the beach-side bar.

Adios, Zihuatanejo! Would I go back again? Most definitely. As my taxi was taking me to the airport, he went through an area behind my hotel that I hadn’t explored which looked interesting. I would prefer going when it’s not quite so hot, though. I do love the beautiful blue water of the Caribbean side of Mexico, but every location has its beauty.

With that being said, I have changed the title of my blog to “Random Travel Musings” because I’m branching out to locations other than Mexico. Last spring break, I went to London, but because my blog was titled “Random Mexico Musings,” I didn’t feel I could post about it. London is a hoot and I will eventually do a very late post about that now that I’ve changed my blog title. Like I said, I do these posts because I like to “revisit” my trips, so I want to memorialize London, too. That was definitely not a “relaxing” trip as you try to fit as much as humanly possible into a week of sight-seeing. And even then, you feel like you’ve missed so much.

On a final note, here is my destination for this spring break next month.