Things to do in Oaxaca Coast
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La Providencia
Zipolite's most suave dining option has an open-air lounge area where you can sip a drink while you peruse the menu and place your order. The flavorsome and well presented food is a nuevo mexicano treat, from cold beetroot and ginger soup to chicken breast in blue-cheese-and-pumpkin-flower sauce.
reviewed
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Deep Blue Dive
Based in Beach Hotel Inés; the instructor here is also PADI-certified.
reviewed
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Guadua
There’s nothing quite like Guadua on the Oaxaca coast. A solid wooden deck sits about halfway along Zicatela beach, its thick palapa roof supported by bamboo poles. The delicious and attractively presented food is a Pacific-Mediterranean-Asian–Middle Eastern fusion with dishes like shrimp coconut curry, cashew couscous and seared tuna with teriyaki sauce. Guadua is also a hip beach lounge, with a good bar, music from bossa nova to dub to electronica (live Wednesday to Saturday evenings), and quirkily constructed loungers out on the sands in front. And it recycles waste water and trash.
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Oasis Surf Academy
Oasis Surf Academy, in the Rinconada area above Playa Carrizalillo, offers classes of 1½ to two hours with experienced and qualified local teachers for M$585, which includes the rental of a board. It’s associated with Oasis Surf Factory, run by local pro surfer and board maker Roger Ramírez.
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Restaurante El Jardín
This palapa restaurant serves very good vegetarian dishes, from gado-gado (vegetables in peanut sauce) and many salad varieties to tempeh and tofu offerings. The menu also includes plenty of seafood, pizzas and pasta, and a good, long juice list.
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Instituto de Lenguajes Puerto Escondido
Offers good language classes taught by native Spanish speakers, with an emphasis on conversation skills, plus a variety of complementary activities, including surfing, cooking and salsa lessons.
reviewed
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Servicios Ecoturísticos La Ventanilla
Some 2.5km along the road west from Mazunte a sign points left to Playa Ventanilla, 1.2km down a dirt track. The small settlement here includes the palapa of Servicios Ecoturísticos La Ventanilla. Servicios Ecoturísticos is Ventanilla’s successful conservation and ecotourism cooperative. Most popular are its 10-passenger canoe trips on a mangrove-fringed lagoon where you’ll see endangered river crocodiles (there are about 1000 of these in the 230,000-sq-meter local protected area) and lots of water birds (most prolific from April to July). For the best wildlife-spotting, go in the early morning. Servicios Ecoturísticos also offers three-hour horseback rides (M$250), spec…
reviewed
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Beaches
Huatulco's beaches are sandy with clear waters (though boats and jet skis leave an oily film here and there). Like the rest of Mexico, all beaches are under federal control, and anyone can use them - even when hotels appear to treat them as private property. Some have coral offshore and excellent snorkeling, though visibility can be poor in the rainy season.
Lanchas will whisk you out to most of the beaches from Santa Cruz Huatulco harbor any time between 08:00 and 17:00, and they'll return to collect you by dusk. Taxis can get you to most beaches for less money, but a boat ride is more fun. Round-trip lancha rates for up to 10 people from Santa Cruz: Playa La Entrega aro…
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Parque Nacional Huatulco
The Parque Nacional Huatulco protects 119 sq km of land, sea and shoreline west of Santa Cruz Huatulco, including some of Huatulco's most important coral reefs, which in the past have suffered some damage from fishing and touristic activities. Few visitors enter the national park except on guided or escorted trips, and the fee for entry to the land zone is normally taken care of by your tour operator: otherwise you can pay it from 09:00 to noon, Monday to Saturday, at the national park office.
The fee for the marine zone is collected at Santa Cruz harbor, along with another fee to enter the harbor itself. Use of non-biodegradable suntan lotions or sunscreen is prohibited …
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Playa La Entrega
Playa La Entrega lies toward the outer edge of Bahía de Santa Cruz, a five-minute lancha trip or 2.5km by paved road from Santa Cruz. This 300m beach, backed by a line of seafood palapas, can get crowded, but it has calm water and good snorkeling on a coral plate from which boats are cordoned off - although the coral is in danger of being smothered in silt churned up by the cruise ships entering the bay.
'La Entrega' means 'The Delivery': here in 1831, Mexican independence hero Vicente Guerrero was handed over to his enemies by a Genoese sea captain. Guerrero was taken to Cuilapan near Oaxaca and shot.
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Hurricane Divers
The very professional international crew at Hurricane Divers speak English, Spanish, Dutch and German, and offer a variety of courses and dives. This is one of Mexico’s few PADI 5-Star Dive Resorts. Options include two-tank dives (M$1235), night dives (M$910) and the Introduction to Scuba Diving (M$1755 for about six hours over two days). But Hurricane’s most popular outing is a full-day excursion for M$1560 per person (minimum two people) with snorkeling and a picnic lunch. Prices above are based on two-person outings, though larger groups have discounted rates.
reviewed
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Piña Palmera
Piña Palmera, an independently run rehabilitation and social integration center for physically and intellectually disabled people from rural communities, does fantastic work with workshops at its beautiful palm-grove site and on village visits. Over 5000 disabled kids, adults and family members have participated in Piña Palmera programs since 1984. Some toys and crafts made here are sold in a shop on the main road. Piña Palmera can use volunteers who speak decent Spanish and are willing to sign on for six months, though volunteer programs are flexible.
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Bahía Maguey
Some of the western bays are accessible by road; at times groups of young men congregate in the bays' parking lots, offering to 'watch your car' and touting for the beach restaurants. A 1.5km paved road diverges to Bahía Maguey from the road to La Entrega, about half a kilometer out of Santa Cruz. Maguey's fine 400m beach curves around a calm bay between forested headlands. It has a line of seafood palapas. There's good snorkeling around the rocks at the left (east) side of the bay.
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Bahía San Agustín
If you head 1.7km west of the airport to a crossroads on Hwy 200, then 13km south down a dirt road, fording a river after 9km, you'll reach Bahía San Agustín. The beach is long and sandy, with a long line of palapa comedores, some with hammocks for rent overnight. It's popular with Mexicans on weekends and holidays, but quiet at other times. Usually the waters are calm and the snorkeling is particularly good here (some of the comedores rent out equipment).
reviewed
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Rutas de Aventura
Rutas de Aventura offers flexible active trips with an emphasis on sustainability and well-informed, English-speaking guides. Possibilities include early-morning kayaking and bird-watching at Laguna Manialtepec and visits to Finca Las Nieves, an organic coffee plantation in the lush inland hills near San Juan Lachao, where you can bike, hike, watch birds, learn about coffee production and the local ecosystem, and sleep in comfortable rooms and bungalows.
reviewed
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Rancho Tangolunda
The well-established Rancho Tangolunda not only takes you rafting on the Copalita but also offers river and sea kayaking, horseback riding, climbing, rappelling, a 300m zip-line, walking and biking tours, canyoneering and bird-watching. Most activities cost M$250 to M$500 per person, though the more challenging rafting and kayaking options are M$600 to M$700. The rancho is about 1km inland near the Río Copalita at the east end of the Bahías de Huatulco area.
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Coco Loco Surf Club
Coco Loco Surf Club, based at México Lindo, rents surfboards for M$50 per hour or M$150 to M$200 per day, and boogie boards or snorkel gear for M$30 per hour. It also offers surfing classes with qualified French instructor David Chouard (two-hour private class for one/two people M$350/500; two-hour group class per person M$200) and three-beach ‘discovery trips’ combining snorkeling, bodyboarding and a visit to La Ventanilla for M$280 per person (minimum four people).
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National Park Office
Few visitors enter Parque Nacional Huatulco except on guided or escorted trips, and the paying of the $20 fee for entry to the land zone is normally taken care of by your tour operator: otherwise you can pay it from 09:00 to noon, Monday to Saturday, at the national park office. The $21 fee for the marine zone is collected at Santa Cruz harbor, along with a $5 fee to enter the harbor itself. Use of non-biodegradable suntan lotions or sunscreen is prohibited within the national park.
reviewed
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Bahía Cacaluta
Bahía Cacaluta is about 1km long and protected by an island, though there can be undertow. Snorkeling is best around the island. Behind the beach is a lagoon with bird life. The road to Cacaluta (which branches off just above the parking lot for Maguey) is paved except for the last 1.5km, but it can be a long, hot walk from the pavement's end, and there are no services at the beach itself. A lancha from Santa Cruz Huatulco is a much more pleasant way to get there.
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Playa Zicatella
Long, straight Zicatela is Puerto's happening beach, with enticing cafés, restaurants and accommodations as well as the waves of the legendary 'Mexican Pipeline,' which test the mettle of experienced surfers from far and wide. Nonsurfers beware: the Zicatela waters have a lethal undertow and are definitely not safe for the boardless. Lifeguards rescue several careless people most months (their base, the Cuartel Salvavidas, is in front of Restaurante El Jardín).
reviewed
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Centro de Buceo Sotavento
La Crucecita ( [tel] 587-21-66; Local 18, Plaza Oaxaca Mall, Plaza Principal; [hrs] 9am-9pm); Tangolunda ( [tel] 581-00-51; Local 6, Plaza Las Conchas; [hrs] 10am-5pm Mon-Sat) is a friendly local company offering a range of options from a four-hour introduction (M$975) to full certification (five days; M$3850) to specialty night dives (M$4550). One-/two-tank dives are M$715/975. Sotavento also does four-hour snorkeling trips for M$260 per person (minimum two people).
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Azul Profundo
Several operators on and around Playa del Panteón offer a four-hour, four-beach snorkeling boat trip, including Estacahuite and La Boquilla beaches, with snorkel gear included. En route you should see turtles and, with luck, dolphins and even (from November to May) migrating whales. Azul Profundo does this trip daily at 09:30 and will pick you up and drop you off at your accommodation in Puerto Ángel or Zipolite; amiable guide Chepe speaks English and German.
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Hostal Carlos Einstein
Toward the west end of the beach, this place also boasts a lively scene most evenings, as guests, staff members and the owner (often seen in some type of ceremonial costume of his own making) pass around guitars, patter on African drums and sing trippy songs about their journies along the astral plane. If you’re a traveling musician, you might be able to exchange an evening’s performance for a free night’s stay and breakfast at the (rather dingy) hostel.
reviewed
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Bahía Principal
The central beach is long enough to accommodate restaurants at its west end, a fishing fleet in its center (Playa Principal), and sun worshipers and young body-boarders at its east end (called Playa Marinero). Pelicans wing in inches above the waves, boats bob on the swell, and a few hawkers wander up and down. The smelly water sometimes entering the bay from inaptly named Laguna Agua Dulce will put you off dipping away from Playa Marinero.
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Pascal
Right under the palms on the Playa Principal sands, Pascal from France prepares original and delicious seafood, meat and homemade pasta dishes with rare flair. You might go for the ravioli with ham, peanuts and ricotta, or the shrimp with orange and tequila. There’s a choice of tasty sauces for all pasta dishes, and the seafood is fresh as can be. Your visit might coincide with the occasional live-music or trapeze entertainment.
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