Mexico's latest resort

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Geo: 15.85, -96.32

Sunday 29/03/09 Huatulco - Mexico Temps Air 38°C Sea 25°C

Huatulco is the latest resort to be created from scratch by Mexico's tourism agency and consists of nine bays and 36 beaches many of which can only be reached by boat. In an attempt to prevent outside interests building hotels and complexes 70% of the bays and the surrounding areas have been acquired and made into a national park so they'll never be developed. The beaches are pristine and the waters crystal clear, helped by the fact that as a new resort with concerns for environmental issues all waste water is treated before being discharged into the sea.

We took a boat journey to view some of the surrounding bays with a stop off at one of the beaches where we took the opportunity to swim in the cool refreshing waters. The boat had a free bar and provided masses of free fruit, pineapples, melon, and water melon. The Margarita's made on board were some of the best I've ever had, that coupled with the fact that they're served in the equivalent of ½ pint glasses rather than your usual cocktail glasses made for a very happy group of passengers. On the way back we were treated to a natural display of stingrays jumping almost vertically, clean out of the water, whether they were pursuing prey or were being preyed upon I've no idea but it was beautiful sight.

By the time we returned to the harbour the Holland- America cruise liner Statendam was berthed on the other side of the pier, the local beach was along side the pier was crowed to capacity and the little town, swamping with tourists. Fortunately for us on our boat journey we'd noticed a little beach just around the corner, so we took the opportunity to walk around the harbour to it and spent the afternoon there along with the locals, just swimming around and chilling out, we were the only non natives there, not one of the potential 4000 passengers from either of the 2 cruise ships ventured to this little beach.

The whole area is now starting to open up with more cruise ships adding the destination to their itinery, and more hotels planned for the future, so we felt fortunate to have been there when it was still a quite, and tranquil haven, long before the inevitable increase in tourist trade

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