Since Zihuatanejo was between Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco, and seemed to have a nice mix of things to do, I thought I’d check it out. I didn’t realize until after I made my plans that it was also the Mexican beach town from the movie Shawshank Redemption.
The last scene in the movie where Red joins Andy on the beach was actually filmed in the Virgin Islands, not Zihuatanejo. That doesn’t take anything away from the power of the movie nor the actual beauty of the town, as you can see from the pictures below.
Just north of Zihuatanejo is the resort town of Ixtapa. While, Zihua is a traditional fishing town with tourism overlaid on it, Ixtapa is a planned resort area created from scratch by the Mexican government in the 1970s. While the beach is public property, Ixtapa has a ton of private condos and hotels that, except for a few gaps, block off access to most of the beach. So people can enjoy the whole beach, but have limited places to get to it.
While there was not much surf at Ixtapa proper, there were places around with good surf. One of the most well known is Playa Linda, which is about a 15 minute drive north of Ixtapa. I went there 3 days with the only formal surf shop/school in town: Catcha L’Ola (ola means wave in Spanish). Brothers Leo and Edgar started the shop in 1998, they were both competitive surfers in Mexico. The cool part is that they are friends with Roger Ramirez, the owner of Oasis Surf Academy in Playa Escondido, the school I was with the whole time I was there earlier this year. They are also friends with Gato in Sayulita, who gave me a lesson when I was up there a few weeks ago. Also, Leo is president of the surfing federation in Guerrero. He was organizing a contest for surfers aged 14-19 in Acapulco the second weekend I was in Zihua.
The first day the waves were large, officially 5-8 feet, but many clean up sets were double overhead. Edgar still took me out for a lesson. I did catch a bunch of waves with his help, but getting back out was a bitch. Twice it took me about 20 minutes. My right shoulder was pretty messed up from all of that. Stephen from Orange County joined us for the day. He was down for the week with his wife and was surfing a couple of days. He’d been surfing since he was a kid and was incredibly impressed I actually hung through it all. He was even having trouble getting lined up on some of these waves, and he’d surfed here a few times in the past.
The second day the waves were down a bit to 4-7 feet, but the clean up sets weren’t nearly as big. I was out by myself that day. Edgar was about 100 meters north giving a beginner lesson to a gal from Mexico City in the whitewater. I couldn’t generate enough speed with my should to catch any waves. The third day the waves were much smaller with better shape. I finally caught one on my own.
On the fourth day, Leo, Stephen and I went down to another break called Barra de Potosi. It was incredibly beautiful and the waves were really small. I caught a ton of waves, but also missed a lot because of how bad my right shoulder felt. I was still really hurting from the first day at Playa Linda. I ended up shutting down my surfing here after that day because of the pain. That part really sucked.
The cool aspect of all of this is that it was the first time Leo had been in the water since January. He got hit really bad with Covid in January. It was his second bout with Covid. He then needed a hernia surgery. So it was wonderful to see someone who’d been in the water his whole life be able to get back in for the first time in 9 months. It was a special day for him and, therefore, for us.
Since I had to stop surfing because of my shoulder pain (which seems to be some type of rotator cuff strain, and I’ve started treating it as such), I got in a couple of days of SUP from the tranquil beach of La Ropa.
I had a very basic, inexpensive Airbnb in Zihua. The best part was the host family. They had 10 apartments there and were incredibly responsive for some of the small repair work the apartment needed. They even brought over a bottle of wine on the second day.
