September 18 to 26, 2019

I really like Playa del Carmen but I have been there a lot in the last six years. I was looking for an alternative place to go on vacation. I posted a question on the Trip Advisor forum for Playa asking for places similar to Playa. The consensus was Huatulco.

I found a dive shop website for a Huatulco Huatulco dive shop. They said they encounter whales, mantas, sharks and dolphins on their dives. They were honest about the visibility, they said sometimes it is 30 feet or less but it can be 100 feet. If you are not a diver, when I dive in the Caribbean, I can routinely have 100 foot visibility.

What I didn’t know when I booked my ticket is that Huatulco is extremely slow during September. As my trip got closer, I started contacting dive shops in Huatulco and the reply I got from all but one of them is that are closed the month of September. I was kind of hoping for a hurricane to threaten (but not hit of course) Huatulco so I could cancel my tickets.

Getting to Huatulco

 My flight from Minneapolis to Huatulco connected in Mexico City where I had a four hour layover. Luckily, I was able to buy data for my TelCel sim so I could at least check email.

I discovered that the gates are not clearly marked at the Mexico City airport. I had a four hour layover and I almost missed my flight because I couldn’t find my gate.

Once I landed in Huatulco it took forever to get my luggage. My bags were almost the last one on the carousel.

I booked a rental car for my trip because it was $7 a day through Hertz. It took a while to get the rental car because the agent had a tablet with my contract. He walked around the car taking many photos of the car from all angles. It turns out I was glad he did.

The drive from the airport to my hotel was spectacular. The car serpentined down the hill toward my hotel on the ocean. The vistas were beautiful, there was jungle on both sides of the road and vistas of the blue ocean below.

Holiday Inn Huatulco

The hotel is located on the marina. My room overlooked the marina. The hotel was close to everything in the tourist area of the town.

My room was large. The hotel wasn’t new but it was kept up nicely. There was a restaurant in the hotel called Restaurante Jaguar, they had a Starbucks in the lobby and a bar by the pool.

House keeping was obsessive. I came back to my room in the afternoon one day and the room hadn’t been cleaned yet. I was going to hang out in the room for a while so I put the “Do not Disturb” sign out.

I got a knock a little while later and in broken English the maid asked me if I wanted my room cleaned. I said no. A while later I got a call from the front desk asking me if I wanted my room cleaned and I assured them that I did not. This happened a couple of times.

The hotel did have underground parking at no extra cost.

Diving

I found  a couple of dive shops in town that were going out. One was a little shop next to the hotel that sold boat tours, etc and diving. I stopped in one evening on my way back to my room and asked if they were going out. The person at the shop made a call and arranged for diving the next day.

We had two divers. The other diver was from South America. It as windy so our small boat was getting bounce d around by the waves. We stayed close to the cliffs for protection on the way out and back.

The water was 86F. It was the warmest I have ever dove in. I did not need a wetsuit. Then fish were similar to what I see in the Caribbean but different colored or their bodies were a slightly different shape. I saw huge walls of coral but it was bleached. Since it was choppy the visibility was about forty feet, so not great. I opted to not book another dive. The visibility would be bad for the next several days at least so it wasn’t worthwhile.

Food

Café Huatulco was my favorite restaurant. It is basically a gazebo in the middle of the central Huatulco park. I didn’t eat there my first night because it didn’t look like a restaurant. It looked like a gazebo not a restaurant. I had breakfast there and also stopped in for a lattes several days. I had great, really inexpensive, tamales and quesadillas for dinner.

I had dinner at Oro Negro twice. They have good pizza and Italian food and the servers are friendly.

I read many great reviews on Trip Advisor about La Bocana at Playa Bocana. The beach is located outside town. When I arrived at La Bocana there were only a couple of tables with people. The restaurant across the street was packed. Once I saw all the people at the other restaurant, I had buyer’s remorse. Should I have eaten there? The answer is, yes I should have. This was my worst meal on vacation. My sandwich was barely edible.

I had dinner Vel el Mar. It is a very nice restaurant on the beach near the pier that served average pasta. I was pretty sure, that because of the location, the pasta would not anything to write home about.

One of the restaurants in the beach in Huatulco was Jessymar. The owner talked to me every time I walked by the square in town and asked me to eat at his restaurant. I gave in one day. It was a little expensive but good.

I had breakfast and/or coffee at Nikos Coffee several times. It is on the edge of town but it is worth the small walk or drive to get there.

I walked to Club de Playa Chahue to hang out for the day and have lunch. It is a really nice bar, restaurant, hotel on Chahue Beach. I had really good fish tacos. The service was excellent. I ate at the restaurant and then moved to a palapa to enjoy the beautiful beach and maybe another beer or two. The waiter was very friendly and was always checking to see if I wanted another beer.

The Two (or more) Huatulcos

Santa Maria Huatulco is the original city of Huatulco. It is located in the hills northwest of the airport. I never made it there and I would guess a lot of tourists head to the ocean rather than the Santa Maria Huatulco.

That said, the section I stayed in is officially Santa Cruz Huatulco or just Huatulco but that area is divided in to the tourist area which is by the ocean and the main town that is mostly locals which is a mile uphill from the there.

There is a beautiful walking path that starts near the Holiday Inn and ends on the outskirts of the main town about a mile away. It is paved and mostly lined with trees and plants. There are sections that are a little barren but is a nice walk.

I walked the trail midday. The vista when I looked back was beautiful but the hike was hot. I was sweating shortly after I got on the trail and drenched by the time, I exited the other end.

The Holiday Inn is next to the marina but it is not on the beach. It took me a day to figure out that I had to walk past Café Huatulco and past the line of buildings in the south end of the café to get to the beach.

The beach is lined with restaurants. The ones I ate at were okay but most of the good food was a few blocks away, off the beach.

The day I walked the path to the other part of town I was looking for a dive shop, which I never found but I did spend some time waking through the older part of Huatulco. It is a typical Mexican city with several small restaurant on each block, small mom and pop shot that sell a variety of goods and street vendors. The streets are narrow and busy with people and traffic.

Beaches

If you are staying in Huatulco and want to see more than the few near by beaches you will need a rental car. I would be too expensive to take cabs. Benito Juarez Boulevard which runs along the ocean is a beautiful four lane boulevard. So that makes driving very easy. When I walked into the older section of Huatulco I was glad that I waked not driven. Teying to navigate the narrow roads and dodge walkers and other cars would have been a challenge.

La Bocana

La Bocana was the furthest beach I visited. It is a simple drive from The Holiday Inn with gorgeous vistas. Since it was September the beach was nearly deserted, I only saw several other people on the beach.

La Bocana is a spectacular beach with cliffs on one side and crashing waves on the other. Normally there would be surfers but this was slow season so I did not see one. I believe that this is not normally a good swimming beach, at least it wasn’t the day I was there.

Chahue Beach

It is a not short walk from the Holiday Inn to the beach but it is walkable for those people how prefer to have several beers with lunch and not drive afterward.

The beach was absolutely pristine the day I was there. No seaweed, no plastic, no garbage and no seashells. Unfortunately the red flag was out so I could not swim.

Playa Santa Cruz

This is the main beach in Huatulco. It is a beautiful sand beach that is lined with restaurants. Even though it apparently the slowest month of the year, these restaurants were usually busy.

Playa Entrada

This beach is a short drive from Huatulco. I assumed it would only have a couple of bars and restaurants but parking was scarce and it was off season. I am not sure what they would do during Christmas, I guess people would have to take cabs.

I had lunch there and I brought my snorkel gear. The water was warmer than the Caribbean, 86 degrees but, like diving, not nearly as clear. They also don’t have the reefs like the Caribbean. There are rock structures covered with coral but nothing as picturesque as the Caribbean.

Entrada isn’t a huge beach. However, it is mostly lines with restaurants and bars. It is one of the few beaches that I could swim at during my stay.

Going Home

I returned my rental car with plenty of time before my flight. The rental car agent walked around the car to inspect it for new dents and scratches. He found a small abrasion that did not appear in the picture. I was sure that I did not cause the scrape because the car sat in the Holiday Inn garage for most of the trip. I asked the agent to zoom in on the picture and when he did the scrape appeared. It was a little irritating.

I had a one hour lay over in Mexico City. My next flight was to Atlanta where I cleared customs and immigration in record time. I grabbed dinner before boarding my flight to Minneapolis. Once home it was past midnight so I grabbed an Uber rather than ask my wife to pick me up.

Recap

Huatulco is a beautiful coastal city with extremely friendly people and good inexpensive food. The beaches are beautiful but not always swimmable. There are a lot of beaches to explore. If you get tired of Huatulco there are a lot of little towns up down the coast to explore.

But…I still like Playa better. It is personal preference.  I missed the good diving of the Caribbean. The beaches are better but they are smaller in Huatulco. In playa I can take an hour and a half walk in the beach but not so in Huatulco.

That said, erosion has taken its toll on the Playa beaches and sargassum has too so it is harder every year to enjoy the beach.

Playa is a much larger town than Huatulco so there are many more options for food but the quality of food in both locations are good.

Playa is still my favorite place to vacation. Huatulco if a very nice city but it is a little small for me. I might enjoy my vacation if I were to return but it doesn’t work for me. It is still a good place to visit.