ChrisJenTravel.com – Honeymoon Trek

We arrived at Zihau, a city that we now have a great affinity for since it took in our homeless puppy with open arms. Remember at the end of Shawshank Redemption when Andy escapes to a tiny fishing village in Mexico – Zihautanejo? Well it isn’t a small village anymore – the picturesque bay, great fishing, diving and friendly people have attracted hordes of tourists – but fortunately it still has the feel of a small town and most of the charm. The town also serves as the cultural base for the nearby resort town of Ixtapa, which is set up more like Disney World.

Zihua is set between the mountains and the bay, which holds charter fishing boats, pangas (smaller boats of the local fishermen) and sailboats. The streets are lined with markets, vendors, hotels, restaurants, shops and artists, but somehow it doesn’t have a resort-touristy feel. Despite having a population of around 50,000, it’s also fairly clean and feels very safe. You can tell that the locals all take great pride in its Mexican charm and beauty. The streets are swept religiously and the people all say hi and smile as you walk by. As you wind your way through the cobblestone streets that encompass the bay, you see soccer games being played and a busy, bustling city full of heritage and tradition. It’s the first large town we have really enjoyed and wanted to settle in for a while. [read on]

I woke up determined to find the cool part of Troncones and hopefully some of the surf breaks I had read about. First I drove 5 kilometers down the coastal road but could find only 2 spots that even had beach access. All there was were huge guest houses and B&Bs behind 8ft walls and solid wood gates. All the way down the beach. Oh, and some new behemoths being built. This was the furthest thing from real Mexico I had seen yet – more like Laguna Beach with dirt roads. I finally found one of the breaks, Troncones Point and after walking through the lobby of an exclusive bungalow resort and pretending I was deciding whether to stay there. Although there was a nice small left hand point break out back there were also three yuppies sipping morning coffee with their brand new longboards at their side, presumably waiting for their lessons.

I drove back to the hotel disgusted and told Jenny about the rest of the town – we quickly decided we wouldn’t be returning or spending any of our money there. We packed up and left town to try to find two other breaks in the area: The Ranch and Saladita. One of our friends from Barra de Nexpa had written down some directions from memory.

We followed the directions to Saladita but they must have had a few mistakes as we ended up on a muddy road in the middle of some farms. Somehow we found our way back to the right road and asked directions, eventually pulling up in front of the beach. True to the stories, Saladita is a very long, easy breaking left hand wave. It comes in around a point and breaks consistently over a rock reef. It was breaking at about waist high while we were there, perfect for longboarding and, more importantly, perfect to give Jenny some great practice. Only problem was she was still hurting from the ramen noodle incident several nights before and we didn’t want to chance further injury. [read on]