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I was writing Huatulco restaurant recommendations for a friend and it occurred to me that this would be a good blog posting.  So, here are my picks for places to eat in Huatulco.  I have also included the places we have stayed as well.

Places to Eat

Santa Cruz

Hecho En Mexico
Calle Mitla, just off the square
Santa Cruz
  The fish tacos are out of this world.  It is made with tuna and there is an amazing spicy slaw in the taco.  The combination of hot tuna and cold and spicy slaw are out of this world.  A plate of fish tacos will set you back $40 pesos.  You can order single beef or pork tacos (also very tasty) for $5pesos each.

***There is also a restaurant right on the beach in Santa Cruz.  You head through the square and then over to your left (facing the beach, not the docks with the boats).  There are two blocks of shops and if you go to the second block closest to the beach, there is a restaurant right there on the beach.  They have really tasty shrimp and margaritas to knock your socks off.  Sadly, I can’t remember the name of it, but really it was really tasty.

La Crucecita

TerraCotta Restaurant
Gardenia 902
La Crucecita
Located below the Hotel “Mision de Los Arcos) just off the square near the Cathedral
They have an amazing breakfast there, try the stuffed French Toast, it is a little piece of heaven!  They also have a really great Omelette Ranchero filled with chorizo, chile peppers and quesillo cheese, not exactly great for the waistline, but hey, you’re on vacation right??  Here is their lunch/dinner menu  http://www.misiondelosarcos.com/english/LUNCH.PDF

La Crema
Located on Gardenia, just across from TerraCotta, on the 2nd floor
La Crucecita
great wood fired oven pizza.  The service tends to be a bit slow, but you are on vacation…so relax!  Every pizza is made to order and isn’t good pizza worth waiting for??

For tacos al pastor, go to the square in La Crucecita.  Near the Iguana Bar, you will see a big spit of tacos al pastor meat just waiting no, begging to be paired with a tortilla.  They are only open after 3PM and they make some pretty good tacos al pastor.  I have been there twice and sadly, I can’t remember the name of it.  I will try to remember for next time.

Sabor de Oaxaca
Av. Guamúchil #204
La Crucecita
Traditional Oaxaca cuisine.  I haven’t eaten there because I get my fill of Oaxacan cuisine here.  But, it has had great reviews.  http://www.tomzap.com/sabor.html

Bahia Chahue

L’Echalote
calle Zapotec s/n
Bahia Chahue
Located in the Posada Eden Costa
These folks do international cuisine with a focus on French, Asian and North African.  They have a white board menu and a standard menu, I recommend something off the whiteboard.  It is usually pretty tasty. http://www.edencosta.com/echalote.html

Fond de Gat
Located on the main road
Bahia Chahue
You will see a covered wagon out front.
Very simple dining.  I haven’t been there myself, but the burgers are said to be amazing.  They have a small shop with international foods as well.  They sell imported wines, sake, spices, salami and cheese.  When you live in an ethnic food wasteland, this is a really great store to visit!

Places to Stay

Mision De Los Arcos
Gardenia 902
La Crucecita
Located just off the square near the Cathedral in La Crucecita.  They have nice, clean rooms with air conditioning and cable TV.  The beds are firm and the hot water is plentiful.  This is generally our first choice when we come to Huatulco.  Not to mention, it is right above TerraCotta Restaurant where they have amazing breakfasts!  The big drawback is that they don’t have a pool.  However, they have an arrangement with the Hotel Castillo where you can use their beach club for the day.  It costs about $50 pesos. http://www.misiondelosarcos.com/english/home.htm 

Posada Eden Costa
calle Zapotec s/n
Bahia Chahue
They have really beautiful rooms with firm beds.  Their suites are gorgeous as well and will sleep up to 6 people.  Every room has cable TV and air conditioning.  Try to get a room near the front of the hotel.  If you get one at the back, make sure it is on the first floor. There is the Disco Baby Khryss which runs until about 2AM and can make for a bad night’s sleep if you get one of those other rooms.  They have a great pool and a good restaurant.   http://www.edencosta.com/

Hotel Castillo Huatulco
Boulevard Benito Juarez s/n
Santa Cruz
We stayed at this hotel over Christmas and New Years.  The rooms are clean and comfortable and they all have cable TV and air conditioning.  The have a great pool at the hotel and you also have access to the beach club with another pool.  We had the all inclusive option, so we mostly ate at the hotel.  They serve traditional Mexican fare (as opposed to the other all inclusive hotels that serve up typical buffet food).  The selection is limited to about 5 dishes, but they are all quite good.  Lunches are served at the beach club and you order a la carte.  They are also really good.  This is a very nice hotel.  I wouldn’t recommend it to every all inclusive vacationer, but for the group I was with, it worked out really well.  If I were coming back to Huatulco from Canada, and looking for an AI resort, I would go choose this one again.  http://www.hotelcastillohuatulco.com/ingles/index….

Other Recommendations

Snorkel
There is good and easy snorkeling at Playa Entrega or Playa Maguey.  I think Entrega is better for snorkeling but it tends to be busier than Maguey.

Mazunte
If you are tired of eating, swimming and sunbathing check out Mazunte.  They have a turtle museum there (which I believe is closed on Monday and Tuesday) and there is also a cosmetics cooperative where you can buy all natural shampoos, soaps and creams and stuff.  It is about an hour drive from Tangolunda. 

 
Boat Rides
People offer boat rides right from the beaches in Santa Cruz, I imagine it is the same in Tangolunda.  They will take you out to look for animals and often they will let you hop off the boat and do some snorkeling, depending on the group and the conditions.  It should run you about $150 pesos a person, maybe a bit more because it is high season. 

My driver’s license was set to expire in February 2007.  I originally planned to leave my “good license” in Sarnia and have it renewed at those mall kiosks however I needed a new photo so it was not possible  Recognizing this, I tried to renew my license before leaving for Mexico.  This was quite a test of patience.  The MTO rules state that they cannot renew a license more than 6 months before it expires.  I left on August 2 which was 6 months and 12 days before my license expired and the MTO refused to renew my license for me–no exceptions.  I called, went to a local office and even tried their head office in Toronto with no luck. 

The 800 number did tell me that I could fax a request for temporary renewal of my license.  This would extend my license for another 6 months so I could get back to Canada and renew it. 

I wrote the letter in December and had it faxed off.  I waited patiently for 8 weeks and I received nothing in the mail.  Given that the Mexican postal system can be sketchy at best, I was certain that my license was blowing around the desert or had been eaten by a goat.  I called the MTO office to find out what was going on.  As it turned out, they had not even processed my request for the renewal.  The rep assured me that he would send it through to his supervisor to have it processed immediately. 

I waited 8 more weeks and nothing arrived.  Just last week, I planned to call the MTO again to try to track down my license, but due to the daylight savings time change, Mexico is 2 hours behind, (it changes this weekend) it made it difficult for me to call them on my lunch hour. 

On Monday, I had a surprise.  After 16 weeks, 1 fax and two phone calls, my license finally arrived, in tact.  I compare this with my experience of getting a Oaxacan driver’s license (which took about 1 hour) I am certain the MTO could use to learn a few tricks from the folks here. 

Why was I so worried about my Ontario driver’s license when I had a Mexican one?  Well, we have our car from Canada here and the Mexican Car Importation Rules state that only people with a foreign driver’s license can drive our car, so I NEED to have the Ontario license to drive here in Mexico.  My temporary Ontario license expires on August 21, if we drive back to Canada in August and we take longer than 6 days to get back to Canada, I need the Mexican license to drive through the US and Canada.  Makes perfect sense…Right?

Last week we got a membership to the ADESAC club.  The ADESAC is like a country club for the PEMEX employees.  It has a pool, soccer pitches, tennis courts, squash courts, spinning classes and billiard tables.  It is one of the many perks of working at PEMEX.  Non-Pemex employees can have access to the club, but you must pay a $5,000 peso ($500 CAD) deposit and then a monthly fee of $250 pesos. 

We were not keen on paying such a huge deposit when all we wanted was access to the pool, so we pretty much gave up on the idea until last week. We sent a request to the accountant to make an exception to their policy if we promised only to use the pool. Seeing as we are only here for a short time, they decided to make an exception to their policy and we now have access to the pool.  Officially we are paying for swimming lessons, but they are offered during my working hours, but with the lessons come access to the pool. 

Most of the locals don’t swim.  When they go to the beach, they just go in up to their thighs and then splash around.  The same thing applies to the pools.  The pool at the ADESAC is huge.  It is 2m deep in the shallow end and 3m deep in the deep end but because this one is so deep, it is pretty much empty. 

So, now I am working on becoming a stronger swimmer.  It is going to take practice, but it’s worth the effort.  Not to mention how much of a treat it is to hop in the pool after a long day of 36C weather. 

I have big feet.  People have always been surprised that someone who is 5´4″ (on a tall day) can have size 10 (41 European) feet.  But I do.  Unfortunately, most people in Mexico have small feet. What I would hazard to say by Canadian standards as freakishly small feet.  However, seeing as I am the foreigner living in Mexico, the tables have turned and my normal Canadian feet are seen as freakishly big clown feet here. 

The sizing in Mexico is different for clothes and shoes.  Most people around here are a size 23-25 (and they usually drop the “2″ when they talk about size, so they are 3-5).  I am a gianormous size 27, or a 7.

Before I left, a kind person warned me that if I had big clown feet, that I would have difficulties finding shoes.  However she did say that because I would be living in the Isthmus, the women are a bit bigger there so I might not have problems.  Being proactive, I bought two brand new pairs of sandals in hopes that I would not need to buy new shoes while I was here.  Sadly, my shoes were no match for the heat and dirt of the desert.  I needed new shoes.  

I looked at the shoe stands on the street hoping to find big shoes, but sadly all I ever found where size 22-24.  It was extremely discouraging.  I suddenly became obsessed with people’s feet.  I would constantly look at women’s feet and try to decide if they had big feet like mine and if they did, maybe there would be hope for me to find shoes too. 

This obsession finally paid off.  On the weekend, I was at a birthday party for the German Exchange Student here in Salina Cruz and of course, I started checking out everyone’s feet.  As it turned out, the birthday girl had really big feet.  (OK; normal German girl feet, but big feet for Mexico).  I trapped her in the kitchen and asked her where she got her shoes and discovered that her host mom had given them to her as a Christmas gift.  So, off I went to explain my shoe dilemma to her host mom, who quickly gave me a list of 3 places in Salina Cruz where I might have some luck.  She explained to me that one of the good things about living in Salina Cruz is that it is a port city so they can easily import things like shoes.

With my spirits lifted, we went out shopping for new shoes and as luck would have it, I found a pair of black sandals in my size.  The even better part is that they were relatively cheap, just $129 pesos!!!  Of course, the shoes were made in Brazil, not Mexico,  and they are not a full size 10 like you would buy back in Canada, but they are the best fitting shoe I have found in the isthmus and in much better condition than my other sandals.  Sadly, it is unlikely that I will be able to buy any of the fun, pretty shoes that I see for sale in the street, but at least I won’t have to go barefoot and that is the most important thing!

We are in mango season!  It is just the beginning of the season right now and the official “Mango Festival” happens the first week of April (coinciding this year with Semana Santa/Holy Week).  The most popular type of mango here is the Ataulfi mango, which is a golden mango.  The other is the Philippine type which is more commonly sold in Canadian grocery stores.  The only difference is that the Ataulfi mangoes are smaller so they are the same amount of peeling and cutting for less fruit, but the taste is the same.

We figured it was mango season pretty quickly on our trek to Juchitán this weekend when we saw lots of mango stands along the side of the road (very similar to the fruit stands that you see in the summer in Ontario).  The great part is, you can buy a  a huge basket of mangoes for a ridiculously cheap price.  We stopped on the side of the road and picked up this basket of mangoes for 15 pesos (which is about $1.50 Canadian).  I did a quick count and there were 22 mangoes in the basket. 

The even better part is that we have a friend that has 4 mango trees and each of these trees produces about 400 mangoes per tree, per season.  Yep, that is a pile of them!  Around here, people give them away like Canadians give away their tomatoes.  It is a really good thing. 

Don tells me it is one of two reasons why he came to Mexico (the other reason is garnachas).  We were already spoiled by the fresh seafood, avocados and bananas, now we have to add mangoes to the list too. 

On the weekend our friend made a mango pie.  It was heaven in a tart shell.  I am working on getting the recipe and will post it as soon as I can!  Until then, I’m going to live off mangoes until my skin turns orange or they run out of mangoes–whichever comes first!

It’s been 7 months since I have been in Mexico.  I have dined in some dodgy restaurants, eaten mystery meat and discovered the wonders of street food–all with reckless abandon and without consequences.  I was beginning to believe I had a cast iron stomach and that nothing could take me down! 

Sadly, the warranty on my cast iron stomach ran out.  I got sick.  Sick enough that I had to stay home from work yesterday to recuperate. 

The  university policy states that if we stay home due to illness, we must go to the doctor for a “constancia” so that we get paid for our sick day.  So, yesterday I went to the private doctor around the corner from us and for $15 Canadian dollars, he examined me, gave me a prescription and my doctor’s note. 

After doing some research on the prescription he gave me, I found out that this particular medication was only good at fighting “certain” bacteria, not all.  So I decided to break into our personal medical kit that we brought along and self medicate.  This bag of tricks contains the usual stuff like Tylenol and Band-Aids, but also the wonder drug that works wonders (in 3rd world countries): Cipro!

Cipro became a household word during the anthrax scares of 2001, but it has many other functions aside from treating anthrax.  It is a general antibiotic that pretty much goes in and cleans your clock of all the nasties you have.   We discovered the merits of Cipro when we were traveling in Peru in 2002.  Interested in knowing all the ins and outs of Cipro??  Click here. It is a travelers best friend!

As an interesting side note: most intestinal related illnesses are related to the food that you have eaten in the past 24-48 hours. 24-48 hours before my illness, I did not eat out in restaurants, food stalls or anything like that.  I ate at home and at friend’s houses.  It just goes to show, that you can be as careful (or reckless) as you choose, but ultimately, you just never know if you are going to get something–it could be from the sketchy foodstand on the street, the best restaurant in Lima where the cooks are nuns, at home or at a friends house.

The Rotary Club of Salina Cruz and the Red Cross (Cruz Roja) have a close relationship where both organizations support the other’s fund raising activities. 

On Friday night, I attended the Red Cross Carnival Fundraiser Dance.  It was a costume party held on the local naval base.  The interesting twist to this dance was that it was a women’s only dance.  No Boys Allowed!  Why, you ask?  Well, the rationale is that this gives the women the opportunity to wear whatever they want without having to worry about men leering at them or feeling uncomfortable in any way.

About 200 women attended and the costumes ranged from hippies to pirates to Tahitians to a group of burlesque women.  A friend lent me a costume, so I was dressed up like an Indian woman.  

The dance started at 5 but I had to work until 7 so I arrived late.  The dance was in full swing when I arrived and it was difficult to find my friends as everyone had a costume on.  Fortunately Mary found me and took me over to their table. 

We spent about 2 hours there and then we went to Tere and Delfino’s house for Pozole.  This was probably the best part of the evening.  The pozole was SO good.  It was a red pozole (meaning that it had beef as the main meat rather than chicken).  It had the standard toppings to add: lettuce, onion, radishes and epazote, however they also had green salsa so you could make it as spicy as you like.  Yummy!

After talking some Youth Exchange shop (we can’t get away from it!) we left around 12:30.  Overall, it was a really fun, interesting night. 

If you haven’t seen the cult classic, the Princess Bride, STOP READING NOW. Crawl out from under your popular culture void, go rent the movie and come back to this post.  For those of you who know and love the Princess Bride and are familiar with the story of the Dread Pirate Roberts please continue reading.  Of course, if you are still reading and do not know who the Dread Pirate Roberts is, you can cheat and read the Wikipedia explanation as well.

Remember my posting about Cenaduria Lupita?  Click here to go to my old blog page to refresh your memory.  We have made an unusual discovery.  Lupita’s is the Dread Pirate Roberts of the Isthmus.  Lupita’s has been open since 1983.  There was a person working there that everyone called Lupita, she looked too young to have started a business in 1983, however women between the age of 25 and 45 pretty much all look the same around here and it is difficult to tell how old someone really is.  About 3 weeks ago something strange happened:  Lupita’s shut down for about 3 days.  It reopened and all the staff that were there since October are gone.  Even “Lupita” is gone.  We have been down once since the new staff has arrived.  The food is the same but the magic is gone.  I have not heard anyone being called Lupita so I don’t know if Lupita is truly the Isthmus equivalent to the Dread Pirate Roberts, but it is the only theory that I can come up with.  Sadly, there is a hole in our lives with the “real” Lupita gone.  We are trying to cope with our loss by frequenting the tacos al pastor place to fill the void.