Acapulco: Mexico's Cosmopolitan Urban Beach

Acapulco is a sophisticated and cosmopolitan city that reminds me far more of a city like Miami than it does resort destinations like Cancun.

That's a good thing: it means lots of truly good restaurants--not the tacky American chains that seem to dominate Cancun. It also means lots of great nightclubs, each with unique personalities--not just the loud corporate chain bars playing recorded music too loud. Get out and dance the night away!

Don't miss the cliff divers at La Quebrada: they defy death five times a day by hurling themselves off the cliff walls into the pounding surf below. Awesome!

Take some time to loaf on the beach--I personally like the beach on Isla la Roqueta. Could be the sand, could be that it's a bit away from the crowds, or it could be because I get to feed beer to the burros! Only in Acapulco . . .

Quick Tips:

See the cliff divers twice: the day show is very different from the night shows.

Some of the best shopping is around the Glorieta Diana area.

Nightclubs generally don't start rocking until close to midnight.

Best Way To Get Around:

I would never drive in Acapulco. The drivers are so aggressive that they make the loudest New York City cabbie look like a meek and mild-mannered citizen. "Do not enter" signs seem to mean "please drive here" in Acapulco. "No left turn" signs indicate that you should expect everyone to be turning left. Traffic can be mess. Don't drive!

I generally like the taxis in Acapulco. They are mostly deep-blue-and-white Volkswagen Beetles. Prices are generally fair and there's always plenty of taxis everywhere.

Acapulco also has good buses running along the beaches--look for the modern, brownish-yellow buses--they're even air conditioned, a rarity for local buses in Mexico!

Are you nostalgic? Do you have fond memories of the 1950s? Did you love kicking back in front of the TV watching John Wayne flicks, or marvelling at Johnny Weissmuller in his Tarzan movies?

I grew up with guys like the Duke and Tarzan as my Saturday movie idols, and when I found out that they were among the group of Hollywood stars who once owned the Flamingo Hotel as their own private paradise, I just had to spend a night!

The hotel is old and feels much like a 1950s kind of place, yet it's remarkably well maintained and clean and the restaurant continues to serve excellent food in a wonderfully airy setting on a bluff 450-feet up from pounding surf below. Try the Coco Locos--it's rumored to be the bar where the drink got its start.

Don't stay here though if you insist on big, new, corporate-style hotels. This place is cool, hip, funky, and very 1950s. Many rooms have no air conditioning or TV. The Flamingo is decidedly not for everyone!

I stayed in "The Tarzan House," a very unique suite that was the preferred room of both John Wayne and Johnny Weissmuller. Surprisingly, it's affordable! It's set apart from the rest of the hotel, has its own stone fortress part-way down a cliff, and several hammocks strung around the round patio. It's private and I've seldom been as relaxed as I was, lying out on the hammocks here, sipping a cool Negra Modelo, reading a book, and just letting the day slip away from me . . .

Ahhhh! Acapulco!

I love good Belgian cuisine. It offers the complexity and richness of the best French dishes, but with the healthy enthusiasm and portion-size of German food. A winning combination in my book!

As testament to Acapulco's cosmopolitan character, La Petite Belgique is a very authentic Belgian-style restaurant in the heart of this resort town. The owner is a Belgian chef who, after cooking for 20 years in the fine restaurants of Brussels, retired to Acapulco where he runs La Petite Belgique with his Mexican wife.

The dining room is attractive, fairly informal, and has a nice view of the beach from one window and a less-appealing parking garage view from the other.

Food is the big reason to come to La Petite Belgique. Start dinner off with an Affligem Abbey ale--probably the only place in Acapulco you can get a genuine Belgian ale. Try one of the vast array of terrines displayed in the refrigerated cases; they're made fresh each day and are positively, decadently rich!

Steamed mussels always remind me of Belgian cooking and, after ordering the mussels, an enormous pot was brought out--all for me! Guy, the owner, came over to the table and chatted for a bit about the food: the mussels are imported from Belgium, flown into Acapulco daily, and steamed in white wine with onions and fresh herbs. Magnificent!

If you're looking for a nice place to eat in Acapulco, ir you're a little tired of the steady diet of Mexican fare and grilled seafood (I know, that's hard to get tired of), head over to La Petite Belgique for a taste of Europe!

"When in Rome, do as the Romans, but when in Acapulco, don't do as the divers."

--Tio Gringo

If there is a single most spectacular sight in Acapulco that nobody should miss, it MUST be the sight of local divers jumping off the cliffs at La Quebrada.

At various times during the day, and into the evening, tourists and locals gather on the platform decks near the El Mirador hotel to watch the young men swim across the narrow channel into the rocks, scale the cliff, pray to God (good strategy), and then dive 120 feet down into the raging waves as they smash against the base of the cliff.

Dramatic? You bet your garbanzos!

Sunsets can be spectacular here, and you really don't know whether to concentrate on the spectacle of the divers or the majesty of God's own daily fireworks display. Either way, you come up a winner!

At night, the divers hold torches as they jump and they still do two divers at once. These guys have some serious cojones!

The best place to watch is from the lowest public platform. The decks at La Perla restaurant inside the El Mirador hotel are good, too, but drinks cost out the yin-yang. Some people charter boats to see the spectacle from the water, but I have no idea what that costs. I also see cheapskates parking their cars along the arched bridges of Av. Lopez Mateos, but you'd need binoculars to get a good view from there . . . best to just pay a couple pesos to walk down to the lower public platform--no sense being a penny-pincher for a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle like this.

In all honesty, I don't think the beaches at Acapulco are as good as those in Cancun or Ixtapa, but let's face it, a bad day at a mediocre beach STILL beats a great day at work!

My family took one of the boats over to Playa la Roqueta for the day. We'd heard the beach was good, and it is--not great, but good. It's fairly large and a very short boat trip from downtown.

There were several restaurants on the island and, like many Mexican beach areas, if you hang out at the restaurant and drink their beer, you can use their tables, umbrellas, and rest rooms for free. We picked one of the cleaner looking restaurants and set up camp for the day, ordering a few shrimp cocktails and a round of chilly brewskis while the kids dashed off to play in the water and commence sandcastle construction projects.

The weirdest thing about this beach is that a herd of burros that lives on the island has developed a taste for cold beer (can't say that I blame them). They come around to the tables and try to bum brewskis off you. I thought the burros were just local color, sort of like the ponies on Assateague Island, but no, a guy at the next table went up to one of the burros, held up a bottle of Corona, and the burro proceeded to chug-a-lug the bottle out of the guy's hand! It looked like so much fun that I had to try it too (but with an Indio--I have much better taste in beers than some folks).

We walked up to the lighthouse, which was just a short walk away, and sat on the rocks for a while, just loving the sunshine and the light sea breeze, then we wandered over to the small "zoo." Small is the operative word here. There couldn't be more than a dozen or so animals in rickety cages. PETA members would be aghast at this island, no doubt . . .

Getting to the island is easy--there are boats going over every few minutes. I've heard that some leave from Playa Caleta, but we caught a ferry at Playa Larga. Some of the ferries have glass bottoms so you can see the fish, or the local curiosity (more like a hokey gimmick): a submerged statue of the Virgin Mary.

Overall, a pretty nice day, and inexpensive to boot.

The whitewashed walls of the old San Diego fort stand as a testament to Acapulco's status as a long-standing port city and date back to the Spanish colonial era. It's also one of the city's best vantage points for a panoramic harbor view; plus, there's an interesting local art and history museum housed inside.

The fort was actually built in 1617, but was partly destroyed in 1776 by an earthquake. When it was rebuilt, the Spanish added a moat (without gators in it--darn!)

It cost us about $1.50 to go into the museum, which wasn't bad for a pretty cool little place. A series of exhibit rooms focused on different time periods in Acapulco's history, starting from pre-colonial days and finishing with fairly recent times. It's not a huge museum, but they don't charge an arm and a leg to get in either . . .

The fort is located on a hill overlooking the harbor near the big port facility where the cargo ships and cruise ships dock. It's right on Costera Aleman--the city's main drag and is reached by climbing 80-gazillion steps (I counted). If you're lazy, take a taxi--they go in the back way and wind through the neighborhood on the backside of the hill. You'll probably need less rest under the trees than I did . . . whew!