Huatulco

Legend links this coast with the Toltecs and with Quetzalcoatl, said to have raised an indestructible cross here. Chatinos, Zapotecs and Mexica all passed through, but by the Postclassic period the people of the area spoke Pochutec, a language closely related to Nahuatl, and worshipped at a temple to an idol called Coatepetl, "snake hill". At the mouth of the Copalita River a settlement first occupied some 2,500 years ago stood on the border between Zapotec and Mixtec lands.

After the Spanish conquest Huatulco became a port under Hernán Cortés, a lookout for Spanish galleons and a supply point on the Pacific coast. In the late 16th century Francis Drake and Thomas Cavendish both attacked it, raids still remembered in local legend. For the next four centuries the area was little known except for the coffee grown in its hills.

That changed in 1984, when FONATUR, the government's tourism development agency, acquired 21,000 hectares to build a planned resort on the model of Cancún. The people already living there were moved to the old inland town of Santa María Huatulco, roads and services were built, and green zones were set aside between the developments. A national park was decreed in 1998 to protect the western bays. In 2005 Huatulco became the first community in the Americas to receive the Green Globe sustainable tourism certification, and in 2006 it was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. In June 2020 a magnitude 7.4 earthquake centred between La Crucecita and Salina Cruz killed ten people in Oaxaca, and travel guides report that most of the coral in the bays died in a marine heatwave in 2023.

Huatulco is a young place, and its culture is that of the Oaxacan coast more than of any long local tradition. About 80 per cent of visitors are Mexican, so the resort has a family, small-town feel rather than a party one. Only about a fifth of tourism is foreign, partly because international flights are limited.

Its identity is tied to the environment. The planners set aside green zones and built water and sewage treatment plants so that no waste reaches the bays, and the national park protects lowland dry forest, mangroves and the coral communities of the bays. Ecotourism, snorkelling, diving, birdwatching and hiking are central to what the resort offers, and the Festival Música por la Tierra, with rock and pop bands, is held to raise awareness about the environment.

Religious life centres on La Crucecita's parish church, whose cupola holds a 20-metre painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and on the little seaside chapel at Santa Cruz, a favourite place for weddings and baptisms. In the hills, coffee farms keep alive the older economy of the region. The Universidad del Mar has a campus in Huatulco as well.

According to INEGI, the municipality of Santa María Huatulco had more than 50,000 people in 2020. La Crucecita, the service town of the resort, has grown with tourism, and the older town of Santa María Huatulco inland is the municipal seat; Santa Cruz, Chahué and Tangolunda are the beach districts where hotels and holiday homes stand.

Tourism is the economy. Hotel and restaurant workers, taxi drivers, boat operators and guides make up much of the workforce, and the calendar follows the seasons: busy over Christmas, Easter and the dry months from December to April, quieter in the rains. Cruise ships calling at Santa Cruz bring a day's trade for shops and tour agencies. Coffee plantations in the hills still operate, some offering tours.

Life is unhurried. La Crucecita's park is the evening meeting place, colectivo taxis and buses link the communities, and fishing and seafood stalls on the beaches keep part of the coast's older way of life. The growth of the airport and new roads has made this stretch of Oaxaca's coast more popular, and the resort is a stop on the coastal route that also takes in Mazunte, Zipolite and Puerto Escondido.

Huatulco eats from both the sea and Oaxaca's kitchen. Fresh fish and shellfish are sold and cooked on most of the beaches, especially at La Entrega and Maguey, and seafood dominates the menus of Santa Cruz.

Inland Oaxaca's dishes are served everywhere. The tlayuda is a large, crisp tortilla spread with pork lard and beans and topped with quesillo, the region's stringy white cheese; Oaxacan mole is a dark, complex sauce of chillies, spices and chocolate; cecina is thinly sliced cured meat; and chapulines, grasshoppers toasted with chilli, lime and salt, are the snack that surprises visitors. The restaurants in La Crucecita's centre, around its main park, are the place to find this local food at local prices.

The hills behind the resort grow coffee, a crop older than the resort itself. Plantations around the bays still produce and give tours, and Pluma Hidalgo is the name of an organic coffee grown on one of them, among waterfalls and ravines. Mezcal, distilled from roasted agave in Oaxaca's valleys, is the regional spirit poured in the bars.