Zipolite
Encyclopedia
Playa Zipolite is a beach community located in San Pedro Pochutla
municipality on the southern coast of Oaxaca
state in Mexico. It is located between Huatulco
and Puerto Escondido and is part of the “Riviera Oaxaqueña” area. Zipolite is best known as being one of Mexico’s very few nude beaches and for retaining much of the hippie
culture that made it notable in the 1960s and 1970s. The name Zipolite, sometimes spelled Sipolite or Cipolite probably comes from the Nahuatl
word sipolitlan or zipotli, meaning "bumpy place" or "place of continuous bumps or hills". However, some claim the name means “beach of the dead” in either Nahuatl or Zapotec
because of dangerous underwater currents just offshore. The beach is currently popular with foreign tourists, especially backpackers, who stay in one of the many rustic cabins or camping spaces that line the beach.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Zipolite was hard hit by two hurricanes and a fire. The first hurricane was Hurricane Pauline
on 7 October 1997, a category four storm which destroyed nearly everything in town with strong flooding, leaving it -along with Mazunte
and Puerto Ángel
- cut off from the mainland, but there were no deaths. Next was Hurricane Rick
on 9 November 1997. While not as strong as Pauline, the storm damaged roads and other infrastructure that was only partially rebuilt after Pauline. The last disaster to cause major damage was a fire that broke out on 21 February 2001, burning many of the wood and palm-thatched structures that were on the beach.
Since its beginnings in the 1960s, Zipolite has evolved from handful of beachfront cabanas and palm-thatched palapas
to concrete, but still basic, hotels and other structures with a few more amenities. Behind the line of beachfront construction is now an area called Colonia Roca Blanca with a street known informally as the Adoquin which has become the town center. Recently, the municipality has added tourist information services and police patrols on the beach both day and night during the busy season.
. The main drag is the only paved street within the community, it is officially called the “Paisan” but locals call it the Adoquin. Further behind the beach and Adoquin is a larger road that connects Zipolite with other local communities such as San Agustinillo
and Puerto Angel.
There are no building codes enforced here, so constructions vary as to materials and quality. There are no banking services here. The closest automated teller machine
s (ATMs) are in Puerto Angel and the closest bank branches are in Pochutla. There is no currency exchange either, but many places take U.S. dollars. Almost all the establishments that face the beach have palapa sheltered restaurants and bars in front and lodging in the back. These lodgings can vary from wood huts, to simple concrete structures and often include hammocks and places to pitch tents. Most baths are shared. There is no high-rise development here and almost none of the lodgings offer air conditioning or hot water.
Zipolite also has a variety of restaurants from the standard Mexican to international cuisine and vegetarian choices. Many of the local restaurants are owned by expatriate Italians and serve pasta dishes as well as pizza. One restaurant serves crepe
s because of its French expatriate owner. Nightlife in Zipolite is subdued. Many of the beachfront hotels have their own small bars. and there are a number of small nightclubs such as Zipolipas and La Puesta.
Zipolite still attracts those drawn to the hippie lifestyle. Today, music from artists such as The Doors
, Bob Marley
, Santana
and others from that time can still be heard. Attitudes about drug use, in particular marijuana, are also typically relaxed.
The police station is largely unmanned, but extra efforts for security are implemented during busy seasons such as Christmas and Easter week, supplementing the normal local auxiliary police with regular patrolmen from San Pedro Pochutla. Other efforts include checking for intoxicated drivers and boaters in Zipolite and other area beaches.
Zipolite can be reached by flying into Huatulco or Puerto Escondido and traveling on coastal highway 200. It can also be reached by road from Oaxaca City via Highway 175, which is a narrow, very winding road that takes six or seven hours to traverse. This highway ends at Puerto Angel and there are taxis that travel between this port and Zipolite.
.” It stretches from a small isolate cove called Playa del Amor on the east side to the new age Shambala retreat on the west end which is partially sheltered by rocks. Behind this is, sea cliffs rise. The beach is lined by palm trees and rustic cabins, hotel rooms and hammocks with a few more sophisticated lodgings on the west end.
This beach is part of the Riviera Oaxaqueño, which includes the nearby beaches of Puerto Angel and San Agustinillo. This beach is favored by foreign tourists, most of whom are backpackers and by the Mexican middle class, especially during Holy Week vacation in Mexico. The beach’s appeal stems from being one of very few beaches in which nudity is tolerated, however it is mostly practiced on the sheltered far east Playa del Amor and the far west end.
Swimming is practiced here but caution is strongly advised. Waves are strong in the afternoon, which is good for surfing and undertow is always strong. The ocean just offshore has strong currents that flow in circular patterns, some of which push swimmers toward shore and some which can pull swimmers out to sea. These currents are strong but not very wide. Swimmers have regularly drowned, prompting the creation of a volunteer lifeguard team and a flag system to indicate where and when it is safest to swim. The lifeguard team was founded in 1995 and trained by local charity Piña Palmera and U.S. citizen Joaquin Venado. In 1996, drownings at this beach were cut in half. The lifeguard service currently has ten lifeguards, an ATV, a jet ski, radios and other equipment provided by the state government. From 2007 to 2009, there have been no drowning deaths at Zipolite, a record, but there have been 180 registered rescues.
zipolite trip advisor
lonely planet zipolite
San Pedro Pochutla
San Pedro Pochutla is a city and municipality located in the south of Oaxaca state, Mexico next to the Pacific Ocean.It is an important commercial, transportation and administrative hub for the Pochutla District in the east of the Costa Region. Pochutla is located at the junction of coastal...
municipality on the southern coast of Oaxaca
Oaxaca
Oaxaca , , officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca is one of the 31 states which, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided into 571 municipalities; of which 418 are governed by the system of customs and traditions...
state in Mexico. It is located between Huatulco
Huatulco
Huatulco , centered on the town of La Crucecita, is a tourist development in Mexico. It is located on the Pacific coast in the state of Oaxaca. Huatulco's tourism industry is centered on its nine bays thus the name Bahias de Huatulco but has since been unofficially shortened to simply Huatulco...
and Puerto Escondido and is part of the “Riviera Oaxaqueña” area. Zipolite is best known as being one of Mexico’s very few nude beaches and for retaining much of the hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
culture that made it notable in the 1960s and 1970s. The name Zipolite, sometimes spelled Sipolite or Cipolite probably comes from the Nahuatl
Nahuatl
Nahuatl is thought to mean "a good, clear sound" This language name has several spellings, among them náhuatl , Naoatl, Nauatl, Nahuatl, Nawatl. In a back formation from the name of the language, the ethnic group of Nahuatl speakers are called Nahua...
word sipolitlan or zipotli, meaning "bumpy place" or "place of continuous bumps or hills". However, some claim the name means “beach of the dead” in either Nahuatl or Zapotec
Zapotec language
The Zapotec language are a group of closely related indigenous Mesoamerican languages spoken by the Zapotec people from the southwestern-central highlands of Mexico. Present-day native speakers are estimated to number over half a million, with the majority inhabiting the state of Oaxaca....
because of dangerous underwater currents just offshore. The beach is currently popular with foreign tourists, especially backpackers, who stay in one of the many rustic cabins or camping spaces that line the beach.
History
Archeological finds at the east end of the beach shows that the area has a long history, but for the first half of the 20th century only one family lived here. In the 1960s and 1970s, counterculture hippies began to congregate here in part due to the beach’s isolated nature. At the time, there was little law enforcement, and drug use became common. In the 70s and 80s the beach gained a reputation in Mexico and among foreign travelers as a free-love paradise.In the 1990s and early 2000s, Zipolite was hard hit by two hurricanes and a fire. The first hurricane was Hurricane Pauline
Hurricane Pauline
Hurricane Pauline was one of the strongest and deadliest Pacific hurricanes to make landfall on Mexico. The sixteenth tropical storm, eighth hurricane, and seventh major hurricane of the 1997 Pacific hurricane season, Pauline developed out of a tropical wave on October 5 about 250 miles ...
on 7 October 1997, a category four storm which destroyed nearly everything in town with strong flooding, leaving it -along with Mazunte
Mazunte
Mazunte is a small beach town on the Pacific coast in Oaxaca, Mexico. Mazunte is located 22 km southeast of San Pedro Pochutla on coastal Highway 200. Mazunte is located some 10 km to the west of Puerto Angel and just about 1 km from San Agustinillo and 264 km south of the...
and Puerto Ángel
Puerto Ángel
Puerto Ángel is a small coastal town in the Mexican state of Oaxaca located in the municipality of San Pedro Pochutla. It, along with San Agustinillo and Playa Zipolite are known as the "Riviera Oaxaqueña. It is located 9 km south of city of Pochutla fifty km west of Huatulco and eighty km...
- cut off from the mainland, but there were no deaths. Next was Hurricane Rick
Hurricane Rick (1997)
Hurricane Rick was the last hurricane in the 1997 Pacific hurricane season, the last named storm to form in the eastern Pacific, the second-last named storm of the season, and the second latest hurricane ever to make landfall in Mexico. Rick was a short-lived Category 2 hurricane on the...
on 9 November 1997. While not as strong as Pauline, the storm damaged roads and other infrastructure that was only partially rebuilt after Pauline. The last disaster to cause major damage was a fire that broke out on 21 February 2001, burning many of the wood and palm-thatched structures that were on the beach.
Since its beginnings in the 1960s, Zipolite has evolved from handful of beachfront cabanas and palm-thatched palapas
Palapa (Spanish)
A palapa is an open-sided dwelling with a thatched roof made of dried palm leaves. It is very useful in hot weather and, therefore, very common in Mexican beaches, such as in Acapulco...
to concrete, but still basic, hotels and other structures with a few more amenities. Behind the line of beachfront construction is now an area called Colonia Roca Blanca with a street known informally as the Adoquin which has become the town center. Recently, the municipality has added tourist information services and police patrols on the beach both day and night during the busy season.
The community
The community known as Zipolite consists of a stretch of beach with a street that parallels it. It has one named neighborhood, Roca Blanca, situated at the western end where most of the hotels and restaurants are located. Roca Blanca is a recent creation and is named for the island or large rock just off the shore, which is white due to bird guanoGuano
Guano is the excrement of seabirds, cave dwelling bats, and seals. Guano manure is an effective fertilizer due to its high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen and also its lack of odor. It was an important source of nitrates for gunpowder...
. The main drag is the only paved street within the community, it is officially called the “Paisan” but locals call it the Adoquin. Further behind the beach and Adoquin is a larger road that connects Zipolite with other local communities such as San Agustinillo
San Agustinillo
San Agustinillo consists of a small fishing village and a stretch of beach at a place with the Sierra Madre del Sur meets the Pacific Ocean in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. It is located in the municipality of Santa María Tonameca just east of the coastal communities of Mazunte and La Ventanilla,...
and Puerto Angel.
There are no building codes enforced here, so constructions vary as to materials and quality. There are no banking services here. The closest automated teller machine
Automated teller machine
An automated teller machine or automatic teller machine, also known as a Cashpoint , cash machine or sometimes a hole in the wall in British English, is a computerised telecommunications device that provides the clients of a financial institution with access to financial transactions in a public...
s (ATMs) are in Puerto Angel and the closest bank branches are in Pochutla. There is no currency exchange either, but many places take U.S. dollars. Almost all the establishments that face the beach have palapa sheltered restaurants and bars in front and lodging in the back. These lodgings can vary from wood huts, to simple concrete structures and often include hammocks and places to pitch tents. Most baths are shared. There is no high-rise development here and almost none of the lodgings offer air conditioning or hot water.
Zipolite also has a variety of restaurants from the standard Mexican to international cuisine and vegetarian choices. Many of the local restaurants are owned by expatriate Italians and serve pasta dishes as well as pizza. One restaurant serves crepe
Crêpe
A crêpe or crepe , is a type of very thin pancake, usually made from wheat flour or buckwheat flour . The word is of French origin, deriving from the Latin crispa, meaning "curled". While crêpes originate from Brittany, a region in the northwest of France, their consumption is widespread in France...
s because of its French expatriate owner. Nightlife in Zipolite is subdued. Many of the beachfront hotels have their own small bars. and there are a number of small nightclubs such as Zipolipas and La Puesta.
Zipolite still attracts those drawn to the hippie lifestyle. Today, music from artists such as The Doors
The Doors
The Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...
, Bob Marley
Bob Marley
Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley, OM was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae band Bob Marley & The Wailers...
, Santana
Santana (band)
Santana is a rock band based around guitarist Carlos Santana and founded in the late 1960s. It first came to public attention after their performing the song "Soul Sacrifice" at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, when their Latin rock provided a contrast to other acts on the bill...
and others from that time can still be heard. Attitudes about drug use, in particular marijuana, are also typically relaxed.
The police station is largely unmanned, but extra efforts for security are implemented during busy seasons such as Christmas and Easter week, supplementing the normal local auxiliary police with regular patrolmen from San Pedro Pochutla. Other efforts include checking for intoxicated drivers and boaters in Zipolite and other area beaches.
Zipolite can be reached by flying into Huatulco or Puerto Escondido and traveling on coastal highway 200. It can also be reached by road from Oaxaca City via Highway 175, which is a narrow, very winding road that takes six or seven hours to traverse. This highway ends at Puerto Angel and there are taxis that travel between this port and Zipolite.
Piña Palmera
Piña Palmera is a rehabilitation and educational center for disabled children and adults, from rural communities in Oaxaca state, the majority of which are indigenous people. It is a private charity which has existed since the 1980s, and the charity has enrolled over five thousand people in one or more of its programs. Most of its staff is volunteer. The endeavor is supported by a Swedish charity and it not affiliated with any political or religious group. Currently, about 350 people are in their programs.The beach
Zipolite is a nearly pristine beach about forty meters wide and two km long, with medium grain gold colored sand. The water is clear with tones of blue and green. This was one of the beaches featured in the Mexican blockbuster movie “Y tu mamá tambiénY tu mamá también
Y tu mamá también is a 2001 Mexican comedy-drama film directed by Alfonso Cuarón, and co-written by Cuarón and his brother Carlos. The film is a coming-of-age story about two teenage boys taking a road trip with a woman in her late twenties; it stars Mexican actors Diego Luna and Gael García...
.” It stretches from a small isolate cove called Playa del Amor on the east side to the new age Shambala retreat on the west end which is partially sheltered by rocks. Behind this is, sea cliffs rise. The beach is lined by palm trees and rustic cabins, hotel rooms and hammocks with a few more sophisticated lodgings on the west end.
This beach is part of the Riviera Oaxaqueño, which includes the nearby beaches of Puerto Angel and San Agustinillo. This beach is favored by foreign tourists, most of whom are backpackers and by the Mexican middle class, especially during Holy Week vacation in Mexico. The beach’s appeal stems from being one of very few beaches in which nudity is tolerated, however it is mostly practiced on the sheltered far east Playa del Amor and the far west end.
Swimming is practiced here but caution is strongly advised. Waves are strong in the afternoon, which is good for surfing and undertow is always strong. The ocean just offshore has strong currents that flow in circular patterns, some of which push swimmers toward shore and some which can pull swimmers out to sea. These currents are strong but not very wide. Swimmers have regularly drowned, prompting the creation of a volunteer lifeguard team and a flag system to indicate where and when it is safest to swim. The lifeguard team was founded in 1995 and trained by local charity Piña Palmera and U.S. citizen Joaquin Venado. In 1996, drownings at this beach were cut in half. The lifeguard service currently has ten lifeguards, an ATV, a jet ski, radios and other equipment provided by the state government. From 2007 to 2009, there have been no drowning deaths at Zipolite, a record, but there have been 180 registered rescues.
zipolite trip advisor
lonely planet zipolite