Few places in Mexico offer two trips in one, fifteen minutes apart. Zihuatanejo is a bay with a real town: fishermen unloading at seven in the morning, women selling chilate (a cacao and rice drink) next to the market, boats crossing to Las Gatas for a hundred pesos. Ixtapa, on the other hand, is a neatly laid-out hotel zone with a cycle path, a marina and long open-sea beaches. You can sleep in one and spend the day in the other with a MX$ 21 urvan ticket.
The best things here are free or nearly free: Playa La Ropa, with calm water and a Blue Flag; the Paseo del Pescador at sunset; the cycle path of almost 25 km between the Marina de Ixtapa and Playa Linda; the estuary with crocodiles you can watch from a lookout. What you do pay for is cheap too if you do it on your own: the boat to Isla Ixtapa, snorkelling on the Las Gatas reef or a plate of tiritas de pescado, the strip-cut ceviche born on this coast.
Let's be clear: Ixtapa Zihuatanejo is in Guerrero, and the US, Canadian and UK governments have advisories for that state. Canada and the UK make an exception for Ixtapa and Zihuatanejo as long as you arrive by air. That's why this guide recommends flying into ZIH airport and getting around within the tourist zone. With that precaution, it offers swimmable beaches, sport fishing, nature close at hand and honest seafood at small-town prices.
The Zihuatanejo coast was inhabited long before the Spanish arrived. Nearby, in Soledad de Maciel, INAH studies the ancient city of Xihuacan, occupied from the Preclassic period and at its peak between 650 and 950 AD. The town's origins are linked to Cihuatlán, a Cuitlatec settlement that the Mexica made pay tribute in 1497. The name is usually translated from Nahuatl as 'place of women'. In 1527 Hernán Cortés had three ships fitted out in this bay; they set sail on 31 October under Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón, bound for the Philippines, and only La Florida reached its destination. For centuries Zihuatanejo was little more than a fishing port. In 1811 it came under Tecpan, in 1824 under the State of Mexico and in 1849 under the new state of Guerrero. On 23 December 1953 the municipality of José Azueta was created. The big change came with planned tourism. In 1968 the Banco de México set up a fund to develop new beach destinations, and Ixtapa, built on old coconut groves and estuaries, was one of those chosen. Work began in 1970, the federal trust was set up in 1971, and in 1974 the first hotel opened and the resort formally began operating. In 1976 the international airport and the Palma Real golf course were inaugurated. In 2008 the Guerrero Congress renamed the municipality Zihuatanejo de Azueta. Today it has 126.001 inhabitants (INEGI 2020), and in 2026 its airport is growing at double-digit rates, although travel advisories for Guerrero still weigh on foreign arrivals.
Read the full history ↓The state of the southern Pacific, between the Sierra Madre and the sea: home of the silver of Taxco and of the Manila galleon at Acapulco, scene of the Congress of Chilpancingo of 1813 and of the 'Sentimientos de la Nación', a state that bears the name of the insurgent Vicente Guerrero and the land of the Afro-Mexican culture of the Costa Chica.
Read the history of Guerrero →Some places make no sense on your own; with someone explaining them, they change completely. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 14 activities in Zihuatanejo. Three are below so you get the idea: tap any of them and they all open.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
For millions of people around the world, Zihuatanejo is the name of a dream: the Mexican Pacific beach where Andy Dufresne asks his friend Red to come and find him at the end of 'The Shawshank Redemption', 'a warm place with no memory'. What the film does not tell you is that the paradise is real, and that its history is far older and far richer than any Hollywood script: that of a fishing town looking out over one of the most sheltered bays in the country, inhabited for centuries and tied to the greatest trade route of the colonial era. Long before the Spanish arrived, the bay of Zihuatanejo and the strip of what is now the Costa Grande of Guerrero were inhabited by Indigenous peoples linked to the great lordships of western Mexico, among them the Purépecha (Tarascan) empire of Michoacán, which pushed its influence as far as this coast. These communities lived from fishing, from gathering salt and shellfish, from farming and from coastal trade, making the most of one of the most protected bays on the shoreline.
The name of the place keeps the memory of that world. 'Zihuatanejo' comes from the Nahuatl 'Cihuatlán', usually translated as 'place of women'. Different readings connect it to an ancient cult of female deities, to a social order in which women held a prominent role, or to the presence of communities of women in the area. The pejorative or diminutive suffix '-nejo' was added later, giving the toponym its present form.
A deeply rooted tradition tells that the Tarascan cazonci (ruler) Caltzontzin ordered a barrier of stones built out in the sea to form a natural pool where he could bathe in peace. That artificial breakwater, so the story goes, gave rise to today's Playa Las Gatas, whose calm, crystal-clear water is still one of the wonders of the bay. Whatever its historical basis, the legend shows how important the region was to pre-Hispanic peoples.
After the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521, Hernán Cortés and the Spanish conquistadors set out to explore the Pacific coast —the 'South Sea'— looking for ports from which to organize the sailing route to Asia and to new lands. In that context, the bay of Zihuatanejo was one of the first places on the Mexican coast sighted and admired by the Spanish, around 1521-1527, thanks to its exceptional natural shelter.
The expeditions Cortés sent out worked their way along the shoreline identifying bays and anchorages fit for building shipyards and sheltering vessels. Zihuatanejo, with its calm bay protected from the swell, caught the eye of those first navigators. The region was absorbed into Spanish rule and into the organization of New Spain, although its remoteness and small population kept it a place apart for a long time.
The strategic importance of the Mexican Pacific would soon grow on the back of a monumental project: the Manila Galleon route, which for two and a half centuries would turn Acapulco —not far from Zihuatanejo— into the great port of trade with Asia. Although Acapulco took all that traffic, the bays of the Costa Grande, Zihuatanejo among them, stayed tied to the lore and the legends of that trans-Pacific route.
For 250 years, between 1565 and 1815, the Manila Galleon (the 'Nao de China') crossed the Pacific Ocean linking the city of Manila, in the Philippines, with the port of Acapulco, in New Spain. Those enormous ships carried silks, porcelain, ivory, spices and luxury goods from Asia, which were distributed from Acapulco across the Americas and shipped on to Europe. It was one of the richest and longest trade routes in history.
The bay of Zihuatanejo, on that same Pacific coast, ended up tied to the route and to its legends. The most famous of them explains the name of the best-known beach here: 'Playa La Ropa' ('the clothes'). Tradition tells that a galleon loaded with fine cloth and clothing coming from the East was wrecked, or lost part of its cargo overboard, near the bay, and that the garments washed up and lay spread out over the sand of that beach, which is where its curious name would come from.
Beyond the legend, the galleon era left Zihuatanejo a quiet, secondary point on a coast dominated by the activity of Acapulco. For centuries the region remained a peaceful enclave of fishermen and small communities. That seafaring life, simple and bound to the ocean, would define the character of the town through the whole colonial period and much of the independent era, right up to the 20th century.
For most of its history, Zihuatanejo was a quiet little fishing town, far from the big circuits. Its people lived from fishing in the bay, from small plots of land and from local trade. Life went by slowly in front of a generous sea, in a setting of great beauty but almost unknown to mass tourism. That seafaring authenticity is, still today, the essence that sets 'Zihua' apart.
Everything changed in the 1970s. The Mexican government, through the National Tourism Development Fund (Fonatur) —the same body that drove Cancún—, chose the area next to Zihuatanejo to develop a resort planned from scratch: Ixtapa. On a strip of coconut palms and mangroves it built large modern hotels lined up along the beach, infrastructure, a golf course and services aimed at international tourism. Ixtapa was born a designed destination, in contrast with the spontaneous, traditional Zihuatanejo next door.
The arrival of Ixtapa put the whole region on the world map and brought the airport, the hotels and a steady flow of visitors. But Zihuatanejo, far from losing its identity, managed to keep its small-town character: its center of narrow streets, its market, its waterfront promenade and its fishing boats. The pairing of Ixtapa and Zihuatanejo —the modern resort and the authentic town, a few kilometers apart— became one of the most appealing formulas on the Mexican Pacific.
In June 2023, Zihuatanejo was named a Pueblo Mágico by Mexico's federal Ministry of Tourism, a recognition that celebrates precisely what the tourist development of Ixtapa did not erase: its identity as a real fishing town, its bay, its cultural heritage and its traditional feel. The distinction reinforced the appeal of Zihuatanejo as a destination with a soul of its own, complementary to modern Ixtapa.
Today Zihuatanejo balances its tourist calling with its seafaring essence. The Paseo del Pescador (the waterfront promenade) is still the heart of the town, with the fishing boats anchored off the main beach and the seafood restaurants. The big beaches of the bay —La Ropa, Las Gatas, La Madera— draw travelers from all over the world, while the market, the narrow streets downtown and the small Museo Arqueológico de la Costa Grande keep the memory of the place alive.
The region also keeps its reputation as a destination for sport fishing, snorkeling and sunsets, in a setting of sheltered bays and abundant marine life. Zihuatanejo today stands for a different way of living the Mexican Pacific: without the crowds or the height of the big resorts, betting on the charm of the town, the warmth of its people and the serene beauty of one of the loveliest bays in the country.
