Acapulco Is HOT This Mexican resort was a mid-century hot spot for the jet set. Our '90s newlyweds find the fast crowd gone – but the heat intact. By Bill Heavey The Washington Post Sunday, August 31, 1997; Page E01

I held this thought until we passed the parking lot for the Acapulco Price Club. Then we saw a stadium-size Wal-Mart. Pizza Hut, the Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood and Col. Sanders all followed in rapid succession. There was a Tony Roma's that covered an entire city block and featured photos of spare ribs so enlarged you figured there had to be a chain saw and a brontosaurus carcass somewhere back in the soundproof kitchen.

The street passed under a monumental arch erected by the folks at Holiday Inn. It all looked like a particularly dense section of Rockville Pike, only bigger, 20 degrees hotter and without the charm. Chain hotels 50 stories high, some with dirt parking lots, crowded the beach. We had a room for the night in one of them, the Acapulco Presidente. On the way up, the bellhop invited us to a free breakfast the next morning if we would sit through a presentation on time-share condominium opportunities. We smiled, escorted him to the door and bolted it.

My bride and I stared at each other wide-eyed, as if we'd just been in a car accident and weren't yet sure whether we were injured. "What we're gonna do," I said to Jane after several minutes, "is go out and have a nice dinner with big rum drinks." We did this. I began to hope fervently that Acapulco was not somehow a metaphor for the differences between what you expect in a marriage and what you actually get.

As we soon found out, there are really two Acapulcos along the six-mile bay that is one of the world's great natural deep-water ports. The eastern half is the glitzy, highly commercial district into whose clutches the first-time visitor immediately falls. But just a couple of miles west along the Costera Miguel Aleman is Old Acapulco, a much more accommodating place. Here you'll find the town square (or zocalo), the church, several hundred stalls of the municipal market and the 380-year-old colonial fort. Just south of Old Acapulco is a peninsula. This is where we retreated on our second day. Here we discovered actual houses, smaller family-style hotels frequented by middle-class Mexican vacationers and the quieter beaches of Caleta and Caletilla. For $52 a night, we got an air-conditioned, ocean-side room with a balcony, fridge and shower in an older hotel with two pools set about with mango trees and flowering bushes.

Acapulco, it turns out, is sort of like the New Jersey shore, only with a higher SPF rating and more limes. If you come expecting sophistication, three-star cuisine and sites of artistic, cultural or historic significance, you will not merely be disappointed; you may never recover. If you aim a little lower -- good beaches, fresh seafood at ridiculously low prices, few of your fellow countrymen, friendly cab drivers whose English is no better than your Spanish, freeing both parties to invent a new language consisting largely of pantomime and words ending in "o" -- you can have a pretty nice vacation. Maybe it is a metaphor for being married: Expect less, get more.

Following its glory days as a mid-century glamour destination, Acapulco began a protracted slide. The number of hotels and residents looking for work in them grew faster than the supporting water and sewer systems. Social tensions increased as the population of La Laja, a seedy cluster of tenements outside of town, grew to 8,000.

By the 1970s, rural unrest in the countryside spilled over into the city. The police chief was assassinated by guerrillas. Occasionally, hostages were seized in Acapulco itself. Hassling of tourists became widespread. The bubble was bursting, which was the best thing that could have happened. At the same time, Cancun, Los Cabos and Ixtapa emerged as new magnets for foreign tourists.

But resort towns like Acapulco never die, they just go through cycles. In 1988, public and private interests in Acapulco banded together to spruce up the hotels, reduce the number of street vendors and cut crime. And, nearly a decade later, Acapulco is back, minus the vengeance. Its 15 minutes of global fame ended long, long ago, but it's still the closest beach to Mexico City. This fact alone guarantees its future.

Switching gears, of course, isn't always as easy as it sounds for either a resort or its visitors. On our first day at the beach at Caleta, we were led to our umbrella and reclining chairs by Jose, a young man with the muscle tone of a tennis player who was dressed in a white polyester uniform. We ordered lemonade, then a red snapper platter. When the fish didn't arrive after an hour, I began to do my angry American act. Jose wasn't around, but when I confronted the other waiters sitting in the shade of a large tree, one made gestures indicating that the fish was still being cooked, another that Jose had been desperately looking for me without success, a third that the fish was still out in the ocean in search of the cook, to whom it greatly desired to offer itself. I was in no mood to be pacified. I told them I didn't want excuses, I wanted fish. I scowled and tapped my watch ominously, at which point one of the assembled men actually came forward solicitously to adjust the mechanism. The others exchanged another-hyper-gringo-who-picks-his- battles-unwisely looks and shrugged. Defeated and sweating profusely in the kind of heat that turns asphalt into black ink, I returned to the shade of the umbrella. Five minutes later the fish arrived. It was delicious.

There's no real surf in the bay at Acapulco. You swim Mexican style, which is to say you wade out up to your chest and stand there until you feel cooler. Or you rent a paddle boat or go water-skiing or ride one of the big rubber bananas that motor boats pull.

Around 3 p.m., you may decide to take one of the glass-bottomed boats over to Roqueta Island, 300 yards away. For 25 pesos (a little more than three bucks) you get a 45-minute ride during which you see thousands of spiny sea urchins, multicolored fish and a two-ton statue of the Virgin Mary that somebody sank near a pile of rocks so the glass-bottomed boats could stretch out the ride. Unless you speak Spanish, the only words you will understand on the whole trip are "Johnny Weismuller," "John Wayne" and "Hedy Lamarr," all of whom apparently owned big houses on the bluffs here back in the early '50s. The Duke didn't like horses, had to remind himself to say "ain't" and preferred well-cut suits to cowboy duds. But he sure knew real estate.

The guidebooks tend to gloss over the heat, noting that the town has almost constant sunshine and year-round temperatures in the eighties. This is true but misleading. Buried later in the text you will find such statements as: "Most of the time, Acapulco weather is like August in the warmest parts of the United States" (Fodor's "Mexico '97," Page 344).

Actually, we found the Acapulco weather to be like August in the warmest parts of the United States if you shut your windows, turned the heat on, put on two sweaters and took a lounge chair to the attic. The city is 300 miles south of the Tropic of Cancer, the same latitude as Bombay. (To be fair, we honeymooned in July, near the peak of the hot season. My advice: If you honeymoon in Acapulco, get married in January.)

If you don't believe the sun is a viable power source, spend a few days in Acapulco in summer. Eventually it ceases to bother you if your red snapper takes an hour or two to arrive. You walk down the street plotting your moves from one piece of shadow to the next, like a sniper. Chugging a liter of water when you return to your room after breakfast becomes as natural as sloughing off your flip-flops. Then you lay down, read two pages of some utterly absorbing novel and fall back asleep. Around noon, you bestir yourself to go to the beach and stand in the water for 15 or 20 minutes before retiring to the shade and your lounge chair. You tear through another chunk of prose, maybe three pages this time, drink another bottle of water, eat lunch and doze again.

Around 4 you order a cup of iced coffee then walk slowly back to the hotel, take a shower, lie down and begin fantasizing about dinner. Acapulco has a way of mellowing out the most rabid type-A personality. All the things you were worried about before you came here get burned off by the sun. You realize you've been taking your whole life way too seriously. The really important things are sunscreen, water and a good hat. All the rest is details.

The cliffs of the Quebrada, a bluff overlooking the ocean on the backside of the peninsula of Old Acapulco, rise straight out of the water like some 15th-century Italian landscape. Divers once leaped from here because they could. Once they found tourists would pay them, they reassessed this policy. For the past 25 years or so, cliff-diving has been a pay-per-view business, with shows five times a day. The visitor forks over 10 pesos (about $1.30) and walks down a long set of stone stairs past vendors selling postcards, ice cream and beer to a stone platform set in the hillside. Between you and the opposite cliff is the slit of blue water at which the divers aim, ever rising and falling. The clavadistas, who tend to be about 5-foot-6 and as barrel-chested as Clydesdales, wander down through the crowd in their Speedos and enter the water.

There are usually four divers working a given show: a single dive from 25 meters (about 82 feet), a tandem dive from the same height, and One Spectacular Dive from 40 meters (about 130 feet). With a blast from the sound system, the divers emerge from the drink and clamber nimbly up the sheer rock face to their perches using finger- and toe-holds. A single slip would mean injury or death, but they're actually smiling and racing each other to their perches. Then there is much adjusting of bathing suits, praying and crossing of themselves at a shrine outlined in electric lights. They limber up, redrape their Speedos a few last times and plunge: first the single, then the tandem divers, at last the leap from 40 meters.

It is an act of stupendous bravery. The divers have to time their dives on an incoming wave so that there's enough water in the gorge. They must enter the water absolutely perpendicular and fist-first to avoid breaking bones. And they have to remember to adjust their Speedos again before leaving the water and climbing back up through the crowd, which has already begun to drift away. Then they hurry through the crowd to stand at the top of the stairs, where they receive tips and make fun of each other's lack of sexual prowess, in the manner of young men the world over.

I talked to the night's high-diver, 32-year-old Ricardo, who started here at 16. He bears a scar on his right forearm from the time he hit wrong and broke his arm. If you don't go in correctly, he says, you end up taking the shock of impact on the wrong part of your body. If you break the water with your face instead of the top of your head, you can go blind. You can dislocate a shoulder, which also means the end of your career. He says the divers are unionized. They even have insurance.

Although Mexico is a poor country, crime is not a problem for tourists on Acapulco's streets. This is due to the presence of local, state and national police and army troops, as well as lots of private security guards, all of whom are here as a result of the government's clean-up program and who are packing major heat. Bank guards have ancient .30-caliber carbines. Some of the state boys carry Colt .45 pistols in the cocked-and-locked position. Strolling down the Costera Miguel Aleman at night, it is not unusual to see a horse-drawn carriage festooned with yellow balloons carrying tourists and, three cars back, a pickup with three soldiers casually cradling M-16s, the truck's blue roof light revolving silently. Safe? As a gringo tourist you could walk down the street pulling your wallet after you on a string and be sure nobody would make a move toward it.

Nonviolent crime is another matter altogether. The price of just about everything is negotiable in Acapulco: cab rides, room rates, souvenirs, silver necklaces. At first we felt it was beneath our dignity to haggle. After two days we realized we were getting ripped off on nearly everything and joined the fray. We figured out, for instance, that the initial price quoted by a silver merchant in the Mercado de Artesanias behind the town square is about a five times what he'll finally accept. If you walk out and the vendor doesn't follow, that's good. It means you've finally determined the seller's true bottom line. Return and offer 10 pesos more.

Silver is a good buy in Mexico. I bought nicely worked necklaces for half of what I've paid for similar ones in Georgetown. Do not buy silver that lacks the .925 stamp identifying it as sterling. Do not buy the shiny stuff that beach vendors try to sell you. It's a look-alike that is virtually worthless.

All the vendors in the market have the same souvenirs -- sombreros the size of truck tires, carved wooden angels with cheeks puffed out like Dizzy Gillespie's, grinning Day of the Dead skeletons, dope pipes in the shape of a human foot with the big toe as the pipe stem, 50-pound onyx eagles in the fascist style, leather rifle scabbards, ironwood domino sets and a raft of T-shirts, including the ever-popular "One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor!" When you need a break, there's a little cafe in the middle of the market with a sign that reads "WE HAVE COOLD-BEER AND COOLD WATER ATMOSPHERE. FAMILY, PLEASE COME AP STAIRS."

Going out to dinner is one of the great pastimes in Acapulco, and you have to work hard to spend more than $50 each, even at the best restaurants. We went to Madeiras, a swanky place on a hill overlooking the bay, with precisely this purpose in mind. At the door, I was informed by a beautiful young hostess that shorts were not permitted but that the management would be happy to loan me a pair of pants. I joined my wife, Jane, at the table in a pair so big I looked like Eddie Murphy in "The Nutty Professor."

An expensive restaurant in Acapulco doesn't necessarily serve you better food, but you do get higher production values: one waiter to pour water, another to take your order, another to bring the food, a maitre d' who gives the impression of wanting to be the godfather to your unborn children, enough glasses and tableware to start a Crate & Barrel (if there isn't one here already).

My shrimp "steak," a bunch of the crustaceans artfully mashed together to create a half-pound disk of pink protein, came with a lagoon of bland yellow cheese sauce on one side of the plate, and an inland sea of what tasted like ketchup on the other. It wasn't particularly tasty, but it would have made a nice resort logo. The bill for everything -- including rum drinks, salad, coffee and dessert -- came to about $65. We decided it was too much work. Better to walk past the places that serve architecture instead of food, ward off the waiters dressed as pirates or Chinese men and find yourself a no-nonsense place like Pipo's, the local version of Crisfield's. If you want meat, El Cabrito has good steak, chicken and goat, the house specialty. They even have goat's head, "for the most discriminating palate." Fortunately, there was not one discriminating palate in the place.

On our last full day in Mexico, we made a day trip to Pie de la Questa, a long stretch of empty beach with surf and undertows too rough for anyone but the most able swimmers. Just across the road is a big freshwater lagoon. It was at a bar here that I saw three big American boys drinking beer. They were wearing ball caps from the University of Tennessee, No Fear T-shirts and Nikes. They had goatees, sideburns and one earring each. When I asked them how swimming in the lagoon was, they looked startled. I drifted away. Then I heard them speaking German.

We crossed back over the road and settled in to watch the waves crash against the shore. It sounded like a sustained artillery barrage. This being Mexico, there was nothing between us and the undertow but a thin band of common sense. An elderly man was casting a weighted net into the waist-deep still water that comes in that moment after the wave has flooded the shore but has not yet begun sliding back into the sea. There were families playing in the foam, the kids shrieking and jumping in the water sucking at their feet, their parents keeping watch. A man wearing a Ducks Unlimited cap strolled by and smiled; he was lugging so many rolled-up hammocks on his shoulders that he looked like a mountain climber carrying coils of heavy rope. Two little boys scraping ribbed plastic bottles with combs appeared before us and chanted "La Cucaracha" for two pesos each. A squad of pelicans skimmed along in the twilight just inches off the water, looking into the curl of a wave for fish. My wife and I held hands. "Well," she said at last. "We're married now."

"Yep."

"How's it feel?"

"So far, so good." We sat there, not moving, listening to the waves collapse and re-form over and over, just like a marriage.

Bill Heavey last wrote about New Orleans for the Travel section.

DETAILS: Acapulco

GETTING THERE: Delta flies from Washington to Mexico City, with connecting service to Acapulco on Aeromexico. Continental offers service to Acapulco via Houston. Both airlines are quoting a round-trip fare of about $600, with restrictions. American begins its winter service to Acapulco, via Dallas, on Nov. 1. 1/4

WHERE TO STAY: If you want to go the super-deluxe route, don't mind a pink motif and don't particularly want to rub elbows with the locals, Westin Las Brisas (Carretera Escenica 5255, 1-800-228-3000) is for you. Rates start at $175 double and include a continental breakfast. Another good bet is the Pierre Marques (Plaza Revolcadero, 1-800-223-1818), set on a smaller bay just east of Acapulco. It shares facilities with the giant Acapulco Princess hotel, but not the crowds. Rates start at $100 per night double.

Want discos, high-rise hotels and shopping? Head for the hyper-commercial strip in the town's east part. Your best bet, believe it or not, is the local HoJo's, the Howard Johnson Maralisa (Costera Miguel Aleman, 1-800-446-4656), which runs about $60 per night double for an ocean-view room.

For a quieter, low-rise, more Mexican version of Acapulco, head for the bay's western edge. We stayed at Suites Alba (Grand Via Tropical 35, 011-52-74-83-00-73), a resort-style hotel popular with Mexicans and Europeans. Suites have kitchenettes and terraces. Our room was $52 when the place was almost empty, though prices go up here and at other hotels during the winter season, October through March. Nearby is the more luxurious Boca Chica (Plaza Caletilla, 011-52-74-83-67-41), a 40-room hotel overlooking Roqueta Island. Rates run about $100 and up for a double. 1/4

GETTING AROUND: Private taxis may not carry passengers from the airport to town. Most people use the Transportes Aeropuerto, an airport taxi service. A cab to the center of Acapulco runs about $15, not bad for a half-hour ride. Once in town, un-air-conditioned VW cabs are cheap and plentiful. The key is to always settle on a price before you get in. Few rides cost more than 40 pesos (the peso was trading at 7.8 to the dollar when we were there). If you're a penny-pincher, bus rides are two pesos. We found the drivers helpful -- just smile, say where you're headed, and they'll wave you on or point you to the right stop. 1/4

WHERE TO EAT: You don't need a tie or jacket for the best restaurants. You do need long pants and some type of collar to your shirt. Madeiras (Carretera Escenica) serves a four-course, fixed-price menu for about $30 per person. The views are superb, but the wine list is overpriced. In season, you will need reservations. Coyuca 22 (Av. Coyuca 22) is the most expensive restaurant in town (meaning you can spend $50 per person). Closed until Nov. 1, it serves steaks and seafood. We really liked the atmosphere of Pipo's (several locations): good seafood, good service, reasonable prices, no pretension, no bay view. The red snapper with tomatoes, peppers, onion and olives is particularly good. El Cabrito (Costera Miguel Aleman) serves fish, but the name of the game is meat: A cook in a glassed-in kitchen grills chicken, steak and goat.

A fail-safe restaurant strategy is to stroll the street until you see an open-air place jammed with people speaking Spanish. Avoid any place where the waiters are dressed as pirates, vampires or Chinese people. 1/4

BEACHES: All beaches in Mexico are public. The Condesa, smack in the middle of the bay shore, is Tourist Central, especially for singles. The water here isn't great, but then most people aren't here to go swimming. Further west, the beaches of Hornos and Hornitos have palm trees for shade and lots of cheap restaurants nearby. We liked the family beaches around the corner of the peninsula at Caleta and Caletilla. When it all gets to be too much, hire a cab and flip a coin: Heads you go west to Pie de la Questa; tails, you head east to Barra Vieja. Both are superior beaches where you can lay in a hammock or under an umbrella in relative peace. 1/4

INFORMATION: Mexican Government Tourism Office, 1-800-446-3942, or http://mexico-travel.com on the Web.

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company

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