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Huatulco

Do You Remember Huatulco When…?

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That was the question we put to readers on Facebook. We asked them to name something they remembered that no longer exists, and more than 400 comments followed. Together, they recalled an earlier map of Huatulco: bus stops beneath trees, dances where markets now stand, favorite places to eat, and the little train that circled the park.

“La Crucecita didn’t exist yet. The Adolfo López Mateos primary school stood where the Santa Cruz dock is now. There was only one taxi, and people traveled in passenger trucks.”— Fabiola

“Where Plaza Madero stands, the micros used to stop beneath a huge tree. U2 was mostly dirt, with just a few improvised houses.”— Alika

“I remember the guanacaste tree where Plaza Madero is now.”— Carolina

“The boulevard to Santa Cruz ended at the far end of Sector F.”— Harriet

“There was no parking or bathroom at Playa El Arrocito. You reached the beach by a steep path.”
— Pedro

“Before Magic Circus, we went dancing at a place across from the park that everyone called La Nacoteca. Workers from the hotels and the construction sites met there. It was beautiful, and we had such a good time.”— Sharin

“The fairs were set up in La Crucecita’s park, and the Independence Day celebrations took place at the sports court. The dancing and festivities happened right in the center.”— Lety

“La Tropicana was open around the clock. Upstairs was El Telefonito, where Doña Naty made the best chocolate milkshake.” — Calacas

“I remember sitting on those lovely benches with backs, eating a paleta from La Zamora after dinner at Pollo Chava or Don Arnoldo’s Fogón. Paradise.”— Socorro

“The little train—and the Barbie motorcycles and Jeeps you could rent in the park. I remember them from as far back as I can remember.”— Kyara

“Música por la Tierra!” — Estefanía

“There was a place where you could rent a movie and watch it in a little wooden room.”— Miguel

“I used Mare’s dial-up internet and went to its cybercafé above the shops behind Súper Santa Cruz.”— Raúl

“The first cinema was where the Megacable offices are now.”— Jesús

“There were no traffic lights, and there was just one policeman.” — Ritu

“La Fuente, Café Dublín, the internet cafés—and the iguana at the bar in Los Portales.”— Karen

“Santa Cruz had only Ve el Mar and Doña Celia. The church was just a palapa.”— Julie

“Doña Celia’s first palapa; her son Migue with the first Jet Ski in Huatulco; and Don Wilo’s pizzas on Cocotillo.”— Rubén

“The pizzas sold from a tricycle at the entrance to Residencial Chahué were delicious.” — Bernardo

Some places have changed names. Others have disappeared so completely that a comment was enough to make someone else say, I remember that too.

What do you remember?

Write to us at TheEyeMexico@gmail.com

Reader comments translated and lightly edited for length.

 

Huatulco

When Did Huatulco Stop Being Cheap?

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By Randy Redmon and Jesse Kirkham—

There was a time when one of the great pleasures of living in or visiting Huatulco was sitting down at a nice restaurant, ordering a good meal, having a couple of drinks and walking away from the table thinking, “Wow, that was a lot of food for very little money.”

Huatulco was never completely free of expensive restaurants, of course, but for many Canadians and Americans, the appeal was that even a good restaurant meal generally felt like a bargain compared with what they were accustomed to paying at home.

Lately, however, we’ve found ourselves looking at restaurant bills a little differently, not necessarily because the prices are outrageous, but because the gap between what we used to think of as “cheap” and what we are paying today seems to be getting smaller. Perhaps the easiest way to see that change is with a glass of wine.

Consider a restaurant selling a house wine for 150 pesos a glass. Depending on the exchange rate, that works out to roughly C$12 or US$9. Neither figure is particularly shocking when compared with a mid-range restaurant in Canada or the United States, especially when you remember that Canadian restaurant prices often have sales tax added after the menu price.

The question, then, isn’t really whether 150 pesos is expensive, but whether it still feels like the kind of value people have traditionally associated with Huatulco.

For many years, the favourable exchange rate helped make Huatulco feel exceptionally inexpensive to Canadians and Americans. A 300-peso dinner seemed like a bargain when your dollar bought a significant number of pesos. With the peso stronger against both the Canadian and U.S. dollars, those same peso prices translate into noticeably more money from a foreign visitor’s perspective.

A 1,000-peso restaurant bill is still 1,000 pesos, but it is also roughly C$81 or US$59 at today’s exchange rates. Add a bottle of wine, a couple of cocktails, dessert and a tip, and a dinner for two can reach 1,500 pesos or more without anyone feeling as though they went overboard.

That doesn’t necessarily make Huatulco expensive, particularly when a comparable dinner in Canada, the United States or Europe can easily cost more. It does, however, mean that Huatulco may not feel as incredibly cheap to a Canadian or American visitor as it once did.

Visitors adjust accordingly. A family staying in an Airbnb may make breakfast and lunch themselves and eat out less often, while a couple might buy a bottle of wine at the supermarket rather than order several glasses at dinner. Someone heading to the beach may fill a cooler rather than buying drinks and snacks throughout the day. Those choices make perfect financial sense, but collectively they can also affect the local businesses that depend on visitor spending.

This is where the conversation becomes more interesting than simply asking whether Huatulco restaurants are too expensive. The real question may be what value means to us now.

Huatulco has changed considerably over the years, and the restaurant scene is better and more diverse than it was when many of us first arrived. There are talented chefs, excellent seafood, international cuisine, interesting wine lists and restaurants offering experiences that simply weren’t available here years ago. That improvement comes with a price, and most of us understand that, but customers are also doing their own calculations.

If I spend 1,200 or 1,500 pesos on dinner, I don’t necessarily need it to be cheap; I need it to feel worthwhile. I want good food, good service, a pleasant atmosphere and, yes, a glass of wine that makes me glad I ordered it. That is really the difference between cheap and value: cheap is about price, while value is about what you get for the price.

Perhaps Huatulco is slowly making that transition. For years, one of the easiest ways to market a Mexican vacation was to say, “It’s beautiful, the weather is fantastic, and everything is cheap,” but perhaps that isn’t the best way to describe Huatulco anymore.

Huatulco may be becoming a value destination rather than a cheap destination, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. People will pay for quality, a memorable meal, good service and a beautiful setting when they feel that what they received was worth what they paid.

Huatulco’s appeal has never really been that everything is cheap. It has always been the combination of natural beauty, climate, culture, food, hospitality and a quality of life that offered exceptional value. Perhaps that’s what we should be protecting.

So the next time you sit down at a Huatulco restaurant and look at a 150-peso glass of wine, maybe the question isn’t whether it’s expensive, but something much simpler: Is it worth it?