The few restaurants that made up the town along the beach at Huatulco are bordered by a national park of the same name. We were able to camp within the gates of a newly built restaurant called El Capi’s, with access to the clean, new washroom throughout the night and slow to average WIFI, all for 150 pesos per night, about $10 Canadian. The food in the restaurant was good, there were hammocks to swing in, and shady palapas if we needed to get out of the sun.

It was a pretty ideal setup, except for the Dutch couple in the rig next to ours. We had spent a few hours chatting with them our first night there and they were a very interesting couple. She had been a fashion designer and together they had operated a clothing factory in India. Before working in India, he had made guitars and violins.  His most famous clients included The Rolling Stones, and he claims to have kissed Brigette Bardot and several other European celebrities from a past era (most of whose names we didn’t recognize, but I am sure they were all beauties).

You can see our truck camped in the background next to the restaurant.

There were little clues as they talked that maybe not all was well in their relationship, and as soon as they were inside their camper, the heated arguments in Dutch began, and continued pretty much every time they were inside. You didn’t need to understand the Dutch language to know they were fighting. Poor Derek…he is fairly fluent in Dutch, and could not help but overhear the content of their “discussions”….campers with open windows are not very soundproof.  It seems they were having differences of opinion about the design of the home they were getting ready to build just a few hundred metres down the beach. Not everything was well in paradise apparently.

Fishing boats and restaurants along the beach.

Other than that, we enjoyed our time in Huatulco.  We snorkeled for the first time on our trip, right from the beach, the first day around the rocks that were close to where we were camping. The next day we walked to the larger reef at the other end of the beach. It was pretty decent snorkeling. The coral was a bit bleached but we did see some colourful pieces, and at one point a school of maybe 100 or 150 large grey and yellow fish, similar to these guys, swam towards me and then parted, swimming around and under me. I held my breath and let them pass, then slowly turned to make sure I didn’t hit any of them with my flippers as they made their way past Derek.

While we were staying at El Capi’s I saw on an overlanding Facebook group page that Zapatista rebels had taken over some toll booths on the road to San Cristobal de las Casas and were not letting vehicles past. The Zapatistas are a left-wing group, made up of mostly indigenous people, looking to have more control over the natural resources of the state of Chiapas. They had also taken over the collectivos (small buses) in the city. We had read in the past about the Zapatista people forming road blocks, sometimes passive, sometimes not, so we discussed our options. We decided that we didn’t want to risk heading into possibly volatile situations, and so we altered our route to bypass San Cristobal…maybe another time.

Late afternoon on Huatulco beach.