What we find today is very different…from this unique urbanization process developed a sociological phenomenon which has dramatically transformed the town, resulting in a “the best of both worlds” resort.

As Huatulco is continually being built, there came the need to service the “imported” local population of predominantly building trades and tourism personnel. We therefore find hotels of a more modest nature, the produce and meat market, and a wide diversity of retail, service and government health and welfare establishments.  With the influx of people to provide these goods and services came their families, and thus further needs to be met.

The result has been the creation of a micro-society not unlike what we find right here in our state capital, complete with a meshing of regional cultures. A major difference is that all this has developed over a period of about only 25 years.

So what then are the implications for the tourist wanting a respite on the coast for three days? There is now the diversity of hotel qualities that previously was non-existent, with many away from the beach and close to the Zócalo. Within blocks of the Zócalo you can find not only shops and services designed to attract the tourist dollar, but also what the local population requires for its day-to-day living.

Since this populace has now, a generation later, become more diverse in age and socio-economic level, the range of offerings which benefit tourists has correspondingly increased.  We find much more so than previously, a resort town with establishments frequented by both tourists and local inhabitants alike, making for a much less “artificial” ambience. What caters to tourists must also cater to non-tourists, and vice versa, to make the marketplace work to its potential. Prices must reflect this developing reality.  Hence, as we recently learned, for example, four can dine deliciously on a bountiful array of the freshest of seafood, including appetizers and three rounds of drinks, for 850 pesos; during the “off” season (if not at other times depending on your level of negotiating skill), notwithstanding a stated hotel rate of 1200 pesos, a couple can end up with a junior suite including breakfast, for 450 pesos.

The range of tourist products and services together with indigenous cultural traditions found in other resort towns which developed more naturally and slowly, has fast arrived in Huatulco…and for the traveler, arriving can be more than half the experience.  After that first anxiety-free drive, the rest of Mexico, cities and all, might no longer seem all that frightening from behind the wheel.