On a recent Sunday Ali and I drove down to Puerto Vicente, a small “fishing village” about 85km south of Zihuatanejo. It took us about 90 minutes to drive there, although it is possible to arrive in the town via three buses, more or less. Finding information on Puerto Vicente is a bit difficult to do, and most of the info we did find was in Spanish. But we’ve seen the photos of our friends lounging in hammocks half in the water, and that looked fun enough for us to make the trek. Although we never made it into those hammocks!
We did very little prepping before leaving home for Puerto Vicente. If we had planned better we may have visited a few other places nearby. Puerto Vicente is essentially a giant saltwater pool. But we had no idea there was a beach roughly a half-mile away! This saltwater pool is pretty cool, though. There are twenty or so restaurants lined along the bay, each hanging over the water, so you can drink a beer or eat a taco and jump into the water within seconds. The water is fairly calm, and there are kayaks for rent and guys willing to pull you in an inner tube behind their boat, too. Some of the restaurants have inexpensive pools set up, or concrete pools filled with water from the bay. Others have slides that drop you into the bay. Those were fun!
We arrived around 11:30am and the restaurants were almost all empty. By 12:30pm most restaurants were busy with tourists. It appeared that most of the people visiting were from neighboring towns. We ate lunch at Restaurant Don Carmelo. The pricing was very fair, but the music was super loud.
Ali and I spent over four hours in Puerto Vicente. If there is more than the bay and the restaurants, well, we missed it. We still had a good time. I think if we planned it better we would’ve been able to see if there was anything else worth visiting. There wasn’t a street with vendors selling homemade stuff, or any area that we could see built for tourists, like a few hotels and shops. Perhaps most everyone visiting is local and there aren’t a lot of overnight tourism? On the drive down we passed through Petatlan and several other small towns in addition to a few beaches and some great views along Highway 200. Just north of Puerto Vicente is a nice looking beach called Playa Ojo de Agua. We will definitely make a stop there on our next visit.
Our suggestion would be to consider a visit if you are heading from Zihua to Acapulco, or if you are staying in Zihua for more than a couple weeks and looking for a day trip outside the city. If you are only in Zihua for a one or two week stay, then we would not recommend using one of your days to travel to Puerto Vicente. We’re here year-round, so I’m sure we’ll be back there!