For Memorial Day 2005, we took a last minute trip to Huatulco, Mexico. Huatulco (pronounced wah-TOOL-co) is in the state of Oaxaca (pronounced wah-HA-cuh) on the southern Pacific coast.

We haven't been on vacation since our trip to the Galapagos - and we travel a lot and rarely visit the same place twice (obvious exceptions being BVI and the Bahamas). Our requirements for this trip were somewhat normal (warm weather, beach, relaxing location) and somewhat unusual (good seafood and serviced by Continental since I had an unused ticket to use). We considered Ixtapa, but decided to go to the less popular Huatulco.

We read about Huatulco on Yahoo's Huatulco Group, tomzap.com, and tripadvisor,com and decided to stay at the Camino Real Zaashila (booked through hotels.com and got a rate $40 cheaper than anywhere else I saw).

Since this was a relaxing trip (compared to some of our other adventures), we really did absolutely nothing so I can't comment on activities in the area. Our four days pretty much followed this "schedule" - sleep in, down to the beach around 10, around 11 go lay in the pool for a while, around noon have lunch, back to the beach, back to the pool, beach, pool, beach, pool, back to the room for a quick siesta and shower, go out to dinner. If you are looking for a moderately priced, relaxing beach vacation with GREAT food, this place is for you.

The hotel had complimentary internet access and we had fun posting our daily cameraphone pictures. You can read our daily entries from Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

Hotel Camino Real Zaashila
The hotel was a lot nicer than we expected and practically deserted. From the pictures we took it looks like we were the only ones there! We were in room 80 (ochenta) which was on the second floor with a great view of the pool and beach. The rooms on the first floor have plunge pools, but if you have one of those go for #'s 1-4 (since they overlook the beach and not the pool - the other 1st floor rooms aren't too private because the pool runs just about the entire width of the resort. The room was air-conditioned and had a ceiling fan - super important since it was in the 90's with high humidity!

The water at the hotel is drinkable (according to a sign in the room). I didn't go out of my way to drink water from the faucet, but we had plenty of ice (and water in restaurants) and neither of us got sick.

The beach is nice, but the water was very rough (peligrosos). I went in once but got kinda banged around trying to get out. The hotel is isolated from the other resorts on Tangolunda Bay by a hill. It would have been nice to go for l-o-n-g walks on the beach past the other resorts, but the nice thing about the hill is that it kept a lot of the beach vendors away. I know, I know, people have to earn a living - and the ones that did make it over the hill (Andy called them "billy goats" given their demonstrated hill climbing ability) were not pushy at all and accepted our "no gracias".

The pool was spectacular! The edges of the pool featured semi-submerged concrete chaise lounges and cocktail tables - and the attentive waitstaff seemed to find us regardless of our current location.

Transportation was always available in the several new air-conditioned suburbans - we didn't go very far and the ride was usually about $4.

There were three restaurants at the hotel, one for each meal: the Bella Grill for breakfast, the Beach Club for lunch, and Chez Binni for dinner.

The Bella Grill has a great location overlooking the pool on one side and the beach on the other. The restaurant offers a full breakfast buffet with made to order omelets and quesadillas with a variety of ingredients including traditional Oaxacan delicacies such as grasshoppers. We ate lunch at the Beach Club restaurant several times and each visit was better than the next. The restaurant has a great view of the beach and is nicely cooled by ocean breezes and ceiling fans. Favorites include guacamole, salsa, cheese-stuffed bacon wrapped shrimp, lobster tacos, and shrimp fajitas. We didn't eat at Chez Binni.

Our best meal at the hotel was dinner at "Deep Blue" - which is the Beach Club restaurant transformed into a contemporary sophisticated dining experience. The hotel doesn't seem to promote it at all - we didn't know what it was, just saw lights out there so we decided to see what it was. It was pricey for Mexico, but the atmosphere, service, presentation, food - everything - was outstanding.

Other restaurants

• Don Porfirio - walking distance from the hotel - had a band on Saturday night - good guacamole and shrimp.
• Dona Celia - nice setting on Santa Cruz bay - good guacamole and shrimp.
• Casa Del Mar - very good food, nice view