Huatulco, Mexico

Huatulco (Spanish pronunciation: [wa'tulko]; wah-TOOL-coh), formally Bahías de Huatulco, centered on the town of La Crucecita, is a tourist development in Mexico. It is located on the Pacific coast in the state of Oaxaca. Huatulco's tourism industry is centered on its nine bays, thus the name Bahias de Huatulco, but has since been unofficially shortened to simply Huatulco. Huatulco has a wide variety of accommodations from rooms for rent, small economy luxury hotels, luxury villas, vacation condominiums, bed and breakfasts, as well as several luxury resorts standing on or near the shores of Tangolunda Bay. The Camino Real Zaashila (formerly the Omni Zaashila), Quinta Real Huatulco, Las Brisas (formerly a Club Med), Dreams Resort & Spa (formerly the Gala hotel), and the Barceló are examples of the most popular larger resorts in the area.

Huatulco is located in the state of Oaxaca where the foothills of the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains meet the Pacific Ocean approximately 500 km south of Acapulco, Guerrero. The population is 50,000.

Legends say the Toltecs and Quetzalcoatl came from this area. Quetzalcoátl, according to a later legend, set an enormous and indestructible cross. Various people have passed through this area, including the Chatmos, the Zapotecs and the Mexicas.

After the Spanish Conquest, Huatulco thrived as a port under Hernán Cortés's control serving as a vantage point for Spanish galleons and a distribution centre for supplies on the Pacific coast. The latter half of the 16th Century saw Huatulco attacked by Francis Drake and Thomas Cavendish—both of whom left their prints on the region's history and legends that continue to this day.

Until resort development began in the 1980s, Huatulco was little known except as a coffee-growing area. In 1984, FONATUR (Fondo Nacional de Turismo), a government agency dedicated to the development of tourism in Mexico, acquired 21,000 hectares of land to develop a tourism center, similar to that in Cancún. The existing population was relocated to Santa María Huatulco. The plan resulted in the improvement of roadways and other infrastructure. It also has populated areas mixed with "green zones" to make the area ecologically friendlier.

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Wikipedia