Zipolite

Zipolite
Town
View of the beach from Playa del Amor
Zipolite Location in Mexico
Coordinates: 15°39′46″N 96°30′34″W / 15.66278°N 96.50944°W / 15.66278; -96.50944
Country	Mexico
State	Oaxaca
Municipality	San Pedro Pochutla
Elevation	20 m (70 ft)
Population (2005)
• Total	931
Time zone	CST (UTC-6)
Area code(s)	958

Coordinates: 15°39′44″N 96°30′42″W / 15.662100°N 96.511749°W / 15.662100; -96.511749

Playa Zipolite is a beach community located in San Pedro Pochutla municipality on the southern coast of Oaxaca state in Mexico between Huatulco and Puerto Escondido. Zipolite is best known as being one of Mexico’s very few nude beaches and for retaining much of the hippie culture that made it notable in the 1960s and 1970s. The name Zipolite, sometimes spelled Sipolite or Cipolite probably comes from the Nahuatl word sipolitlan or zipotli, meaning "bumpy place" or "place of continuous bumps or hills". However, some claim the name means “beach of the dead” in either Nahuatl or Zapotec because of dangerous underwater currents just offshore. The beach is currently popular with foreign tourists, especially backpackers, who stay in one of the many rustic cabins or camping spaces that line the beach.

Archeological finds at the east end of the beach shows that the area has a long history, but for the first half of the 20th century only one family lived here. In the 1960s and 1970s, counterculture hippies began to congregate here in part due to the beach’s isolated nature. At the time, there was little law enforcement, and drug use became common. In the 1970s and 1980s the beach gained a reputation in Mexico and among foreign travelers as a free-love paradise.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Zipolite was hard hit by two hurricanes and a fire. The first hurricane was Hurricane Pauline on 7 October 1997, a category four storm which destroyed nearly everything in town with strong flooding, leaving it -along with Mazunte and Puerto Ángel- cut off from the mainland, but there were no deaths. Next was Hurricane Rick on 9 November 1997. While not as strong as Pauline, the storm damaged roads and other infrastructure that was only partially rebuilt after Pauline. The last disaster to cause major damage was a fire that broke out on 21 February 2001, burning many of the wood and palm-thatched structures that were on the beach.