As I stretch heavily into a downward dog pose, I glance over at my wife Michelle and chuckle. A playful breeze sweeps a sweet wave of bougainvillea scent past our yoga instructor, Domitila Santoyo, who is doing a Gumby impersonation in a spot of sun under a courtyard gazebo. A distance sprinkler plays a rhythmic percussion to the gentle CD soothing our morning class.

Enjoying yoga asanas outdoors © 2004 John H. Ostdick

"Twenty years ago, camped on a Yucatan beach, what would you have said if I told you we'd one day be doing yoga in Acapulco?" I whisper to Michelle. As her dog buckles a bit, I detect a corresponding chuckle from my mate. Just to remind us we are in Mexico, however, as the instructor is whispering thoughts of serenity and doing the Cobbler’s pose, two armed soldiers casually stroll by on their way to beach patrol.

The fact that I am in Acapulco at all is a tad startling. By the time I began visiting Mexico frequently as an adult in the late 1970s, Acapulco was losing its bloom as destination hotspot. After a cadre of Hollywood stars cast its pixie dust on the bay that Sir Francis Drake once used as a safe haven — John Wayne and Johnny Weissmuller made the Hotel Los Flamingos famous, Elizabeth Taylor married Mike Todd, and John F. Kennedy and Bridgette Bardot spent their respective honeymoons here, the resulting tourism boom eventually became choked off by overdevelopment and pollution.

During the 1990s, however, a series of hotel renovations, infrastructure improvements, and water treatment plant construction sought to hone a renewed luster, with mixed but generally improved results. Federal warnings about possibly high fecal levels at high-traffic Caletilla beach during last spring’s premium season angered local officials, who claimed that federal officials were trying to steer foreigners to other resort areas in the country, such as Cancun and Loreto.

"Acapulco is suffering from attacks of the federal government," Acapulco tourism director Roger Joseph Bergeret said at the time. "The pollution levels they say we have here are less than those found on American beaches." The controversy was a critical black eye for the city as it desperately tries to increase its share of North American tourists; most of the visitors who play here hail from the interior of Mexico rather than the States.

The city has its problems, with a notable tension between the haves and have-nots, but Acapulco still manages a magical aura. And at a time when sweeping development and growth in the Yucatan obscure its once sleepy, romantic town squares, the essence that is Acapulco seems all the more attractive.

On three sides of Acapulco Bay, the towering Sierra Madre del Sur Mountains lead right down to the shoreline. The big drawing card is Bahia de Acapulco, a seven-mile arc of beautiful beaches, luxury hotels, discos, shopping plazas and restaurants, although the gated entryways and European-inspired menus at some resorts seem antiseptic to visitors who revel in real Mexico culture.

Perhaps it’s best to think of Acapulco as a study in degrees of separation.

Local Produce Market © 2004 John H. Ostdick

Acapulco Nautico, the city’s old town fronting the harbor in the west, lies at its core. The historical center of town teems with local and tourist activity. The onion-shaped Byzantine domes of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Solitude and the Zocalo, the city’s main public plaza landscaped and maintained by the Acapulco Garden Club, are at its heart. Weaved in amid the surrounding streets are a number of local markets, offering both goods and perishables. Goods markets carry everything from the kitschiest of souvenirs, such as peasant-style marionettes and pukka shell necklaces, to silver jewelry heavy with semi-precious stones, ripe for the haggling. The mercados campesinos (farmers’ markets) are a lusty blur of colorful product, pedestrians, and honking vehicular traffic. Vendors offer up tastes of chico zapate, a tremendously sweet, succulent fruit. A soulful looking little girl stands behind a pile of cut roses, beseeching pedestrians to buy.

The next local layer is Acapulco Dorado (Golden Acapulco), the strip around the bay east from old town along the palm-lined La Costera highway. Most of the major hotels, many of its rowdiest restaurants, and haze-filled discos are in this area. These quarters, which from across the bay resemble the high-rise section of Honolulu, throb into the early hours. The room rates generally climb higher through the next zone, Acapulco Diamante, where La Costera changes its name to Carretera Escensia (Scenic Highway), at Puerto Marques, and continues southwest to the airport.

The area was inhabited for about 2,000 years before the Spanish arrived, when Cortes ordered Spanish sailors to take the Bahia de Acapulco, which they did in 1521, signifying the fall of the Aztec Empire. First roads linking the city to Mexico City were finished in 1927. Acapulco has a history of treasures and pirates, and it is not without its shining and shady sides today.

Famed Mexico maestro Eduardo Alvarez formed the Acapulco Philharmonic in 1998 at the invitation of the Governor of the State of Guerrero. At the same time, Alvarez established the State of Guerrero Music School. In the years since, the orchestra has traveled throughout the State of Guerrero, playing before the poor and affluent alike, as well as other states, like Puebla, Morelos, and Mexico City. It also has ventured into the States, playing in Chicago. The orchestra’s sweeping music accompanies a nightly multi-media show at the historic Fort of San Diego in Acapulco's Old Town.

Not far away, a couple of bridges from Acapulco’s glory days still thrive.

Hotel Los Flamingos © 2004 John H. Ostdick

The Hotel Los Flamingos, a beyond-pink 1930s structure tucked into a neighborhood on the Las Playas Peninsula, which juts out from old town at the other end of the bay, is buzzing and sleeping at the same time. Children splash about its pool, and scattered tourists wander in and out to see the place where legend has it that the first Coco-Loco cocktail was created during World War II for a Mexican official entertaining a German diplomat. The rum drink in a coconut shell is an Acapulco signature beverage. Canary yellow hammocks stretch between the stark white pillars of ground-floor patios, 450 feet above the glimmering sea.

David, a large blond Minnesotan in his early 50s, sits shirtless on his patio distractedly reading a magazine. "I come right here for three weeks every year, to escape the Minnesota cold," he says matter-of-factly. "I wouldn’t trade it for anywhere on earth." The remoteness of the place is why Hollywood stars, such as John Wayne, who purchased the hotel for a period in the 1950s, and Frank Sinatra, hung out here.

The terrace bar at the Plaza Las Glorias El Mirador, the first hotel built in Acapulco, provides a sort of stadium seating for the city’s famous La Quebrada cliff divers. Since the 1930s, generations of clavadistas carefully read the frothy swells entering the nine-and-a-half-foot deep narrow chasm below before launching themselves downward from up to 148 feet.

E! Mirador cliff diver © 2004 John H. Ostdick

The young divers, dressed in white pullover and togs as they wait the next diving exhibition, can only compete until a certain age; after so many dives, the repeated impact of hitting the water at such velocity can damage their retinas. The five-times daily show (the last of the day performed with burning torches) is more vivid from the general admission stand below, however, where you are in the set rather than merely watching it. The divers’ confident poses and expressions are clearer, and the sound of their impact into the water more telling.

Winding up the narrow streets on the hillsides not far from where the divers delight crowds, children stare out from corrugated tin shacks and unfinished houses. Many of these shelters are without electricity or plumbing, or have illegally tapped into main city lines with the most bizarre patches. One of the roofed structures contains a piñata factory, the colorful finished burrows and birds hanging wide-eyed on a wire line in the front yard. This is yet another Acapulco, where some of its worst off have the most incredible views down into the bay.

Quetzalquatl Mozaic © 2004 John H. Ostdick

Of course, any visit to this area of Acapulco also should include a stop at Dolores Olmeda’s home on Cerro de la Penzona, where while living with Ms. Olmeda in 1956 the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera covered its outside walls with a 50-foot mural of mosaic tiles, shells, and stones. It took Rivera, one of the founders of the 20th-century Mexican muralist movement, 18 months to finish the incredible work and the additional murals that trail inside the property. The Olmeda mural, which features deities such as Quetzacoatl (a green frog) and Tepezcuincle, the Aztec dog, was one of the last creations of Rivera. An ill Rivera spent the last two years of his life here. There is hope that the property will someday be opened as a museum.



South of downtown on the Peninsula de las Playas, thatched-roofed restaurants, water-sports equipment for rent, and brightly painted boats mark two beaches frequented by Mexican nationals, Caleta and the previously mentioned Caletilla. In the late afternoon, fishermen pull their colorful boats up on the sand at the two beaches and offer the catch of the day and, occasionally, oysters on the half shell. A ten-minute glass-bottom boat ride ($5) from here to Isla La Roqueta passes over the underwater statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The island has a zoo, good hiking, beaches with gentle waves, and plenty of snorkeling opportunities.

Along the anything-goes boardwalk stretching out from Acapulco Nautico and into Acapulco Dorado, the almost four-year-old A.J. Hackett bungee jump ride beckons to all comers who have 550 pesos ($52) and a strong — or foolish — heart. Mark, a thin, blond mid-20-something originally from South Africa but now a citizen of the world, is running the cage that takes hardy souls 161 meters to a scaffold overlooking the bay and a swimming pool far below. About 50 people a day, almost 80 percent Mexican and often young girls in their 20s, pay to be strapped into a leg and waist harness. They smile nervously, spread their arms, crucifix-style, and fling themselves headfirst toward the pool below. Most just kiss the water as they dance up and down on the bungee cord before being pulled off, glassy-eyed on a platform below.

The route outward passes by a prominent white house Sylvester Stallone lived in while he was filming Rambo II and the famous Las Brisas community, which boasts frequent visits from the world’s most powerful people. Guests ferry to and from the 575 casitas on the grounds (each with its own pool) in pink and white jeeps. Private homes in the area, seven rooms with in-house cook, rent for $2,000 a night.

Acapulco Princess

Farther down the road, the Acapulco Princess, which opened in Acapulco Diamante in 1971, has a fascinating aura of its own. The resort’s main building resembles an Aztec pyramid, and the eyes of a mask built into the open-air lobby floor are illuminated, casting a watchful gaze toward the guest floors above. Fairmont purchased the three-tower complex and neighboring Pierre Marques, built in 1957 as a summer retreat for family and friends of J. Paul Getty (he reportedly only visited once, to inspect the site when it was finished), as part of the chain’s ongoing expansion. Together, the complex is a destination onto itself, offering almost 1,500 rooms on 480 acres and the best of two worlds — the Princess is New York City (without the bustle) to the Marques’ small-town, country-club feel.

During the December high season, executive chef Michael Dannecker says that his pastry kitchen will bake 10,000 sweet rolls a day; he regularly orders two tons of butter once a month just for cooking use. The pool service will distribute 4,000 towels daily for use at its four pools or beach canopies. There is a room of oranges just for the squeezing, a twenty-four-hour operation that supplies the resort with its fresh juice.

According to semi-official resort lore, the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes spent the last six months of his life here; his people controlled the top two floors of the main building during that time and all the furniture was cleared out except his medical bed and equipment. The local lore maintains that he actually died here but his body was quickly flown to Houston for his death pronouncement so that the will would be executed in Texas.

The resort’s beautiful grounds, where the ocean breeze plays gentle symphonies in the fronds of graceful palm trees, still attracts a heady clientele — women tennis celebs Anna Kornacova and Martina Hingis, actor Kevin Costner and singer Mariah Carey are just a few of its recent guests. It is also here that the new Acapulco reaches out most fully to North American tourists, offering guests activities such as yoga, not a part of Mexican culture.

In 30 years of traipsing across Mexico, I’ve seen my share of jungle mud — but never has it seemed so soothing as the neck-deep Nahualt Body Wrap I sink into at the Willow Stream spa. A specially developed mix of herbs and Mexican mud inside a heated cocoon wrap highlights my 90-minute treatment ($169 U.S.), which begins with cup of chamomile tea, a face cloth doused in a lavender and eucalyptus aromatherapy, and a foot soak and scrub. The spa also offers a healthy-yet-sumptuous Bento Box lunch (snapper with pesto, oh my!) between treatments.

Critics charge that such ritzy surroundings insulate visitors but rather they seem to offer the best of both worlds for those wanting to break through the degrees of separation that comprise today’s Acapulco. Each guest can choose how far to explore and savor the flavors that best suit his or her style, like mixing yoga with a view and stretching across the produce stalls at a throbbing mercado campesino.