Ifirst visited Zipolite about 15 years ago. I had heard about Mexico’s only recognized clothing-optional beach several years earlier from—wait for it—a straight female friend. She has a bohemian bent and discovered the beach town during a backpacking tour around Mexico. She loved the hippie vibe and thought I would love it, too. For decades, that was Zipolite’s reputation within Mexico: a hippie place where (this wasn’t part of her recommendation) freaky people did drugs. It wasn’t a place a nice Mexican would tell their mother they were visiting. And the waves could be very dangerous; the name comes from the Zapotec language and means “Beach of the Dead.”
Zipolite gained a small reputation as a countercultural destination in the 1960s. It was solidified in 1970 when a group of hippies came to watch a rare solar eclipse. Locals were tolerant of these visitors, and their desire to be naked, as long as they were spending money and not being too vulgar.
In my memory, my friend never mentioned that it was popular among gay men, so that could not have motivated my first visit. I just wanted a laidback beach town where I could relax, reflect and do my own thing, which disqualified Puerto Vallarta, Cancun and most of Mexico’s and the Caribbean’s major beach destinations. One of my favourite films is director Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También, a sexy and melancholic road trip movie from 2001. I wanted to find a beach just like the film’s protagonists—played by Diego Luna, Gael García Bernal and Maribel Verdú—happened upon. In Cuarón’s fictional Boca del Cielo (“Mouth of Heaven”), shot on a beach not far from Zipolite, the characters bond with a local fisherman, watch fresh seafood being prepared for dinner, have beers in a thatch-roofed palapa and make out with each other (it’s a complicated lust triangle). I wanted those simple pleasures. I could see on maps that at the far east end of Zipolite’s large runway-like beach is a rocky promontory with rock steps leading to a small cliff-encircled cove called Playa del Amor (“Love Beach”). Playa del Amor must be as romantic as Mouth of Heaven, no?
Over several visits, I fell in love with this tiny, remote and remarkably under-developed beach paradise. I wouldn’t call myself a nudist, but I enjoy swimming naked and am happy to socialize with other naked people. Back in the ’10s, it had maybe a couple of dozen small backpacker-y hotels and a couple of dozen eating establishments, only a handful of which would qualify as full-fledged table-service restaurants. Until very recently, Zipolite had only one ATM, a particularly unreliable one at that. The town still has no chain businesses. During my first visit, the internet went out for almost a week, and whenever I walked along the main road, I could see the severed cable hanging there, waiting to be repaired. (The internet remains terrible to this day.)
But I have avoided writing much about Zipolite because it felt like a secret that should be shared only with the right type of gay traveller. Someone who will reply with a smile to anyone who strikes up a conversation with him, someone willing to share a bit of himself with strangers. Someone who is willing to step outside his tribe, tap into a more vulnerable, less status-conscious version of himself and set aside various judgements and expectations. Someone who gets pleasure from doing nothing but taking long walks on the beach. That’s the kind of person I wanted to slip the card that says, “You’ve got to go Zipolite!”
Then in 2022, The New York Times published the article “This beach in Mexico is an LGBTQ haven. But can it last?” To which I sarcastically replied, “Not very long now, thank you very much, New York Times, for ruining everything.”
I can’t do any more damage than that article did, so here it goes.
When she visited in the early 2000s, how would my straight female friend even have known Zipolite had a gay following? Back then, the tiny hard-to-get-to beach town in Oaxaca, one of Mexico’s poorest states, was probably attracting just a few hundred visitors each week, maybe less. The naked gay men were mostly mixed in among the naked/bohemian straight people, only becoming obvious when they were discreetly eyeing each other (and more) on the beach. I figured it out during my first sunset, when I was walking down the beach and a guy I could only see in silhouette walked right up to me and gave me one of the most sensual kisses I have ever experienced. When it happened again two nights later, with another guy on the beach, I knew I had stumbled onto something remarkable.
During my first few visits, back in the 2010s, I would bet that there were only rare occasions where more than 40 or 50 gay men were in town on any given week. I say this with some confidence because, in those days, on Playa del Amor, where most of the gay guys hang out, I counted how many people were there for sunset. My count never went over 35, even on the weekends, when Mexican guys from the region would come to Zipolite for short escapes, bumping up our numbers. On a Wednesday sunset in January, there might be 12 or 14 of us, mostly solo or in couples. Some of us would keep to ourselves, reading, tanning, pacing around. But there would be chitchat, especially when there were a few people in the ocean, playing in the waves, our heads bobbing above the churning water. Though there were guys from various countries, and of all ages and backgrounds, I noticed an overrepresentation of creative types: choreographers, theatre designers, writers and the like, especially those visiting from Mexico City.
Only after a couple of visits did I realize that guys were staying on the beach after dark to fool around. Was I naive? Probably. But remember, there might have only been a half dozen who dared stay late on the beach any given night. Then there were rumours that the police were cracking down on beach cruising. During a visit in 2016, there was a sign erected on the steps to Playa del Amor that there was no tolerance for sexual activity on the beach. That sign was gone the next time I was there.
