acapulco_1 travel destinations Virgin Media
Like cocktail umbrellas and smoking on planes, Acapulco belongs to another travel era. The image of Mexico's first ever beach resort is still so inseparable from its heyday that you could assume the place existed only in some faded late-60s time warp, complete with tawdry disco lights and too-tight swimming trunks.
To arrive today, then, and find it not only alive and well but positively swarming with new hotels and lithe young party people is slightly disconcerting. Who the hell told everyone?
The unease, like the first margarita, doesn't last long. Acapulco Bay itself is staggering, a vast sweep of beach and green foothills around the postcard turquoise of the Pacific. It's where everyone from Frank Sinatra to Liz Taylor came to soak up rays by day and let it loose at night. This is still very much the common agenda. The resort has benefited from mass investment in recent years in a bid to draw business back from Cancun, its domestic rival on the Atlantic, and it shows. Down in Acapulco, things are still goin' loco.
There are the usual trappings of seaside life - beach hawkers, multi-coloured inflatables, balloon-festooned donkeys and so on - but there's also the whiff of wealth about much of the seafront. The long coastal road is home to a string of image-conscious bars and clubs, with speakers thumping out the latest Latino beats while a well-groomed crowd shows off its tans and designer tattoos.
Elsewhere, the town's hip boutique hotels and restaurants complement the more standard taco-joints with rising prominence. This is still jet set territory. And down on the beach - where activities range from massages to bungy jumping - what strikes you most is the sheer size of the bay. Crowded sunbathing isn't something you'll have to contend with.
This being Mexico, of course, you can also forget about dealing with boredom. Even without tourists, Acapulco has a population of a million, so there's a living, breathing Central American city to explore, complete with all the sounds, sights and general sensory assault that this entails. Hopping on one of the coastal road buses (memorable in themselves, many effectively discos on wheels) will take you direct to the leafy, fountain-dotted town square in 15 minutes.
Here you'll find Acapulco's startlingly bold main church, whitewashed and topped by two mosaic orbs. The towers form a good navigation point for meandering around the daily bustle of surrounding streets, after which you'd be wise to make for the wonderful 17th-century Fort San Diego, now the city museum. Under the Spanish, Acapulco was one of the most important ports in the world. Cargos of Far Eastern goods would be shipped here from across the Pacific, before being transferred across Mexico by mule train to the Atlantic and on to Europe. The museum creates a vivid and engrossing picture, one which serves as a counterpoint to the luxury villas and Puff Daddy-esque parties of today.
And yes, close by, some ten minutes walk from the centre, are the much-eulogised La Quebrada cliff divers, still soaring after 70 years. Flinging themselves readily from jagged, 35m-high slopes into a shallow tidal channel, they make for a memorable spectacle. The divers are paid professionals, but then given the inherent stomach-turning risks involved they'd need to be. There are four 'shows' a day, starting from 1.00pm and culminating in a spectacular torchlight display at 10.30pm.
The divers are one of the real constants from Acapulco's past, harking back to the decades when the Hollywood pack made the resort their own. But there's little need to dig up the 50s and 60s these days - 21st century Acapulco is more than capable of stirring the senses. Sitting on one of the world's most iconic beaches and watching the dense green bay of the day melt into a bank of twinkling evening lights is proof enough of that. If you like the idea of Latino sunshine and a freshly mixed cocktail of heritage and hedonism, you can't really go wrong.
