Playa Zipolite

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.

History

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.