Any updated safety info for travel to zihuatenejo ?

Appreciate your reply, Baldone. I looked at the site you linked, but it actually made me more nervous. Is your point that it shows a lot of things, but that nothing recent is about Ixtapa/Zihua?

We have been to Mexico quite a bit- several times in Puerto Vallarta, many times around the Cancun/Riviera Maya area;
but our favorite trip was to Zihuatenejo. I think it was more fun because it seemed more like we were in Mexico. For once, we didn’t feel like we were at a place in Florida, surrounded by US citizens .

We stayed at Las Brisas, and were definitely the minorities! It seemed to be the place where locals stayed. Although it had an all-inclusive option, we were able to opt out of it and only had breakfast there,
and sometimes dinner at the amazing outdoor restaurant perched above the waves crashing on the beach- so gorgeous!
We mostly took cabs into town for some fabulous dinners with equally incredible views. We hired a local guide who took us fishing and snorkeling. That was the most amazing day, with the best ceviche ever!
We never felt unsafe.

However, a few days before we left for our next trip there, the US state department changed the level 2 travel warning to a level 4. It basically said, that if you decided to go and had a problem, you were on your own, because there would be no state dept people allowed in the area. Besides all the publicity from Mexico on alcohol poisonings, etc. (The brother and sister who were hospitalized & then the girl died, are from our area- I know several people who are related to them.) It scared me to hear about that and then about kidnappings, etc. Our fishing guide had told us a story about being stopped on the road at gunpoint.
Having a blond teenaged girl- I wondered if, because we would stand out more, would we be more at risk? I did not want to have something happen and then live with regrets that we should have listened to the warnings.
We changed our plans and didn’t go.

We WANT to go back to Mexico. We love it there. We would actually prefer to stay at a more local place and not give money to a big corporation, that’s really not helping the locals. We want a more Mexican vacation and not the big all-inclusives that are full of Americans. To the embarrassment of our daughter, we like to try to communicate in our ridiculously rudimentary Spanish.


But, I am still nervous to go...

We are scheduled to be in Zihua for 2 months this coming winter for the first time. I did some research before purchasing our plane tickets and found out that there are many Canadians and Americans vacationing the area. We are used to the Caribbean side of the country but having sold our condo, we are now free to experience the Pacific coast more so than the past. IMO, we are no more at risk in Zihua than Cancun or P.V. or PDC. We used to read the Pelican Press from the Yucatán area, but have stopped doing so because of the crime and violence reported weekly, which is basically the same as our own newspaper back home. I do believe the Borderline Beat uses pretty much the same formula as most subscriptions do... crime sells , unfortunately.
We stopped looking for bad news from the media’s...

I have to jump in here about Zihua. We have been going there for the last 5 years and have never felt unsafe. We don’t go to bars and aren’t looking for drugs, however we have spent a number of nights at the basketball court watching a local game. I am in Tucson and was talking to woman in the pool, we are at the Tucson Worldmark and the lady asked if I was nervous about going to Mexico? I replied, I’m not going to Texas! As for the Level 4, I trust very little that this State Dept. says. Right now there are at least 4 countries, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland that are warning about traveling to the United States. I will go to Zihua any day!