Zihuatanejo Bay and the Madera Walkway

Living on Playa la Ropa in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, my morning walks usually take me along that strand and I spend little time enjoying so many of the other walking routes that exist around town. There is, however, a lovely morning stroll route particularly handy to those living downtown or close to Madera Beach itself along the Madera walkway that runs from the bridge over the flood control canal next to the archaeological museum on Playa Principal all the way to Playa Madera, with a relatively new extended section that carries on below and beyond the Hotel Irma to terminate at the rocks at the foot of Il Mare Restaurant and Villas Xihuacan.

Madera Walkway Mermaid Statue
Madera Walkway Mermaid Statue

Most of the walkway is a cement path, bordered by bollards and rope, that winds over and around the rock outcroppings of the shoreline of Zihuatanejo Bay. When the tide and waves are larger the water tends to splash up onto sections of the path itself and spray the passersby and dampen the walkway.  The surface is textured enough to not become slippery despite being regularly doused.

The path disappears into the sands of Playa Madera but is taken up on the other side of the small beachfront restaurants to continue to the end.  There are light posts along the path as well as occasional concrete benches, and when I walked there was a series of garbage collection receptacles and hand-painted signs placed by the students of one of the local high schools, trying to promote a sense of cleanliness and social responsibility in the walkway users, exhorting us to put the garbage in its proper place. As I walked that morning, there were a couple of municipal workers cleaning up the beach and gathering the collected garbage to be removed from the area.