Written for Adventure.com

An orange sun is sinking under the sea and behind the rocks of the beach of Zipolite as Guillermo stands up naked from his chair at the beach to take the last swim of the day. ‘I really like clothes, but I feel much better without them’ Guillermo laughs at me, while taking a deep breath gazing the sunset. He arrived a few days earlier with his friend Roberto from Mexico City, where they both work and live. ‘We came here because there is no Covid!’ Roberto tells me, ‘and it is like dipping into another world!’. Located along the Pacific coast in the state of Oaxaca, an hour and a half south from the surfing paradise of Puerto Escondido, Zipolite is the most peculiar beach in Mexico, the only one where people can swim and walk naked without having anyone to complain. The town’s name origin is quite disputed but people often say it means the “beach of the death”, in the indigenous Zapotec language. Cesar, a local guy who brings tourists around to see dolphins and whales, tells me that every year he witnesses some people drowning, because ‘currents and waves are sometimes so strong that people panic and never re-emerge from water’.

Reason why Zipolite is considered one of the ten deadliest beaches in the world. Tourism have been growing nevertheless in the last three decades as the town evolved into an offbeat tourism spot: guest houses, cafes, hotels and restaurant of every kind mushroomed. Local people like Roberto, the manager of a small hotel facing the sea, have seen Zipolite changing radically in their lifetime. When he was a child he was even scared to walk at night, as there were only big cactus, birds, iguanas and turtles. ‘This place used to be a desert, with a virgin beach and just 5 cabanas. In the Seventies people started to come and chill at the beach, playing music and swimming naked. They were hippies. Police was telling them to dress up but then, some minutes later, they’d get naked again. They didn’t really care that they could disturb anybody. It felt as we couldn’t avoid nudism to find its place right here in Zipolite. Local people were disturbed at the beginning but soon they understood that even nudism could be a business and not only they adapted, but they started profiting from it’.

‘Little by little the town started to get more populated. Many people came from outside, opened a business and never left’ Roberto tells me, sitting cozily outside of his posada. ‘You see me sitting here but in fact I am working!’ he laughs. ‘Clients come everyday looking for a room, especially during the nudist festival. In those days there is a frenzy around town as people are walking naked everywhere. Some locals still find it shocking, some others just make a lot of money out of it and do not care. When I was a child we were asking ourselves what we could do in this small village with no opportunities’ Roberto recalls. ‘Now even a federal government deputy of the government came here to invest. His stylish resort is called Naked. Places like this are now profiting enormously from gay tourism, which brings in much more revenues than from pennyless backpackers’. This type of tourism has grown a lot in the last ten years, as also the culture in Mexico have been changing.

‘Despite in Mexico there is a lot of machismo, in Mexico City and in the Oaxacan coast the culture has been changing a lot in recent years’ Guillermo tells me. ‘In Zipolite people are free to basically do anything they want. This beach has become one of the safest place for gay people’ he continues. ‘In fact, this place should be now called Zipogay!’ Indeed the combination of sun, a long strech of beach, nudism, LGBT friendliness and a rich schedule of events makes Zipolite really attractive for the most diverse people. Marylene, 49 years old first aid teacher from Quebec, comes to Zipolite every winter since at least ten years  ‘to disconnect from any kind of pressure’. ‘Here I can do a lot of sport, I can swim naked and take my time for reading’ she tells me. ‘None watch TV, none talk about news, none start Covid talks every two minutes and that’s such a relief’ she tells me while sitting in the terrace of the hotel room that she turned into a home. Canadians like her come in great numbers to escape the dismal temperatures in their country enjoying a direct flight to Huatulco. ‘Having a sea view instead of a computer screen is the way to go! But this is still Mexico’ Marylene continues. ‘Last year a man was murdered for selling drugs just in the main tourist street. In 2010 a man entered a bar, told everyone to leave, shot the bar tender on the head and left in his own car’ Marylene recalls. ’However, I never heard of any gringo getting into troubles’ she adds.

Most of the tourists normally do not expect to find problems, despite everyone in Mexico know that the coast of Oaxaca is controlled by drug cartels. Backpackers traveling through Mexico usually get to know about Zipolite from other travellers, often in nearby places like the beach of Mazunte or Puerto Escondido, as is happened to Skjalg and MacKenzie, 31 and 28 years old. ‘We are gathering some sun vitamins before heading back to cold Norway, where we are currently based waiting to be full nomads’ MacKenzie, a US born citizen, tells me. She met her boyfriend Skjalg in Nepal some years ago, while volunteering for the NGO ‘Conscious Impact’. ‘We feel lucky to be able to enjoy life in a period when many people are stressed out because of the pandemic’ MacKenzie says.

Some other travellers get stuck for many years after reaching Zipolite. Marco, a 39 years old from Bergamo, Italy, fell in love with the beach 10 years ago. Since then, he only returned home once, to see his family and friends. ‘I got really scared when I went back home, some years ago. My friends are working at crazy rhythms. I looked around myself and felt that none was happy’ he tells me. Marco makes a living selling jewels and other artefacts to passing-by tourists in the main street of the town in the evening. ‘In Italy I would the same job. The only difference is that I would be much more stressed, especially with all the restrictions that people are facing right now. In Mexico, they don’t even require a test to enter the airport!’

The feeling in Zipolite is that Covid does not even exists, as many people are coming to escape the pressures and restrictions of everyday life and almost none wear a mask. It is just a feeling however. At the beach, I started talking with a couple who preferred not to speak with me, saying they had recently tested positive. At the hotel where I have been staying, from one day to another all the staff started to wear masks and to propose hand-sanitiser gels to all the clients. A few days later in February, all the events got canceled, including the nudist festival that attracts hundreds of tourists every year. ‘We came here because there is no Covid!’ Roberto was telling me at the beach. In fact, the virus was already everywhere, but people just didn’t want to think about it, to keep partying and enjoying the craziest beach in Mexico. After all, none wants troubles in paradise.