Puerto Escondido, Mexico

PUERTO ESCONDIDO, MEXICO | "The Mexican Pipeline"

Puerto Escondido is the finest surf destination in Mexico and the most authentically lived-in beach town on the Pacific coast — a former coffee port that was discovered by surfers in the 1970s and that has grown into a layered community of local fishermen, Mexican families, international surfers, and creative residents without losing the essential character of a working coastal town with a beach. The Zicatela break, known as the Mexican Pipeline, produces some of the heaviest shore-breaking waves in the world, with barrel tubes that have attracted the world's best big-wave surfers since the 1980s and that create the defining visual spectacle of the town at any swell above 6 feet.

The colors are the Pacific coast tropical palette: the brilliant turquoise of the protected bay at La Punta and Carrizalillo contrasting with the deep navy blue of the open Pacific at Zicatela, the warm sand of the beach at low tide, the lush tropical green of the hillside vegetation, and the specific deep gold of the Pacific sunset when the sun drops into the ocean at the end of the day and the entire beach turns amber in a light that lasts only fifteen minutes but is the reason the whole town migrates to the waterfront every evening.