How Elon Musk Changed Mexico’s Most Famous Nude Beach
Critics like Almendra Gomezleyva Melchor, who works for a nonprofit called Salvemos Colorada, say crucial infrastructural components, like sewage treatment facilities, aren’t prepared for all the new arrivals, which puts the coastline at risk. Regarding the expats buying up property, Centeno admits, “The general feeling is one of invasion, but it’s beyond the locals’ power to stop this.”
Zipolite is at an inflection point, and it’s unclear which direction it’ll tip. I met a personal trainer who came here fleeing vaccine mandates back home, prizing freedom above all else. Though it seems he meant freedom only for himself; in the next breath, he referred to Playa del Amor as Playa del Horror, or Beach of Horrors, because of what gay men do there. MAGA, please.
Starlink provided an instant upgrade to Zipolite’s digital infrastructure, but its physical infrastructure remains challenging. The town is prone to flooding. And after a devastating hurricane in 2022, Casablanca’s owners had to drink water from their swimming pool using a filtration system powered by a generator. Kelly also told me narcos once tried to seize their property. All this underlines the point: If you’re accustomed to white-glove service, Zipolite may not be for you.
That’s one reason some of the digital nomads have left, says chef Peter Krates, who owns the popular Thai restaurant Mao Mau with his partner Gabriel Santacruz, a Oaxaca native. That insane demand, which sometimes led to hour-long waits for a table in town? “It’s sobered up,” Peter says. The people who remained, it seems, came seeking more than just sunshine.
On one of my last mornings in town, I had breakfast at Orale Café with a guy we’ll call Johnny Motorcycle, who may have been the last person on earth to hear about COVID-19. Johnny spent 33 years in the repo business, then packed it in, riding a BMW crotch-rocket from the Arctic down the Pan-American Highway en route to Argentina, calling it “a quest to disconnect from societal craziness.”
Johnny spent a few nights in Zipolite in early March 2020 before heading on to Guatemala, reaching the border on March 19 or 20—where he was “denied entry due to the fact of the pandemic.” His Spanish wasn’t great, and he’d long since removed the SIM card from his phone. “I’m like, Is this normal in Guatemala? How long is this pandemic going to last? Then somebody behind me goes, It’s the whole world, man.”
“I freaked out,” Johnny says, promptly returning to Zipolite where he decided to ride out the storm in “this little pocket of consciousness.” He studied meditation with a beloved guru. When he flew to Canada two years later, his own brother didn’t recognize him. Johnny had lost 60 pounds, but it wasn’t the weight, he says—it was something metaphysical.
Johnny has seen more and more tourists come to Zipolite—“People like yourself,” he says to me—as its reputation has grown and the definition of work-from-home has expanded. He doesn’t mind. This is his adopted home, too. He just hopes you visit with intention. A nude beach can be “a very triggering place,” he says. “When a person walks up beside you and they’re nude and you’re not, you have to ask yourself, Why is that?”
