Oaxaca Surf Spots: A Guide to the Coast

Oaxaca's coast faces almost due south into open Pacific, which is why it works. South and southwest groundswell arrives with nothing in the way from roughly April through October, and the coastline is bent and broken often enough to turn that swell into beach breaks, river mouths, and long sand points. Think of it as three clusters strung along the highway.

Puerto Escondido and around

The famous end of the coast, and the busiest. Zicatela is the headline: a heavy, fast, sand-bottomed beach break that produces genuine barrels and genuine consequences, and earns its Mexican Pipeline nickname. It is not a place to learn, and on a solid swell it is not a place to paddle out at all unless you know exactly what you're doing.

• Zicatela — heavy barrelling beach break. Experienced surfers only.
• La Punta — a long, sand-bottomed left at the south end of Zicatela. Much friendlier, longboard-happy, and crowded because of it.
• Carrizalillo — a small protected cove and the standard place for lessons and first waves. Steep staircase down to it.

Chacahua, west of Puerto

A lagoon system inside a national park, reached by road and boat, with a left that breaks near the river mouth. Remote, rustic, low on infrastructure and high on the feeling of having gone somewhere. Worth the effort if you have days rather than hours to spend, and best treated as its own small trip rather than a day drive.

The Huatulco stretch

Huatulco itself is built around a series of bays that are largely protected from swell — beautiful for swimming, mostly useless for surfing. The wave in the area is La Bocana, a river mouth on the edge of town that picks up the same south swell as everywhere else and is the default local spot.

Forty-five minutes east of the airport, the coast bends and produces Barra de la Cruz — a long, sand-bottomed right point that got its reputation when the Rip Curl Pro ran there in 2006 and has kept it since. On the right swell it's the best wave for a long way in either direction.

The right points further east

Keep going toward Salina Cruz and the coast turns into a series of desert right-hand points — long, mechanical, and mostly reached by truck with a guide or through a camp, since access crosses private and community land and the spots aren't signposted. It's the most organised and most expensive way to surf Oaxaca, and for a certain kind of trip it's exactly right.

Putting a trip together

Most people fly into either Puerto Escondido (PXM) or Huatulco (HUX) and work outward from there. The two airports are roughly two and a half to three hours apart by road, so an open-jaw trip — in one, out the other — lets you surf the whole coast without backtracking. Whichever end you start at, plan around the mornings: nearly everywhere on this coast is glassy at dawn and blown out by early afternoon.