The coast is clear

I start my search for the Costa Chica's chilled-out charm in Puerto Escondido — or Puerto, as it's usually called. The first thing that hits you on arrival (at least if you're a man) is that shirt and shoes are optional. Scratch that: Wearing anything above the waist or on your feet is manifestly overdressing. Nobody shakes hands, either. Instead, from Chileans and Australians and Italians (in Puerto, just about everyone's from somewhere else), I receive a sort of surfer-dude salutation that involves a slide and click of the palms followed by a homeboy knuckle bump — and not once do I get it right. I don't even know what questions to ask. On several occasions — at a bar and on the beach — I get to talking and ask: So, what brought you to Puerto? Or, what do you do? The first would invariably evoke an answer involving a vacation gone hippie (came for two weeks, stayed for two years). The second mostly drew a blank gaze and a shrug, as if to say, Like I'd be so bourgeois to actually do anything ...

This is the kind of town that had hippie roots before there were hippies. The first tourist hub on Oaxaca's coastline, the port began to prosper in 1928, exporting the state's famed coffee. By the '40s, it was already dancing to its own tune: When a tax collector came in 1942, he wasn't just kicked out of town — he was killed on the road out. As Gina Machorro, the wondrously provocative veteran of Puerto's tourist booth, puts it, "We have this Oaxacan tradition of being unfriendly to outsiders — or at least to those outsiders who tell us what to do." Which perhaps explains why the federal government never made any headway — as it did, most famously, in Cancún and Los Cabos — with turning this singular piece of paradise into Resortlandia.

Thankfully, Puerto's main beach, Playa Principal, still looks almost exactly as it did half a century ago — a perfect arc of white powder sand fringed by a swath of palms leaning toward the sea. A clutch of palapa huts now skirt the sand, and the fishermen share the waters with teenage bodyboarders. Behind the trees, a pedestrianized downtown drag (or el adoquín, "paving stone") is home to a few decent restaurants, some primitive-looking nightclubs, and Gina Machorro's tourist booth.

"Our beloved governor is trying to rebrand us as the Oaxacan Riviera," Gina tells me on her walking tour of the town. "Even the guidebooks are using the name now. It's insulting. We're the second-poorest state in Mexico, we've got places down the road with no water or electricity, and now we're a Riviera." The Costa Chica is not the Mayan Riviera, nor was it meant to be. Unlike in Playa del Carmen — Mexico's fastest-growing tourist town — development has not spiraled out of control in Puerto: In fact, the town has yet to sprout any five-star resorts, designer hotels or hipster bars. What it does have is a collection of beaches whose drama and diversity are unmatched anywhere in Mexico and whose Playa Zicatela is Latin America's hottest surf destination, bar none.

Half a mile from Playa Principal, Zicatela is where in the 1970s — just as Oaxaca's once-imperious coffee trade was ebbing — Puerto was reborn. Discovered by surfers from San Diego and now known internationally as the Mexican Pipeline, the waves along Zicatela's three-mile stretch break big and barrel into perfect tubes — much like Hawaii's fabled North Shore. So powerful are the waves — which regularly reach 20 feet but have been known to top 60 — that when I first stood on Zicatela's wide golden sands, I felt their vibration: The waves crash with the force of a thunderous storm and rumble your insides. And they don't stop.

Julien Capmeil / CondeNast Traveler Oaxacan beaches, like the one off Mazunte's Casa Pan de Miel, range from having swimmable waves to featuring pro surfer-size breaks such as those at Playa Zicatela in Puerto Escondido.

"Every day it's like a machine," says Ángel Salinas, Puerto's de facto surf pioneer. "More longboards have been broken here than anywhere else in the world." Ángel should know. A surfer since the age of eight — and famous throughout the surfing world for the colorful wrestler masks he sports at sea — the 41-year-old champion set up the first surf shop in town, as well as Mexico's first surf clinic for children. Puerto now has 15 surf shops in all and holds two international competitions annually, and about a third of the 450,000 visitors who come here annually are "serious surfers," according to Ángel.

"For years, people thought we were just a bunch of bums and weirdos," he tells me at his shop, Central Surf, on Zicatela's sole, seafront street. "It wasn't until 1987, when we had our first international tournament here, that the locals realized, 'Hang on! Everyone's hanging out, enjoying themselves — and they're not drug addicts.' It was, you know, mucha armonía [lots of harmony]. They realized, 'This is Puerto. This is our image.'?" By the '90s, Puerto was barely escondido (hidden) anymore, and nowadays you can find Swiss-made bagels, Japanese sushi, and a Czech-managed hotel on Zicatela — whose laid-back multiculti feel has eclipsed the stale Anytown, Mexico, scene around el adoquín.

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