The Shawshank Bay — the intimate Pacific fishing village where Andy Dufresne dreamed of going, backed by verdant hills above a horseshoe bay, still retaining the wooden pier, fishing boats at dawn, and fresh tuna tacos that made it famous before the adjacent Ixtapa resort was built
Zihuatanejo ('Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo' is the official tourism zone name) is a small Pacific fishing village in Guerrero state that has become famous worldwide as the 'beach Andy was headed to' in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) — and the film's vision of a perfect, uncomplicated seaside paradise is close to accurate. The village clusters around a horseshoe bay (Bahía de Zihuatanejo) with four distinct beaches: Playa Municipal (the main fishing dock beach, with market, pangas unloading catch, and cheap mariscos), Playa La Madera (smaller, calmer, good for swimming), Playa La Ropa (the best swimmin…
The Zihuatanejo area has evidence of pre-Columbian settlement from at least 3000 BCE — the Ixtapa lagoon system shows clear evidence of long-term human occupation. By the time of the Aztec Empire, the coastal region was controlled by the Cuitlatec people (a small independent ethnic group on the Guerrero coast), and the Aztec Triple Alliance extracted tribute in the form of cotton, gold, and tropical birds from the coast. Spanish forces arrived in 1522 — only one year after the fall of Tenochtitlán — as Hernán Cortés's expedition sought a Pacific harbour from which to launch an expedition to A…