Pescado Empanizado

Mexican seaside destinations pass through distinct phases, rather like Mesomaerican civilisations.

The Postclassic for example, manifests not just as a palpable sense of diminishing returns, but with a kind of pustulating pretentiousness.

Playa del Carmen surely had an Early Postclassic era made up largely of boutique and or ‘hip’ propositions around town, before the serious overgrazing commenced and content switched places with style. 
Almost every key structure from the apogee was demolished and replaced — they didn’t even bother themselves with encasing the old with the new.

I have found that one of the key markers one can make use of for determining which stage is current is the size and quality of the breaded fish fillets served in the beach restaurants — establishments which, back home, the lapsed-conquistadores call chiringuitos.

Much of Oaxacan coast appears permanently mired in the shamanistic Early Pre-Classic. Not a bad thing.

There is Huatulco however, laid down by one of those visionary ‘build it and they will come’ approaches to higher civilisation. But they didn’t, at least not really, leaving it as a seemingly incomplete exemplar of all the stages, juxtaposed.