Hilton Grand Zihautanejo Mexico

The resort is very quaint, lovely and terraced into the hillside facing the beach.  Don't even think of staying here if you have mobility issues.   The accommodations here guarantee a daily workout if you leave your room for ice or leave your room for the beach or the pool .  Our room was nine floors up from beach level which was a great daily workout which I can't say I enjoyed but I enjoyed finally getting to my room at the end of the day from a day at the beach with out needing medical intervention.

Our view from our balcony.

 The landscaping was very pretty.

 

The rooms are very dark and this is due to the fact that there is no glass in this entire resort.  None of the windows or doors have glass, none.  In fact the whole resort is allergic to glass.  The doors are wood shutters attached to screens and the shutters do not open or close. They remain closed.  Therefore, you are left with an extremely dark unit which is something I'm not accustomed to nor do I like. 

Lighting on the stairs so you don't kill yourself falling down the stairs.

You do get used to this darkness eventually, but I cannot get used to the environmental concern of the hot air coming in through these screened shuttered windows and doors and then being recirculated for air conditioning.  Seriously, how much does their air-con bill cost every day?  It is hot here in the Ixtapa area even hotter than Puerta Vallarta.  We averaged 33 degrees everyday.

The units are rustic in nature with concrete forms that house, the couch with pillows. It is immovable and in my opinion not very practical because the base keeps sliding out.  The beds have a concrete form as well with concrete side tables but thank goodness the mattresses were comfortable.  The kitchen is also a concrete form for a counter top with a small bar fridge underneath.  The small lower bar fridge was not appreciated because you can't do a big shopping trip to the grocery store. We walked a few times to Soriana and stocked up with a few meals at a time and took an 80 peso cab ride back to our timeshare each time. 

 

However, the kitchen is fairly well equipped but without a stove top but instead  has some sort of hot griddle that you put the pans on top of to cook food.  I have never seen anything like this set up before and I have been to over 80 countries and on all continents. Surprise, I can still learn lots of new and interesting things. One super helpful thing about this resort is that you can drink the water right from the tap because they filter the water. This saved a ton of work not having to carry water up all of these flights of stairs.

The bathrooms are large with a large walk-in shower and the water pressure in the shower is not the greatest. We stayed in a two-bedroom three-bathroom unit and it's always nice to have that third bathroom. There were 4 if us staying there and there is a lot of room.

Spare bedroom shower was cavernous.

If you're okay with rustic and many stairs within your own unit which go down into the master bedroom and into the living room, then eventually you get used to the darkness of the unit and the rustic nature of the unit.    I actually began to like the unit and we stayed almost two weeks.  

There was a dipping pool on our balcony and we ventured in once in the two weeks.  It was nice to sit and soak in the cold pool.  The Master Bedroom shuttered windows opened up onto this dipping pool.

An unwelcome surprise for us at check-in was that there is a resort fee that you

have to pay and it is approximately 300 CND per week for our two bedroom unit. I guess I should have read the small print from my Interval International email exchange confirmation. Many resorts worldwide since covid have been utilizing this money grab and it is frustrating and annoying but if you want to travel you have to start to factor in this cost.

The beach here is the loveliest part of this resort. Most days it is quite calm with very small waves rolling in. It is a very pretty beach day or night.

There are two smaller pools that are nice and quaint and some seating around the pools with  a pool bar that serves a happy hour for approximately 1 and 1/2 hours at 30% reduced cost. Not really what I call a Happy Hour, or perhaps they need to make this happier.

The Pool Restaurant has decent prices and some of the best Baja style tacos that I've ever had, they were delicious.  Baja style tacos are extremely hard to find in the Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo area because we are not on the Baja Peninsula.  If you like your tacos cooked with green peppers and tomatoes almost fajita style, then you'll love this style of taco. Personally, I'm not a fan. We did find another restaurant close by to this timeshare that was open air and had good shrimp and fish tacos with just cheese in them.  There are beach side restaurants all along La Ropa Beach.

The front desk is an open air concept and is not very large because this resort is not Grand even though this word is in the title of its name. It is fairly tiny but does have quite a few rooms terraced into the hillside.

This is the exit out of the resort and this hill is a bit of a beotch to climb up.

A place to wait for taxis

We kept getting kicked off the beach Chaise Loungers because this angry little Mexican dude wanted to pack up the cushions up while we were lying on. He would come up and tap on them as we were on them.  Watching the sun set as the waves quietly lap up onto the beach is my favorite time of day. It's a time to curl up with a good book and not worry about being burnt to a crisp. Unfortunately this was not to be at this resort. We begrudgingly migrated to the pool which is one story up from the beach. It was also pretty here at one of the two infinity like pools but not quite the same. The waves can still be heard and the reflection of the setting sun off the pool still cannot compare to being on the sand. Although the sand fleas were trying their darnest to dissuade me. A few days later we let the front desk know about this little dude and it never happened again.

There is a work out center about 4-5 stories from the beach and has everything that you would need to get a good work out in.  You can also walk a long ways down the La Ropa beach for exercise.

The Hilton Grand is located a short 15 minute walk to Zihautanejo which has shopping and restaurants and an Oxxo that we frequented. The views at night were quite pretty on the walk to town. We always felt safe and really liked the area.

The next few pics are of the Promenade walking area north of La Ropa Beach

Many statues everywhere.

Overall this was a nice lazy beach holiday. This area of Mexico is less touristy than the PV area just up the coast. It can't be developed much more unlike PV which has miles of beaches to exploit unfortunately. I appreciated their room key situation which you could never forget because it is worn like a stretchy black bracelet. I have only seen one other timeshare with this technology and that is the Vidanta conglomerate.  More need to adopt this tech which is so convenient for the patrons.

Beautiful views leaving Hilton Grand on our nightly walk to Zihautanejo.