JDiver

Acapulco is legendary. I stayed at the old Boca Chica, Villa Vera, and subsequent places, over the years; my early scuba diving was here (I've been diving 58 years now). That Acapulco was the hot spot for movie people, tycoons, gangster on the lam, the glitterati and glamorati of the time.

It's not that anymore. Now crowded with resort hotels along the beaches, it's uncomfortably crowded and expensive at high season - especially the two weeks around Christmas and "Holy Week" leading up to Easter. Summers it's beastly hot and humid, and the rainy season can bring hurricanes and road and hillside washouts. If you wish to visit, November leading up to 15 December, the beginning of peak season, as well as March, are good to visit. Then it gets hot; May is the hottest time, then the rains cool it off.

Ixtapa is the new, brash beach resort with condominium and sprawling hotels fronting sugar-fine sand; immediately south, Zihuatanejo is older, less high-risey and gently draped around some lovely bays and baylets. Crowded and most expensive during the same times as defined for Acapulco, above.

Taxco is the ever-preserved Colonial mountain silver mining town, an architectural, art and silver work delight, close to the amazing Grutas de Cacahuamilpa caves and Xochicalco, the most accessible Toltec site and its bore sight used by several cultures to align and adjust their calendars.

I'd visit these in a heartbeat, though honestly I'd pass on Acapulco and its brassy tourism and polluted bays that long ago outgrew any attempts to control sewerage and runoff.

Renting a car in Acapulco or Ixtapa can certainly be done, but I'd caution anyone to avoid driving at night and out of the city (or even some areas in the Acapulco greater area); driving into rural areas of the state of Guerrero is plain dangerous. I can not emphasize this enough. US government employees are at this writing not permitted to be more than two blocks inland from the coastal road in Acapulco. By all means, avoid the shadier parts of town (the red light district and associated bars).

Guerrero is the most dangerous state to travel in in Mexico outside of controlled areas. The police are notoriously corrupt, gangs are proliferating - notably the "Guerreros Unidos" gang these days.

Last month, this hit the media worldwide: The police in Iguala, Guerrero were told by the mayor to prevent a group of 49 student teachers coming to town to protest discriminatory employment practices to intervene and not allow the students to disrupt his wife's speech.

The police opened fire on their bus, killing six, and removed all the rest in police vehicles. Three members of the Guerreros Unidos gang were detained, and they stated the police turned over the student teachers to them.

GU then transported the students in trucks to another, more remote, site. When they arrived seventeen had suffocated already; they executed all the others by gunshot, burned the remains for fourteen hours using petrol, wood, plastics, etc., crushed the remains, bagged them in sacks and dumped the remains in the (Mixcoac?) river. (The mayor of a nearby town has been identified as the probable leader of GU.)

Federal authorities have not yet found the missing 43 student teachers, but whilst looking for them they have discovered other mass graves. In 2013, more murders were reported in the state of Guerrero than in any other state - and the reports are considered to be the tip of the ice berg.

While it seems safe to visit Taxco, and the nearby Grutas de Cacahuamilpa caves and Xochicalco Toltec archaeological site, Acapulco and Ixtapa, I'd strongly advise not go rural in Guerrero state.

I've visited Guerrero since the 1950s, and some areas have always been dicey.

A school chum and her brother camped on the beach just south of Acapulco (1960s). They were awakened by gunmen and tied up. The assailants sat around discussing what to do with them, but as "Adalberta" was obviously pregnant they chose to let them live. But they shot "Beto's" kneecaps and left them after robbing them.

On another occasion, we were camped in a secure area near Pie de la Cuesta when a camper arrived with obvious bullet holes (1970s). The couple told me they'd pulled over for the night in one of the scenic overlooks just south of Acapulco, between Acapulco and Puerto Marqués, when some armed men knocked and demanded to be let in.

When they declined, the men shot the door lock open (and ventilated the door for good measure). What saved them is they were show professionals traveling with a chimpanzee; the chimp went berzerko at the gunshots and the robbers fled.