Beach Bounty

I've hunted and collected beach glass ever since my days of beachcombing the Windward and North shores of Oahu. So when I came across a mother load in the sleepy fishing village of Puerto Angel, this heavenly slice of Mexico's Pacific Coast shot even higher up my list of great south of the border retreats.

Waiting for lunch at Cordelia's on Playa Panteon, I decided to check if the water was as pleasant as it had been in Huatulco's Tangolunda Bay the day prior. The temperature was much the same. But it came with a bonus that sparkled in the mid-day sunlight. Interspersed among small seashells, a bounty of sea glass was ripe for the plucking.

I filled my pockets with some three dozen shards that were mostly white - likely from old Coca Cola bottles that had been carelessly discarded on the beach rather than placed into one of those red crates for recycling. With rounded edges and heavily abraded surfaces, these rapidly vanishing jewels were in abundance that day.

If your travels take you to Huatulco or Puerto Escondido, be sure to check out this sweet little village. Cordelia's has tasty seafood that's served in an enormous dining room that sprawls out to tables standing in the sand and shaded by a thatched palapa. It's part of Hotel Cordelia's, one of the newer and most expensive hotels in the region. But at $50 a night, it's tough to use the word expensive.

Playa Panteon's small bay and scattered inlets are ideal for snorkeling and swimming. The pace is slow, with the biggest buzz found as fishermen haul in fresh catches served up at local eateries for lunch and dinner.

And relaxing on the sand is just as inviting as splashing in the water. But I can't promise how much sea glass will be left. I put a lot of effort into cleaning the beach, so to speak.