In the 1950s, Hollywood stars, elite politicians, and other members of the jet-set flocked to Acapulco. They enjoyed fun in the sun in relative privacy. John Wayne and Johnny Weissmuller co-owned the Hotel Los Flamingos, high on the cliff. Less well-known tourists, like Anaïs and Rupert, enjoyed visiting too.
SPRING, 1954
Spent twenty days in Acapulco.
Never has a period of my life seemed more like a dream, a dream in which I wept with joy. Acapulco is the place where my body and spirit are at peace. Everything contributes to its dreamlike atmosphere.
The drive from Mexico City on Sunday. Cuernavaca was festive, it was overflowing with visitors, the cafés were crowded and animated. The Mexicans, when not at work, dress as for a fiesta. There is always a fiesta, always something to celebrate, a saint or a revolution. Ribbons, red and yellow, in the black hair. Starched white dresses, red, green, yellow, purple, or light-blue ones. The little girls with short black hair and bangs wear butterfly bows of satin in bright colors, the same butterfly bow that as a child in Cuba I was so eager to have tied so it would stand like a butterfly about to take off.
A heavy rainfall came suddenly and drenched us, and everybody scattered, laughing at the rain. The drive to Acapulco is harsh and difficult. The new road is not yet ready and the old one torn up. We drove over rocks, through clouds of dust, through dry riverbeds, new tar and gravel. In spite of this the sight of Acapulco around the bend of the road, from the top of the mountain, is like a mirage long desired. No place in the world where the mountains, rocks are so awesome, the vegetation so abundant and fecund, the air so soft and caressing, the people so human and natural. No need of painters to paint a world, no need but of eyes to see. The dresses of the women blend in colors with the flowers and the fruit. Their dark hair is adorned with ribbons and colored wool. Their hair is glossy, their teeth dazzling.
After the heat and thirst and weariness, Acapulco in the sunset seems like a balm; it enters the blood like a drug after one inhalation of the scent of flowers, one glimpse of the bay iridescent like silk, the sunset like the inside of a shell, so much like the flesh of Venus. The coconut palm with its naked elegance which makes other trees seem fussy like a woman with over-curly hair, gossipy and chattery. The palm with its stylized body, lean and pliant, nude, throwing all its adornment into one luxuriant head of hair of plunging feathers and plumes which sweep the sky gently.
from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume V, 1947-1955
