Be the king of your world.

Author (minus ship) practicing Titanic's 'I'm the king of the world' pose.

Author finds titchy boat and Mexican Leonardo DiCaprio to (sort of) reenact the scene.

Even the local turkey vultures are getting in on the act.

Not to be out done, supreme poser Lou (the traveling wine stopper) uses the pool filter as his vessel of choice

The people we encountered were generous of spirit, kind and seemingly genuinely happy. Of course they're all hustling for your business, but you quickly forget that because they have a playful way of helping you spend your pesos. Every where we went we felt genuine appreciation and enthusiasm for simply being customers. In my everyday experiences, those subtle yet potent ingredients have (for the most part) been wrung out of many employees by corporate rules and regulations, so it was a welcome and refreshing change.

In Zihua however, spontaneity at any moment is possible, a case in point was Lucas, the Leonardo stand-in four pictures above. Not only did he efficiently wait on us all day, but when we decided to move on, when asked he grabbed us a water taxi and we walked all of 50 feet from our beach chairs to the boat and instead of waving us goodbye - he jumped in! Why?... because he could and let's face it we're fun and him jumping in was fun and what can I say, I think the world needs more fun.

Nothing says 'relax' more than some random bricks and a wooden slatted cage covered in chicken wire. Welcome to the Massage Jail, though let's be honest, nothing about this looks fun.

Talking of jail, here's another example of how religion is taken verrrrrry seriously.

Even though Zihua is not known as a surf spot, there was a little left I could see from the house that kept calling my name. The problem was equipment, as the only 'surf shops' I found only sold naff clothing with not a board in sight. So I rented one of the only two boards I could find from a local beach front restaurant. It was a 7ft sponge affair with no leash plug-so of course no leash. The line up consisted of just me, along with the birds, fish and unnervingly close coral, but put the whole thing together & it was bloody fantastic. Even though I caught just one wave on my sponge bob square pants board, I didn't care because I had such a blast communing with nature.

It's 5:00pm somewhere and talk about product placement......as you leave the Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo airport this is what you see, cheers!