Parque Nacional Huatulco

Parque Nacional Huatulco protects the western half of the Huatulco coast: 11,891 hectares, of which about 6,375 are land and 5,516 are sea. It was decreed on 24 July 1998 on land expropriated in 1984 for the Bahías de Huatulco resort, so roughly a third of that land ended up protected instead of built on. CONANP, Mexico's protected areas agency, has run it since 2000. Its marine zone reaches about two nautical miles offshore between Punta Sacrificios and Punta Violín, and five of the nine Huatulco bays lie inside it: San Agustín, Chachacual, Cacaluta, Maguey and Órgano.

Most of the land is low tropical dry forest that turns grey and leafless in the dry season and green with the summer rains, with mangroves and seasonally flooded forest in the lowlands. Offshore are coral reefs with a dozen coral species, counted among the best preserved on the Mexican Pacific. The park is part of the Ramsar wetland Cuencas y Corales de la Zona Costera de Huatulco (2003) and, together with the municipality, of a UNESCO biosphere reserve named in 2006. Wildlife includes the yellow-headed parrot, sea turtles that nest on its beaches, and humpback whales offshore in winter. In 2023 the government declared two more parks nearby, Huatulco II and Ricardo Flores Magón.

There are no towns inside the park, only archaeological remains around a thousand years old. Most visitors see it from the water on boat tours, and tourism concentrates at Maguey and San Agustín, the bays reached most easily by road, while Cacaluta and Chachacual, where scenes of the film Y tu mamá también were shot, are wilder. On land there are guided walks through the forest, birdwatching and bike tours, and each Lent a religious pilgrimage crosses the park.