Puerto Escondido

Puerto Escondido is a town of about half a million people that is known for its´ surfing. It has the best surfing second to Hawaii. It was crazy because everywhere you went there was evidence of Italian influence (mostly if was the numerous restaurants selling pizza). Apparently a while back there was an Italian movie that was filmed here and Italians were so impressed that they came over and made it home. The geography of this town was also really interesting. The main highway divides the town in two, the upper area is where the locals live and work, while the lower section is the tourist area. Down by the water and beaches there was a great pedestrian section, where lots of fishing boats where docked. You could certainly smell fishy smells. There was several beaches but this one right smack in the center of the town is where the locals swam. The night life exploded once it got dark with people selling things and enjoying each others´ company.

The other beach we visited was a little farther southeast from where I just described. It is known as the "Mexican Pipeline." The area surrondign it reminded of us a Whistler/Westboro combo. It had a classy, well-done resort feel. There was a lot of shops and artisan vendors, as well as several Americanized resturants. We found a really great place to stay here for a great price: a cabana ( a wooden structure, sort of like a cottage) with a fridge ( as well as beds and all the other amenities!)

Following are some of our highlights from the time we spent here. Just to warn you this will be a long blog entry because we had a lot of fun in this place.

The first highlight was a public transportation adventure. Up until this point we had been with other people from WILD but people were beginning to branch out and do their own thing, so we followed suit and headed out from Zipolite armed with vague directions and a scribbled map. We had the town name and knew there was an intersection that we had to get off at. So we turend left at the main road and waited for a "colectvo." A colectivo is a cross between a bus and a cab. It is usually a small pick-up truck with seats in the flat bed and you plunk your bags on a shlef on the cab roof. There is a simple metal structure from which a tarp is hung as a roof ( mostly to keep our the sun.) When you are ready to get off ( whether there is a stop or not) you ring a bell to buzz the driver.

We didn´t know that the colectivos have a specific route, but we figured soemthing was up when the first driver dropped us off with his friend only about 400m down the road. It turned out with the help of 2 most interesting English speaking people we made it off at the correct spot once we were in the right colectivo.

The first character was an elderly man ( maybe Indonesian or Asian background) who was well accustomed to MExican culture and choose to hassle the driver when he felt that the driver wasn´t going fast enough. He seemed all polite and was well dressed but when a few swear words slipped out when he thoght we´d passed our spot we couldn´t help but laugh to ourselves. He was chatting it up with a classy middle ages European woman who handmade chairs. She sounded like quite the established artist. Yes I was eavesdropping.

From there we caught a local "city to city " bus. We waited a grand total of 5 minutes (which was so little for a bus that we didn´t know the schedule for) and teh transition went so smoothly. The bus driver´s assistant opens the doors and once you are settled comes and gets the money. It cost 15 pesos/person for an hour bus drive that stops wherever there is a person and lets you off wheneve you are ready (which turns out to be fairly often.)

The second highlight was running into 2 of my favourite instructors from WILD as we walked along the surfers´ beach. Esprit has a whistle/call they refer to as the cooey (? spelling) and it is sounded to get someone´s attention or in an emergency. It´s a basic way to communicate when you a bit of a distance from each other. We´d been walking on the beach and both heard the cooey but ignores it since we assumed no WILDers would be around.

Mel and Tenzin finally called our names to get our attention. They were equally excited to see us and invited us to join them boogie boarding. We were riding waves that were 5-8ft tall, as the sunset over the ocean. We were hooked after ust an hour so we changed hotels to be closer to the beach and rented boards for 24 hrs. the next day. All that after being scared away from this particular beach by the tourist information lady!

On Friday we had a taste of why you had to be a good swimmer and know what you were doing (well sort of.) We´d learned at ZIpolite how crazy the under tow could be. On this particular day the waves were biger and stronger, more like 8 -15ft. We´d given back our boogie boards as I was frustrated because the foamy, crashing surf kept preventing me from going out to catch the waves and our 24hrs. was up. After walking down the beach we spotted Mel and Tenzin in the water body surfing. Of course we had to join them! Body surfing is using your arms and legs to swim and try to catch the waves. There is alot of swimming, diving and archniig your body involved. It was super fun and tiring but the meal that we had for dinner that evening took care of all that hard work. The resturant and bakery was owned by a Canadian couple. I was delighted when they began to play Christmas carols.

After spending a long time at the resturant (since we had booked out of our hotel) and the bus didn´t leave until later we finally boarded the first class bus and got settled in for a long journey.