Puerto El Splendido!

Trip Start Oct 15, 2007
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Trip End Aug 24, 2008

Flag of Mexico  ,
Friday, December 14, 2007

The bus journey along the coast was fairly uneventful and we arrived in Puerto Escondido without any problems. When we arrived, we had a consult of our guidebook and decided that of the seven beaches, we would base ourselves near Playa Zicatela (the major surfy beach) at Playa Marinero, which the guide described as the beauty amongst the beautiful beaches of Puerto Escondido. We found a hotel listed in the book, so hailed a taxi to take us there, figuring that if they didn't have spaces, we would be in the right area to wander round the other hotels until we found someone that did. As it turned out, Flor de María did have a room, which was really very fancy by our standards. We left our valuables, including our money belts in the safe in our room, which felt very luxurious: not wearing a money belt is a real treat, and headed for the beach. We had a great time in the sea, being washed about by the waves which were at least as powerful and mental as those in Puerto Angel. We already felt worlds better than we had in Puerto Angel. We topped this feeling off by going to the roof top bar in our hotel and having beers whilst watching the sun set into the ocean, then went for a meal at the hotel restaurant. Mmmm. Relaxed.

The following day, we did a few admin bits and pieces. We found a cheap place for food and had some tacos then spent some time catching up on email, Jacob bought a vest from a second-hand shop (he'd felt a little overdressed on the beach) and we went and took photos of the surfers before heading to the beach again for the afternoon. That evening, we wandered in to town along the beach front, then found a street running parallel to the beach, which we christened 'Mzungu Street'. Mzungu is a Swahili word for white man, but can be used to mean tourist or non-native. Obviously, Swahili is not that appropriate a language for Mexico, but we still tend to use it almost as our own personal code since both learning it (and having had it shouted at us by excited children) whilst living in Tanzania. Anyway, this street was tourism central, but not in a terrible way. We found a place to eat and had a nice meal and a large jug of pineapple juice, watered down as seems to be the way in this part of the world.

The following day, we went to the beach again and hired some body boards for an hour. We met another couple in the sea and the four of us spent a while learning how not to get mashed to bits by the waves. Kirsty caught the first wave, much to her great surprise. After not very long, we were reasonably adept at figuring out which waves would be good. Kirsty managed to mis-time one quite badly and ended up feeling like she had been caught in a washing machine, eventually ending up in a ball on the sea bed. When she finally resurfaced, Jacob, who had witnessed the sickening inevitability of this and was watching out intently for her to get spat out, failed to notice the same wave had now reached him at the shore, where it picked up his board and smacked him in the face with it. Thus Kirsty's disastrous wave resulted in Jacob having a split lip and bruised jaw. An hour later, grazed, bruised and exhilerated, we returned our boards and collapsed on the sand with our books in the sun. We had a relaxed afternoon of sun and sea and headed back to the hotel for drinks in the bar again in the evening and then back to Mzungu Street for tacos in a little cheap restaurant.

On our final day, we decided against going to the beach, as we were going to be catching a bus to Mexico City in the evening, followed by various flights which would eventually get us in to Lima two days later, so we thought it best not to do all of this with salty hair. We walked back into town and went to the bank again, went to the internet place and then decided to take the clifftop walk. The walk took us along the sea around the headland and back to the main beach, past various rocks covered with little crabs. We stopped for a while to watch the crabs, then headed back to the hotel, where we had been allowed to store our stuff and had been told we could continue to use the bar and pool etc. We went up to the roof top terrace and relaxed in the hammocks for a while, then took some photos of the sun setting into the sea. We then headed up the road to a little pizza place for a few slices of pizza, before getting a taxi to the bus station ready to catch our bus back up to Mexico City. We were genuinely sad to leave Puerto Escondido and concluded that places that are touristy are not always bad and that places that 'are unspoilt by tourism' are not necessarily good. In the cases of Puerto Escondido and Puerto Angel, the former is touristy because it's somewhere nice to be, Puerto Angel is not, because it isn't. Oh well, live and learn. We waved goodbye to Puerto Escondido and hopped on to our bus to head to Mexico City and back to the airport.
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