The runs and the Beach!
Trip Start
Jan 16, 2008
1
8
37
Trip End
Jan 01, 2009
Puerto Escondido,
Mexico
Saturday, February 2, 2008
I'll start with our few days in Oaxaca and take it on from there. After the long trip down, we decided a few drinks on the roof to chill for the evening was a good idea. We met with a couple of Americans and they gave us loads of travel tips for Central Americans. This is where the interesting conversation ended, inevitably, the started talking about US politics, which is my sign to switch off! Luckily I was saved from being completely rude and nodding off by the familiar sounds of "Howyeh lads" in the native tones of Dublin english! Myself & Eoin obviously jumped up and saw an Irish girl come towards us and said she could hear us downstairs in the hostel and had to come up and get aquainted. Turned out she was from Bray, about 15 minutes from where I live and she actually lived in an estate only 2 minutes from me in Ballybrack
Another church!!!Mexico does love them!
. To borrow the very over used phrase..."It's a small world"!!! I have to be honest and say both Eoin & I felt very homesick that night after hearing the accent.We decided to head out for a bite to eat & a few drinks that night and the Americans said they would show us a nice little place downtown so we headed off and got beatuiful steak tacos. The place itself was very Mexican and when you go in you pícko out the meat you want and they cook it for you then. We got a kilo of fillet steak for about 6 euros...not bad at all. The Americans then brought us to a "Mexican" bar, that played jazz and heavy metal....and then they started talking to politics again! I was starting to nod off again so we decided on heading back to the hostel and a few more roof top drinks. It was at this point we made the 1st big mistake of the trip....we saw a hot dog stand, and being a litte drunk and with a case of the muchies, we all tucked in to what tasted like very tasty snacks...until the next day that was. Lets just say it was pretty much a relay race to the jacks between the three of us. Eoin, unfortunately for him was the worst, followed closely by Bill. This stuck with us in stages for the next three days, so unfortunately Oaxaca wasn't graced with our presence too much. However, the night we got back to the hostel we felt it was a great idea to have a game of rugby on the roof....in the dark! The ball ended up falling 4 storys into a fish pond, which we didn't notice until the next day so Bill had to wade in and get it.
I've attached a few photos from Oaxaca, and the little of it that we did see was nice, but nothing that would make me want to stay any more than the 3 days we gave it
Oaxaca town
. So we decided to head further south to Puerto Escondido, a little town that sits on the Pacific Ocean, 6 hours from Oaxaca. We did this trip by minivan, with out luggage strapped to the roof! The trip was horrible cos the bus only seated 7, but there was 9 in it! Which included one lady with a small child who kept getting sick, and when we stopped for a break she decided to cure him with Coke and Doritos! I'm no doctor but I had a farily good idea that they wouldn't stay down too long...and they didn't! Eoin was wedged between a big Mexican woman who kept spreading her legs out as wide as possible (not in a good way!!) and a Mexican man who seemed to lose about 2 stone in sweat. I was squashed up against a tiny window that wouldn't open and had to hang to the door handle as the trip was a long winding drive through the Oaxacan mountains! The first thing that hit us when we got here was the heat and humidity. We were used to cool breezy 24 degrees or so, but it shot up to around 35 here. You should've seen the faces on the people in the hostel when we arrived with our backpacks on and sweat pouring from us! The hostel is mainly a hang out for surfers and as such is very basic but at only 6 euros a night we couldn't complain. The town here is pretty much designed with the beach bum in mind and there's not much happening apart from that. The beach is nice enough, not exactly clean but the surfers seem to love it, so I suppose that's a good sign.
We got talking to a lot of Scandavians here and they said a few of them were doing a sky dive here so we said we'd check it out the next day and thought little else of it
Nice little eaterie
. We went to the beach had a swim and let the Mexicans laugh at our pale complexions turning into a shy red shade of pink. On the way back we checked out about doing the skydive, so we got showered and changed and myself & Eoin headed off to the place. They took us straight away and gave us a rigourous training session lasting all of 2 minutes! Eoin had done one before so he was fairly well prepared. We set off in a big open backed jeep and went to the airport to get strapped into the harness and get a few more bits of info and walked to the plane. Honestly, I'll have to say I wasn't feeling nervous at all but the odd thought of "What if....." came into my mind. We were going to be jumping from 14,500 feet and doing a 1 minute free fall. Once up the height and beginning to feel a little nervous something was said to me by a man that I never want to hear again....."Sit on my lap will ye?" Fortunately this was just my tandem jumper and he was strapping me in for the jump. When I got to the door an looked out it was an unreal feeling, I saw Eoin go and was amazed at how quick he dropped. For anyone who has done one they'll know the feeling when you jump is hard to describe in words, needless to say it feels unreal! No matter how cool you try to be about you can't help screaming your head off when falling from that height and at 140 miles per hour! I had decided to get a DVD done of it and not only did I have to try and take it all in but I also had to try and pose for a fecking photo, and falling at that speed, it doesn't really do much for your image! Still, it was an amazing experience and once landed and saw everyone was ok, we headed back with permanent grins on our faces for the rest of the day
With the America guys
. I went back later that evening to collect the DVD and was suprised to see it was a communal showing of all the jumps of the day, so I had my mushed up face projected onto a 10 foot white screen for all passers by to see!. We've had a few late nights here, as the drink and food is relatively cheap so we've been lazing about in the sun during the day and heading out in the evenings. We've got another day here and there's a local carnival starting tonight so I don't see much change in the routine happening. We'll more than likely be heading further south east to a town called Palenque, which has lots of Mayan ruins that we're dying to check out and from there we'll get a boat into Guatemala and continue on through Central America.
I've only attached a few photos this time, including one Eoin asked me to put in of him posing with a Lucha Libre (Mexican Wrestling) mask....I apologise in advance!!!!
Talk to you all soon
James
Comments
Scary Irishman
Great read lads - sorry not been on much.
Skydive looked like a blast, they fairly chuck you out of the plane!!
Nice mask Eoin, you do realise that image will stay with me for the rest of my life?