We got to Puerto Escondido by Minivan (150 pesos each) with Rich and Ian, a couple of English guys we met at the hostel in Oaxaca. It took us seven hours on that curvy road up and down the hills to get the 250km (150 miles). First we stayed in the Tower Bridge Hostel, which the boys had reserved beforehand for themselves. Really nice and lovely rooms but a bit too pricey for us (200 pesos). [Simeon says: Yeah, but for 200 pesos you got a full suite! Bedroom, bath and comfy front sitting room with a fridge filled with pay-as-you-go Coronas. And it had a television that didn’t work. Genius! You felt like you were getting a tv with the room, but you never felt the urge to watch it (since it didn’t work) and so you got to feel all superior about how you wouldn’t waste your time watching tv at the beach. The hostel also had one of the loveliest pools I’ve ever seen. Just for wading and with a little walking bridge over part of it, the pool somehow seemed to always be the perfect temperature. The owner is a gregarious Englishman who was a lot of fun in small doses and you got good free wifi and a shared kitchen area, but it’s like a half hour hot sunny walk to the beach. Still, I admit that I insisted splurging on an extra night or two here wallowing in the relative luxury.]
So we changed after a couple of days to the Cabanas Edda near a different beach, for 100 pesos a night plus a 15 pesos charge for wifi (shared bath, shared kitchen area and about five minutes to the beach). We got to know everybody that lived there fairly quickly and had a lot of fun chatting and sharing; there are enough visitors who have all stayed long enough that they’ve all gotten to know each other and a little temporary community has formed. Karen and Emilie (we couchsurfed with them on Carolina’s and Juan’s couch in Poza Rica) joined us there (hi the two of you, just thinking about you!) enjoying the beach at the end of their holidays. Actually Emilie was supposed to be already back in France, but the airline company she was supposed to fly with went on strike. And it is not even a French strike (which I just presumed with that history and Emilie going back to Paris) – it was British Airways! So she needed to postpone her flights back, if I remember correctly.
We have a little hut to ourselves and a hammock right in front of it. It reminds me a little of Laos. We are shaded by palm trees which have big bug shells on them. Just the remaining shell after growing and shedding the too small case. Still, it looks like the bugs are always on the march across everything. The owners also take a lot of care of their little patch of grass. All this watering, every day – it seems like a lot of effort for the few little shoots of grass it produces but it cools down this place a lot.
Simeon went and rented a beginners surfboard to start the learning process in the waves. He got quite a bit tumbled around and unfortunately the wrist strap got loose all the time; every time a wave came in the board shot away from him and he had to start searching and chasing it back to the beach. After a little while, he got rid of the board and started enjoying the water the old fashioned no-tools-way. The waves here can be really big; according to Sim: “The biggest waves I’ve ever seen, and the first ones I’ve actually see that are taller than I am.” And playing in them can be quite a bit of a job.
We took our chance to download the long awaited last season of “Lost” – and watched it in a marathon. We also went to the movies at the Cinema theater -- if you would call a small backroom with a big screen showing .avi files off a computer a theater -- but at least we had the chance to finally see “Alice in Wonderland” in English. For me it would have been much better to see it with subtitles because of the slurpy language. I do that on occasion, I believe that particularly this movie I would have enjoyed more if only I could understand what was said but unfortunately the characters had thick accents. The tickets were 50 pesos, but 2-for-1 before three in the afternoon. Emilie and Karen had told us that popcorn and a beer would have been included – would have been a good deal for 25 pesos each. But it turned out to be a misunderstanding; what a shame.
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