Puerto Escondido

From Oaxaca we took a windy bus (not a wind-up bus, that would just be weird!) through a mountain pass down to the coast and the town of Puerto Escondido, thinking it was about time that we treated ourselves to a good few days in one place plus Shona wanted to cram in a few Spanish lessons – so what better place to do it than by a beach. Puerto (as its known) is a cool little town, with lots of bars and cafes lining the beach front and some of the best surf in the world, which also makes it coooooooooool to be in dude! The waves here are some of the biggest around and in late summer are famed for barrelling and also for snapping boards and necks!! You sometimes feel a little out of place if you aren’t wandering around shirtless with bloody shaggy hair and a surf board under you arm, I actually think there are some people here that have never surfed in their lives but just to fit in walk around with one anyway. We arrived in the pouring rain and it didn’t really let up for a few days as there was a pesky tropical storm loitering off the coast and sending in big old clouds of rain, but hey its so blooming hot here anyway I looked drenched in sweat after about 5 minutes of walking so I might as well be wet from the rain! We were actually quite dull when we were here, more thrilled by the fact we had a little cabana with its own kitchen than the fact that there was trendy places to be seen in in town. So we had ourselves 6 days of normality (kinda!), exercise in the morning – went for a few very hard and very painful beach runs or just a long walk, come back and have a cooling dip in the pool. Quick spot of lunch before Shona went for her spanish lessons and I sat under a fan moaning about the heat to myself waiting for the temperature to drop (I might of popped to the bar a few times to watch the football too!) and Shona to return before going for a little evening walk or knocking about a football on the beach and then it was time to cook dinner and sit in a hammock drinking beer! I can understand why people stay here for so long, shame I didn’t get to work on my ‘I’ve just been surfing, how cool am I look’.