On our route Puerto Escondido was actually due two weeks ago, after San Cristóbal de las Casas . Back then the holiday week before Easter (Semana Santa) scuppered our plans: genuinely every beach town was booked out. We had not been to the beach since Tulum at the end of March, so we did not want to simply skip a trip to the Pacific coast. Instead we postponed our beach holiday to the relaxed off-season now beginning.
Let me tell you: booking a flight with a Mexican airline is the most user-unfriendly thing I have ever done. And that despite the airline pre-selecting six extras for convenience. Which ones they are you have to work out yourself, though, by clicking every category and reconsidering carefully whether you really need 15 kg of hand luggage…
Puerto Escondido is the surfing paradise par excellence. The place is famous for the Mexican Pipeline - a barrel wave at Zicatela beach that, together with a similar wave in Hawaii, ranks among the largest waves of its kind in the world. It reaches a height of up to ten metres.
Since the town is consequently only a known destination for surfers or those who want to become them (us?), things are veeeery relaxed here.
We looked for accommodation near the small but excellent Carrizalillo beach, which offers perfect conditions for beginner surfers. Apart from the nightly monster-ant attacks, our accommodation was paradise.
We knew our decision had been spot on the first time we caught sight of our beach: Playa Carrizalillo is a small bay with fine sand and gentle waves, reached down a long flight of stone steps. With a surfboard it feels endless. Luckily our surf instructors were gentlemen and I was spared that experience.
Even if you have no intention of surfing, this beach is wonderful for relaxing. For a minimum spend of 10 euros even on sun loungers under a parasol. Correction: evidently not at the weekend, when the small beach is bursting at the seams with people.
Since we had picked Puerto Escondido to try ourselves out on a surfboard, we booked three surf lessons. It went astonishingly well for both of us from the start and - perhaps for that very reason - was enormous fun. Now we just need to build up some strength in our arms so that paddling back after a successful wave is not so tiring. Then nothing really stands in the way of our surfing careers!
A highlight of our week was a trip to Playa Bacocho, where freshly hatched baby turtles are released into the sea every evening. They were barely an hour old when we carried them to the water. ❤️
We had to shed a few tears, since during the release a few mean birds were circling above the sea and fishing the baby turtles out of the water.
We made one more trip we had high hopes for - to the Laguna de Manialtepec, where on a moonless night you can swim in fluorescent water (please forgive me regarding the correct biological term). We were lucky: the night was almost moonless and it really was magical to swim in the 30-degree water and make it glow in the process.
Thanks to a Google image search I had expected something completely different, though: blue glowing water, and glowing even without us touching it. And that I would be able to take a cool picture of it myself. But that was too demanding for our phone cameras after all.
And now it is: time to say goodbye, Mexico! Even after eight weeks we have explored only a fraction of the country. We would not have guessed how varied it is here. There would be so much more to discover that we could easily have spent another eight weeks in Mexico. We have not seen anything of the north at all, for instance.
But the travel bug is pulling us onwards, and so we are setting off for Guatemala, for which we have plans of an entirely different kind…
