Packed our backpacks in Puerto Escondido to catch a bus to Pochutla in a pretty devastating heat. In just a bit more than 1 hour we arrive at destination and get a taxi to Puerto Angel. As we don’t have a reservation we chat with the taxi driver to get some insight on what is the best deal for a hotel close to the beach. We arrive at hotel Cordelia’s, which looks very comfortable, chairs on the beach, some places to eat and the room is cheap and with an amazing view of the bay. We take it!
As the time had come to leave Oaxaca we got into a servicio express minibus, without seat belts, for a 7-hour drive up and down the mountains with destination Puerto Escondido on the Pacific coast. The ride was great, the view also, but after 5 hours of curving right and left I was sure tired and wanted to forget about it! When hadn’t book any hotels, so we just popped into an internet point and booked the cheapest on expedia. That turned out to be a great hotel, with beautiful rooms, a pool and few minutes from the beach. In the hotel it was only us, a bunch of Dutch people and a Japanese couple on some sort of honey moon. So being half dead we went to sleep early to get in great shape for the day after. I wake up in a good mood and just need a moment to go to the bathroom and I’ll be ready for a swim. As I rise from the toilet I feel a gecko attached to my butt! He gets scared and jumps into the toilet bowl…damn Van der Waals interactions! So we get to the beach which is really gorgeous, with powerful waves. The waves and strong currents this day are rather risky to swim in, and there are red flags planted in the sand. But it’s great just playing with the breaking waves along the beach.
Nothing is welcome as much as a refreshing beer when you are out in the heat, walking up and down the hundreds of steps of this or that pyramid. So we sit down at a bar, go to the bathroom, which has no doors, but just curtains, and get ready to order: one beer to share. The young guy is trying to tell us which beers he has and I say “Leon, por favor, grande” (Leon please, the big one). They guy goes on with some more Spanish “la cerveza, bla bla, preparado”, I don’t understand, but Andreas, also known as “the Norwegian man who extrapolates Spanish from his knowledge of Italian”, proudly says “Lara, he just asked if we wanted the conto preparato (the bill ready)”, oh well, wow I sure didn’t get that, but in this case: “si si por favor”.