Puerto Escondido, mis dias finales

During my last week in Puerto Escondido, I explored many of the nearby beaches. First, I checked out Agua Blanca, about an hour south on the bus and then a twenty minute walk through peanut farms to the beach. This place had a great point break, but had super jagged rocks under water. So if you weren´t paying attention, a big wave could sneak up out of nowhere and mess you up pretty bad on those. While in Mexico, you must always pay attention. I ate a shrimp salad at the little palapa hut on the beach and got a mean bout of stomach disfunction.

Next was Roca Blanca, about an hour drive north on the bus and then, you guessed it, a twenty minute walk to the beach. It´s nuts how along the drive south, the terrain is flat and covered with fields of peanuts, watermelon, papaya, limon, and mango trees, and then you go north an hour and you hit a lush green bushy mountainous area full of lagunas and cows. If you´ve ever seen the movie Y Tu Mama Tambien, this beach Roca Blanca was the setting for the beach scenes. Although the point break wasn´t as fun here as Agua Blanca, climbing up the cliffs lining the ocean and feeling the waves booming below balanced things out. I asked the guy in the palapa hut restaurant here if he had any good fish that day, and he went and pulled out a red snapper from the cooler that was still breathing. He fried that whole little guy up for me and served it with some tortillas and limon, and that was probably the best fish I´ve eaten for sure.

At the end of the week, I went to the town of Zipolite, about a two hour bus ride south of Escondido. Along the way, I took a little canoe trip through this swampy laguna in Mezanute, and saw some intense hissing crocodrillos swimming right next to the boats. I also got to see some sweet ant eaters, dear, and little foxes. The laguna let out into the ocean, and on the beach where the laguna opened up was a crashed plane. The guide said that it was a drug running plane from Columbia that had 3000 kgs of coke on board. The Mexican federales had sighted it, so the plane crashed down, and the Columbians got away. Before the federales could get to the plane on land, local people had raided the plane and kept the goods for their own ventures. Drug trafficking is big in this port I hear, and you can tell by the feds patrolling the streets all day and all night with their machine guns mounted on their trucks with belts of amo loaded and ready. Intense much.

So then to Zipolite. Zipolite is a small funky town lining about a two mile stretch of ocean. Zipolite is full of American and Canadian hippies who seemed to have gotten lost there 30 years ago, and are still wandering around. It seems like a good place to be forgotten. The north end of the beach is a nude beach that requires you to be a 300+ lb white man in order to take your clothes off, or at least the requirement that day. I didn´t attempt to surf there because the beach had an intense current with tons of rocks. The name Zipolite actually means Sea of the Dead in a Zapotec language. I saw a girl almost drown while I was chilling on the sand. She got caught in the current and was getting pounded on the rocks repeatedly. Some surfers snatched her up and brought her to shore on their boards. She seemed to be alright. I stayed the night there in a hamock, then it started pouring rain, and once that stopped, I got attacked by mosquitos. I left as soon as the sun came up.

Now, on to my dog story. So I was jogging along Zicatela, the main beach in Puerto, on the sand with my sneaks on. So I was getting tired fast, and decided to take this hard-packed sand alley back, much easier. Well this scraggly dog approaches me with his wirey tail wagging, and I think we´re all cool, but then I guess I didn´t give the password on time because he let´s out this bark and all of a sudden there´s a ragged beach dog gauntlet in front of me. So I take a deep breath and charge it. I´m sticking, piveting right, turning left, throwing fake rocks, yelling out obsurdities, and I get past the mass of fur, thinking all´s good. Then I look forward and see the Don, the gatekeeper, standing waiting for me with his canines gnarling, and he wants blood. This guy isn´t like the mangey, one-eared muts up front. He´s been bread for business, like a pit-bull, boxer all juiced up. I had to charge him, there was no other option. So I take off, fake left, go right, on my toes high kneeing it to the finish line, when I feel the breaks go on. The Don´s got my shoe in his mouth, and he´s shaking my knee out of place. He´s got me on the ground, foot still in mouth, but someone´s looking out for me because there´s a massive rock at my right hand. I give it to him hard, in the face. Then I get up and run like it´s my job. Luckily I was wearing my new Asics GT2120´s with shock absorber inserts...didn´t even break skin.