Puerto Escondido

          

        

We were so happy to be out of the mountains, alive and at the beach!! Puerto Escondido has awesome waves for beginners and expert surfers. The coast is too rough for swimming mostly, there are maybe two points along the 5km beach where you can actually swim. The rest is only safe for surfers. 

There are three areas of the beach, one end has a small fishing village where a natural rock formation has created a cove for the fishing boats to be moored. Locals bob around in the 5-10 metres between the sand and the moored boats. Most locals don't have swimwear so just go in, in their clothes. Swimming isn't the main goal, they just sit where the waves come in, get wet and make sand castles with their kids. They seem to have a lovely time. 

Mid way down is Zicatella, where, like on our first full day in Puerto when the waves are pumping, there are 100+ really good surfers out and maybe 20+ professional photographers on the beach with amazing cameras with super long lenses to capture the moment. On days like that, there is no swimming on the beach and only professionals on the waves. It is just too dangerous. 

The skill of these surfers was admired by crowds on the beach, made up of locals, want-to-be-surfers (us) and touts. 

The other end, El Punto (the point) has great waves for beginners most days. This is where we learned to surf. Pretty consistent left point break that bends around the rocky point to gently carry you toward a vast sandy beach. This too can get pretty big, and we had to change locations during our 5 lessons due to this. Some of the better/braver/thrill seeking surfers start out before the waves break on the rocks and surf around the point. We saw that end badly for some with a few broken boards. 

Around the point has some great rocks to climb. 

                        

                        

                        

                        

                        

Our first few days in Puerto we walked the length of the beach, there was the girls national beach volleyball competition with people from all over Mexico competing. It was really cool to see, there were little girls of 5 years old with matching outfits and co-ordinated dances when they won a point, all the way up to more serious teenagers who were there to win. 

Having the volleyball championships on the beach highlighted another point that we really appreciated about Puerto. There was an equal mix of locals on holiday, some from as far as Mexico City and international surfers enjoying the beach. 

Like most places with a high number of visitors there are a lot of restaurants that offer 'western' food 10 times the price of local food. We managed to eat local food at local prices most of the time, it just took a bit more searching. 

Although we were camping in our car, we needed a secure place to park. Our accommodation was on the beach at a place called 'El Salvador'. It was run by a very round Mexican called Señor Salvador who spent most of his days in the restaurant visited by his friends, drinking the meager profits of the establishment and then sleeping it off in one of the many hammocks. He was clearly his biggest client.

        

                                     

                                     

                                     

      

                                     

There are a lot of animals in the tropics, and a lot of them lived at El Salvador, dogs, deer, parrots, cats, squirrels, you name it, there was one at this place!

The resident parrot came and said hello every morning. The deer was shy but ever present. 

      

      

                                   

Dogs are everywhere in Mexico, a lot are just street dogs. Most we have come across are friendly enough. You just don't pet them as they are dirty, have fleas and who knows what else. In Puerto there are beach dogs, they hang around the restaurants and play with the dogs who have owners that have brought them to the beach. All are really friendly and desperate to be taken home with other 'owned' dogs. The beach dogs have the most active social lives, the only thing they are missing is a consistent meal. A lot of the 'owned' dogs clearly had health issues also. Taking your dog to the vet isn't a priority here. 

When the waves were too big at El Punto, we went around the corner to another gem of a cove called Carrizalillo. It had lovely consistent long fat waves that gave us time to get up and enjoy a bit of time on the wave. As we were surfing, we didn't take any pictures, but it is one of the most beautiful coves we have ever seen. On our last lesson we were waiting for our next wave and we saw a turtle! Our instructor said she lives in the cove and is super old. She was half the length of our boards. She hung out for the next hour just bobbing between the surfers. It was great!

If we have time on our way back up, we will stop at this place for a few days. 

Despite all the surfing movies we had seen about territory and fights, people out on the waves were pretty cool. Some had a chat with you when waiting for the waves. The rules seem to be, if someone is one the wave, don't try to take it, and when paddling back out after a wave, don't paddle out where people are surfing. That is pretty much it. There was a good mix of guys and girls surfing, and as we can attest, they have worked hard for their good physics. A very strong fashion that we noticed with the girls surfing is g-string bottoms. Most girls surfing had their bums out on display. We are pretty sure it is a way to get your tanning in and surf all in one hit. None of the boys were complaining and as we said, there were no fatties on the waves! Surfing uses all of your muscles! Every day after surfing we were sore in places we didn't know we had muscles! Skye ended up with some big bruises as souvenirs from some decent falls. 

Example of a bare bum surfing!

        

You either walk on hot sand to El Punto or take a taxi from your hotel. 

       

                                   

     

      

      

At the end of our time in Puerto Escondido we had decided to buy a surfboard. Buying a board in a surf town is harder than you would think. There are a lot of salesmen who are like used car salesmen, then there is the new boards from a maker but who wants a new board? As you will more than likely ding it a lot as you are learning. The best way is to talk to other surfers who are improving and looking to downsize or leaving town and can't take their board with them. 

We ended up buying a board of an American guy, Scott who had a cabana at El Salvador and another one up the road at Zicatella. He split his time between the two. He was an actor from LA, he was taking some time from life in the USA, time to re assess things. 

We had spoken to him a few times over the course of our stay and mentioned that we were looking for a board. Turns out he had 14 boards and was willing to sell us one longish one that suited our needs for half the price of what we could find elsewhere. 

He had bought the board from a Jewish guy when he first arrived who had written some things about God on the board. Scott didn't feel the need to take the writing off, we think we will.  

                                    

The shine of Puerto Escondido had started to wear off, with a new board and some new provisions from the supermarket, we were ready to head off.  We hoped the words of wisdom from Scott the actor were true, 'If you can surf in Puerto Escondido, you can surf anywhere.'