The Beaches Redux

Ok. The shift key on this mexican keyboard is freaking me out but what the heck. Yesterday we left Puerto Angel (forget accents with this keyboard) and visited Zipolete, a hippie beach with nude bathing. We saw one old guy and two guys naked but no other sexes or genders were displaying their birthday bathing suits. We did have a wonderful breakfast of hotcakes, huevos, fish tacos and fruit juice made with papaya, orange and cantelope. fresh and fantastico.
From there we headed to Manzante and visited a turtle sanctuary and saw......you guessed it...antelopes! don´t miss it!
We zipped by a couple of other beaches including the lovely San Augustinillo before barrelling into Purerto Escondido.
Puerto Escondido is a cool town right on the beach. It is famous for the Mexican pipeline. Surfers abound in the water riding the old waves. This morning i body surfed (my surfboard was getting waxed at Mels Wax o rama) and it felt great. The water temperature was perfect, the waves were pretty, the light perfect and all was right in the world. An hour later we are in a small cove, Manzanilla I think, and we snorkeled, had shrimp quesadillas, limonades, beer and a just to top it off a sour margarita. We saw a lot of fish, not spectacular but did see a couple of eels and a merman and a mermaid. After exchanging a few underwater high fives we went our way and if it wasn't for this keyboard I would be taking a nap which I´m about to do. Tomorrow we head back to Oaxaca for rest and relaxation, ha!

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The Beaches

I haven't posted in a few days to lack of the internets and the accompanying tubes. It is early morning of Jan. 2 and we are at Puerto Angel. A cozy little town on the coast of the Pacific. We came from San Augustin which is even cozier. Augustin has no town, it is just a place on the beach with palapas. Both areas were quite crowded due to the holidays. Yesterday the crowds started thinning out. We have snorkeled at both places. San Augustin is better snorkeling but both have their absolute charm. We ate dinner last night at the El Rincon del Mar which is about 40 feet from the sidewalk and overlooks the bay you see on the left. The beach on the right is San Augustin. It is the part you don't want to swim as the rip tides are strong. Leaving now for Puerto Escondido. More later.

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Next day I think

Second day in Oaxaca and Steve and Beth, Martha's friends, a geologist and librarian and I go to the mountains outside of Oaxaca for breakfast. A beautiful drive to 9000 feet above sea level. It is a bit cooler but not as cool as it usually is. In fact it is warm. I brought my sweater but never thought of wearing it. I had huevos a la Mexicana and afterwards we drove back to the city. Martha and went downtown and shopped and shopped around the zocalo. We ended up at the Bar Jardin and met Fany, Martha's neighbor who is in law school. The zocalo was crowded with people and vendors and musicians. Four muscians were playing Andean style music two tables over and we could hardly hear ourselves talk. I had a couple of beers and a mezcal and soon became tired. We go home. Crash. Sleep. Deep sleep and in the morning I wake up and listen to the sounds of burro's braying, roosters crowing and dogs barking. The air is clear and blue and the light is to die for.

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December 26

The day started perfectly. Up at 6 am. I thought I had set the clock to 5:30 but as luck would have it that day I got an extra 30 minutes sleep.
I made cooffe, cleaned out the soon to be rotten vegetable matter from my fridge and placed it in Renfroe Elementary school's trash can. For all the juvenile noise that comes from that place it has its perks. Jon picked me up minutes before he was scheduled to come which is a minor miracle in itself and the day could be called perfect on that basis alone.
At the airport my gate was changed from E (the furthest) to T (the closest). "T" was a mere few steps from the security area and my gate was the nearest. Unbelievable, no? Next item the plane boards exactly on time and I have an aisle seat. Now something happened that has never happened on a flight to Mexico. No one is assigned to sit next to me! I have room galore. It is seating manna from airline heaven.
The only "hitch" in the day -- our wings are frosted and we have to go to de-icing. This delays us 45 minutes but it was fun watching the de-icing. (see the pic)
We take off, land in Mexico City. My flight to Oaxaca was on Mexican airline and I had to take the air bus to the old terminal. I was told to wait in gate B which was just a large holding area. You sit there and wait for them to announce your actual gate. It just didn't seem right but it worked out. I take off on time on a small jet and land just 10 minutes late in Oaxaca. Martha is there wearing silver sparkle glasses and it was great to see her. More later.

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On the Way Back 2

We stopped in Solferino to look at a 1000 year old tree and found a cafe down the same side street. It was run by Vera. Vera moved to Mexico many years ago from Croatia and had lived in this cafe/gallery for the last 8 years. She was pretty circumspect about how she happened to be where she is. I'm sure there is a good story about lovers, money or family somewhere. Her art was quite nice and she made a good/strong espresso that we sorely needed after leaving Holbox so early no cafe was open for coffee. Vera's place was very nice and minimalist. I will post more shots of her space later.

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The Way Back

The streets of Holbox. Sand streets and scooters and golf carts with ATV wheels for riding in the sand. Our time is up and we are heading back to "civilization".That's me riding the ferry back to Chiquila where we left the car rental. On the way back we saw the elusive flamingos we failed to find the previous day on our jaunt on the island.

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Isla Holbox--Hotter than Hell!

Isla Holbox. In seach of the flamingos. We rode in a golf cart almost to the end of
the island. We were unable to get to the part of the island with the flamingos but the trip was beautiful. The only snag was when the breeze stopped for a few moments and the flys and mosquito ferociously attacked us. We ran back to the cart waving our hands to keep the monsters away.

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