We decided to move on today, hopefully to avoid getting ripped off for food and drink at tourist prices. We packed up our gear and reclaimed our 2,000 Mexican Pesos deposit for the padlock and beach mat before plodding up the main road to the bus stop.
Here we picked up a collectivo van which was an open backed truck covered with a tarpaulin and equipped with crude wooden benches and hanging straps for standing passengers. A cocky young lad emitted an ear-piercing high-pitched whistle to indicate when passengers should embark or disembark.
A colectivo is a form of transportation in Mexico that is generally geared towards moving the population around Mexico’s vast labyrinth of roads and highways. Quite often the colectivo is a mini-van, but outside of the tourist zones some of the vans are pretty regamuffin.
We trundled along the familiar “endless” road which roller coasted over field and palm forest, amongst green mountains and basic villages. People got on and off in the middle of nowhere, featureless places on the roadside with no sign of life at all.
We crossed quite a few bridges over wide muddy streams, seeing very little traffic except for hatted Mexicans riding small but sturdy horses. We eventually stopped at Pochutla, a small town that we didn’t know, and were told to get a taxi from here.
Disgruntled we headed back to the main road hoping to flag down a bus. Luckily, we found a Bus Station which had a half-hourly service to our destination at Puerto Ángel.
Puerto Ángel is a small coastal town in the Mexican state of Oaxaca located in the municipality of San Pedro Pochutla. It, along with San Agustinillo and Playa Zipolite are known as the "Riviera Oaxaqueña". It is located 9 km south of city of Pochutla approximately 50 kilometers west of Huatulco and 80 kilometres east of Puerto Escondido where we had come from.
Despite tourism development since the 1960s, the town is still mostly a fishing village, located on a small bay surrounded by rocky hills that lead into the Sierra Madre del Sur. It was founded in the mid-19th century as a port for the region's coffee and lumber industries but since then other means of shipping these products has replaced it.
Refreshed by cold Coca Cola we boarded a dusty coach with smashed windows for the short trip to Puerto Ángel village. From here we sweated along a dusty track over the hills to the main Zipolite Beach 2 kilometres away. It was like a scene from “The Hill” movie as we trudged under a merciless sun in shirts and long trousers drenched in sweat with our rucksacks on. The phrase “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun” sprang readily to mind. See https://genius.com/Noel-coward-mad-dogs-and-englishmen-lyrics for the full lyrics of this amusing song.
“The Hill” is a 1965 film where five British soldiers are sent to a detention camp in the Libyan Desert, including Sergeant Major Roberts (Sean Connery), whose conviction for the assault of an officer is shrouded in mystery. As punishment, the vicious Staff Sergeant Williams (Ian Hendry) orders the prisoners to continuously climb a man-made hill in the scorching desert heat. Though his colleague, Staff Sergeant Harris (Ian Bannen), sympathizes with the new detainees, he can only watch as Williams goes to sadistic extremes.
As we reached the beach, we decided that the hike was definitely worth it, being the textbook tropical paradise beach with a few beachside cafés renting hammock space. We met a French bloke on the beach who recommended a hotel just back from the beach and we found it and booked in. We rented hammock space in a lofty roofed enclosure overlooking the beach.
We lost no time in going down to the sea and gambolling in the surf to wash off the sweat. In my clothes it looked like someone had chucked a bucket of water over me. It was very hot but refreshing. We then went back to our quarters to relax with a beer and chat to our new French acquaintance.
Back in our open-air dormitory we swung gently in our hammocks in the sultry heat. It is very “laid back” here and much cheaper than Puerto Escondido. The French bloke, whose name was Eric, wanted to get some cigarettes so we went with him to find out where the shop was.
We bought some milk and went into a bar on the beach for a “Corona” cerveza. Eric was a compulsive traveller and he seemed to have been everywhere. “Ah!” he said as we passed a crude open sewer, “the smell of shit reminds me of India”.
It was still blazing hot, so we killed time until 19:00 hrs. drinking Coca Cola and chatting. We then had a delicious meal of fish marinated in citrus juice with vegetables. This was Mexican ceviche. We then wandered down to the beach bars along a pitch-dark track humming with insects.
The bars all seemed very subdued so after a Coke we returned to Suzanna’s (Azteca) where we were staying, navigating by the flashing fairy lights on the Christmas tree outside. In the bar the music was Western rock and the travel topic for the evening was “places I have visited in Australia”. We retire early to our hammocks.
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