We got up at 05:00 hrs. and packed our stuff. Tentatively, in case he started blazing away with his shooter, we awoke the Governor to let us out of the hotel with a warm farewell. In the gloom we walked to the Second-Class Bus Station passed the seafront restaurants which could have been just opening or just closing.
At the Bus Station we purchased our tickets for Puerto Escondido (English: "Hidden Port"), which is a small port and tourist centre in the municipality of San Pedro Mixtepec Distrito 22 in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Prior to the 1930s, there was no town. The bay had been used as a port intermittently to ship coffee, but there was no permanent settlement due to the lack of potable water.
The name "Puerto Escondido" had roots in the legend of a woman who escaped her captors and hid here. The Nahuatl word for this area was Zicatela, meaning “place of large thorns". Today, it refers to the area's most famous beach.
Puerto Escondido is one of the most important tourist attractions on the Oaxacan coast. It caters to a more downscale and eclectic clientele than neighbouring Huatulco, mostly surfers, backpackers (like us) and Mexican families. The main attractions are the beaches: Zicatela Beach hosts major surfing competitions, while other beaches have gentle waves. A large lagoon area to the west of the town is popular for fishing and birdwatching.
Tickets cost us 1,150 Mexican Pesos each for a nine-hour journey along the coast road, a distance of 249.2 miles. We bundled on to the coach with a lot of palaver from the locals clutching cardboard boxes and pails. The Flecha Roja (Red Arrow) Line coach was very comfortable and we were soon racing southwards along the coast.
The road was narrow, and we careered along passing dangerously close to the oncoming traffic. The journey took us through palm forests along a seemingly endless road which undulated into the distance. We paused at small settlements along the way, usually comprising of a collection of open-fronted shops or palm thatched lean-tos.
Youngsters in cowboy hats trotted around on donkeys while women trudged along carrying their shopping. We passed several army checkpoints where soldiers came aboard the bus, and one where we had to get of for a brief search.
The landscape seemed defiantly green despite the aridity. We crossed several bridges over, often dried up riverbeds, but where there was water the locals were splashing and washing in it. We picked up a drunk bloke who bickered about the fare and staggered about falling onto other passengers. Luckily, he didn’t travel very far before disembarking.
Eventually we saw the airport serving Puerto Escondido with Dakota aircraft on the runway. We got off the bus and retrieved our luggage after this relatively pleasant coach journey and tramped downhill into the town.
A magnificent beach was visible on our right as we followed the road which parallels the coast down to a bridge where we found “Los Cabanas Cortez” where we hired a hut with a thatched roof for 3,000 Mexican Pesos each.
We had one double bed with a plastic covered mattress and one wooden bed without a mattress. The owner explained that it was better to have your own hammock, which luckily, I did. We had a shower in the enclosure before heading down to the beach. The old lady gave us a padlock and chain to secure our equipment in the hut.
We dried out in the sun and then went for a walk along the main drag where there were shops targeting tourists on the beach. These were mainly trinket shops and restaurants with American and European names. Ominously some of them advertised that they accepted credit card payments, a real sign that we were in wealthy tourist territory.
We ended up in the restaurant of another collection of cabanas where we enjoyed several ice cold “Dos Equis” beers. We then ordered a meal of red snapper and chips, which was excellent although a little more expensive than we were used to at 4,000 Mexican Pesos for fish and chips twice.
Refreshed and replenished we got back to our hut at 17:00 hrs. in time to watch it get dark. Our neighbours nodded “buenos noches”, two French blokes and a western couple who scrabbled about in the dust on their porch.
We went to bed early, me struggling with my new travel hammock, which was a nylon western purchase in England, which folded up small and was like a mesh orange bag. Mexican hammock salesmen said it was a “chica hamoca” (little girls hammock) and that I needed to buy a colourful Mexican family hammock made from strongly woven thick cotton thread, which could hold a family of up to 5 sleeping people.
In my small snug hammock, I managed to sleep through a weak assault by mosquitos until dawn.
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