Wrapping Up The Trip to The Coast: More lessons and opportunity to exercise patience

It’s Friday morning and we are leaving Mazunte, going home (to our Oaxaca apartment). Mazunte is known as the yoga capital of Mexico’s Pacific coast, thus the featured image. Thursday night our third room in Mazunte proved to be our most restful since the night in Puerto Escondido. We went for a morning walk and discovered a backstreet that had interesting hostals and restaurants, and yoga places. I hesitate to call them studios as they exist on wooden decks or on the ground. The street we were on was less crowded and had a distinctly more laidback vibe than the main streets in town. If we returned to Mazunte we decided we would stay on that street, or one of the other less trafficked roads. With travel  it takes time to understand a place, even after walking the town. We felt we had just gotten to the point of being able to fully enjoy Mazunte and here we were leaving in 4 hours. Five pictures below.

One of the adjustments we would need to make for an extended stay would be to bow to the weather. With 90 degree temperatures and 75 per cent humidity it would make sense for us to be up early and enjoy the cool before 10am, then be back out as breezes begin to cool things in the late afternoon. It is also sensible to be out in the evening even though things become pretty quiet by 11. Sunset happens around 6:30. In between we would likely be in the hostal room, another air conditioned place, or at the beach under an umbrella with plunges into the never too warm Pacific Ocean.

Declining to experience another bone jarring, spine rattling bus ride back to Puerto Escondido I chose to hire a taxi. That meant we paid $50 dollars rather than about $25. It also meant one leg to the journey instead of two and a half the time on the road. We were quite pleased with the decision. We got to the bus station for our 3pm ride back to Oaxaca city a little more than an hour ahead of time. As often happens in Oaxaca the bus was delayed. On the way to the beach we were delayed by mountain stabilization work. This time we were delayed by the classic Oaxacan experience, a protest. As noted in earlier blog posts there are a lot of protests in Oaxaca and they are well tolerated. When groups choose to shut down the highway they are allowed that privilege. It so happened the highway was shut down, for about two hours. The result was our bus for the 3 pm departure arrived just a bit ahead of the bus for the 5pm departure. We were informed of that fact about 2:30.

Not wanting to spend 2+ hours in a hard bus station seat we grabbed our packs and headed out. We went to the restaurant we had eaten at on Monday night. This time we did not eat, we drank beers. We have made a discovery. Normally, we do not drink beer, and if we do it is craft beers. However, we have found that 90 degree heat with 75% humidity is the missing ingredient in mundane Mexican beers such as Corona, Pacifico, Victoria and Modelo. They can be the perfect refresher. I lied when I said we didn’t eat anything. They kept bringing small plates of roasted peanuts with lime and salt. Normally we wouldn’t consume peanuts, but like the cold beers they were delicious. We got back to the bus station about 30 minutes before departure.

There is a majesty about the bus trip. As the highway cuts through towering Sierras there are numerous expansive valleys to observe. Along the way the sun slowly sank into the west creating some colorful scenes highlighted by a nearly full vividly orange sun. We tried, but failed to capture the sun and sunset adequately. About four hours later we were back in Oaxaca City and after a short taxi ride we were back home at about 9pm.

I will not recommend any of the three hostals we tried in Mazunte; El Angel, Casa Yee lo Bee, or Casa Magica. I do recommend Casa Sixta in Puerto Escondido. A final note, I must have eaten something disagreeable on Thursday night. After mild rumblings in my gut Friday I have experienced diarrhea today, Saturday. Finally, about 3pm I opted for help and went to a pharmacy for a Montezuma’s Revenge antidote and some electrolytes to counteract the cramping in my hands. I will keep you posted.