1/11 A Whole New Year

Aaaah Puerto Escondido.
Turns out about 3 weeks between beach trips feels about right to me.

I first heard about the super highway on my first trip to Oaxaca in 2013, should be ready by next year. Turns out that had been the message for the prior 10 years. Fast forward to 2024 and the highway was finally opened. This was my first trip on this route between Oaxaca and the coast and it was beautiful. Out through the valley and then up into the Sierra Madre del Sur with sweeping vistas of hillsides covered with oak and higher levels giving way to fir and Mexican white cedar. The bus was super comfy and it was a nice easy ride of a little over 3 hours for under $20. Heck yeah.

I normally fly into Puerto which means a sudden assailment of hot, wet air. The bus ride made this more gradual, but you could feel the shift as we came down from the hills to the coast.

I’ve never been there over a big holiday like Christmas and it was far and away the busiest I’ve seen it. This has two impacts, 1. to my dismay, things were bizarrely crowded, and 2. my limited Spanish scored us much better prices on cab fare than it normally does. I was less a tourist. Go figure.

And I had an afternoon to myself. Which was needed. Living alone and spending most of your time on your own makes weeks of visitors a little more intense, good and welcome, but intense. The sun there feels indescribably good. It feels like it cradles my soul when it’s weary and buoys my heart. It allows my limbs to relax, I feel taller. My shoulders slink away from my ears and I walk lazily and without purpose. It feels like peace. And Puerto has its share of hard memories, but I suppose every place you might call home does.

Tess arrived the next day and we beached and baby turtled. Cause baby turtling is awesome. Sometime I plan on going down there more intentionally for laying. But so far, just the babies.

We went to Palmarito a bit further north than the more common Bacocho, and actually I feel like I’d maybe come to this site my first visit to puerto. It’s a long beach. Four types of sea turtles come to Puerto Escondido, the Leatherback, the Hawksbill (Tortuga Carey in spanish), the Green Sea Turtle, and the most commonly found, the Olive Ridley. Ridleys in particular are here year round and consequently, you can always release baby sea turtles. All year. Whenever you want. Every freakin’ evening.

Due to poaching and development, volunteers collect eggs and relocate them to a secured environment. Great care is taken to emulate the depth and conditions of their original nest. On this adventure, Tess and I met a disgruntled and kinda mean Canadian. In retrospect, I think she might’ve loved Puerto any other time of the year, but clearly and vocally everything had been a disappointment and she just spent a lot of energy asking gotcha questions to the volunteers.

If you haven’t done this, you’re not allowed to touch the turtles any more (ok, you never should’ve been, but ignorance is bliss). And in a sign of how much Puerto has developed over the years, each person gets one turtle. My first trip, we each got a bucket. Nonetheless baby sea turtles are ridiculously cute. You then stand behind a line with your turtle in a coconut shell and set it down on the beach. The turtles are remarkably good at orienting themselves to the sea and fin their way through the sand. In fact, if you turn your coconut shell around, the turtle will spin itself to face the ocean.

And we bore witness to a stunning sunset.

Afterward we went to Nene, a staple of Puerto Escondido, in its new location. And though they’ve made some changes that I highly disapprove high, I had some phenonomenally good tuna.

The next day was sit on the beach and plot day. And I did not put a filter on that sunset.

We got up early the next day to go on a boat tour. They picked us and dropped us on down at Bahia Principal, which I was a little surprised by, but had the added bonus of watching the fisherman come in. This is wild. They lay down logs, on the shore maybe 4-6 inches diameter and 8 feet long. The boat comes skyrocketing in and the driver lifts the overboard at the last minute, the boat sails along the logs and comes to a stop. It is then immediately bombarded with folks buying fresh fish.

We finally got on our boat and headed out to sea. It was a hazy morning and lovely to be on the water. We nearly immediately saw whales. So did the other 6 million tourists. Same as I’d never seen Carrizalillo so crowded, I’d never see so many boats. It really kinda ruined the experience with every jockeying for position and the smell of gas in the air. But the boat was nice.

And we took some excellent naps.

The next day was our last day. We needed to be out of the airbnb at 10a (no wiggle room) and our flight didn’t leave till 6pm. We’d been offered a place to stash our luggage but wouldn’t have access and couldn’t really hang out there. The only beach club properly in town was over $150 per person. So I popped on over to the place I stayed last time to see if we could stash our things and hang out there for $25. They rejected the money and let us hang. We bought them a gift certificate for a pedicure. I dragged Tess over to La Punta (150 pesos without haggling!!!) for tacos at Fish Shack and to check out a different part of town. We walked alongside the long beach of Zicatela, disturbingly calm waters prevailed despite its reputation as a famous surf locale.

Then we got on a plane and head home to the city on NYE.

After much costernation around food and wandering on my part and an excessively long wait time to buy some beer at an Oxxo, we arrived at the Angel, along with about 200,000 other people.
Mexico City shut down one of its major streets and had a free rave. This thing was huge, I could see stages set up at every intersection in both directions as far I could see with a large screen projecting the DJ’s performance and dancers on the stage below. So we danced in the New Year. It was pretty freakin’ epic.

At midnight we all yelled the countdown and streamers and foam exploded over the audience. In Mexico, you eat 12 grapes at midnight for a wish for each month of the year and in true form, someone was handing out grapes, although I think Tess and I only get one wish having only been given 1 grape each.

We wandered back to my apartment. The streets were eerily quiet, everyone was partying at the Angel or private parties in homes. We grabbed some more beers on the way back to the house at an Oxxo and didn’t even finish 1 each before crashing.

The next morning we lazed about and eventually grabbed breakfast at La Ventanita, home of my favorite enchiladas rojas and a lovely Leo friendly patio. In the afternoon we headed over to Fran’s to give Mole a little love and a little food and grabbed some cochinita tacos at Escadalo on the way back.

It was somewhere around this time that Tess began working to convince me that a mellow vacation with no particular destinations was what she needed.

The next morning, shortly after I woke, but before I’d considered getting out of bed my phone started shrieking, followed by Tess’ phone, and accentuated by earthquake sirens outside. I put on pants and grabbed Leo as Tess asked “Does that mean we stay inside?” and I responded “Nope that means we go outside”. More pants putting on.

It seemed like the ground didn’t start to rumble for a few more minutes, although I’ve now been told it was more like seconds. But it did come rolling through, a solid rolling shake. Power lines swayed. Leo is not sensitive to earthquakes. Turns out the earthquake was centered about 175 miles away and I was mostly just shocked at how much we felt it with that kind of distance. As a California baby, Tess is unperturbed by earthquakes and was impressed and fascinated by the early warning system.

We had a very mellow couple days as Tess was a little under the weather from some fun combo of altitude and a cold. But we did check out La Laguna and have breakfast at Comal Oculto and watch all Trevor Noah comedy specials.

Sunday morning I headed over to Rosetta to procure a rosca de reyes for me and a chocolatin for Tess. Roscas are enriched, sweet, vaguely orange flavored breads decorated like a crown with candied fruit and craquelin with a figurine baked somewhere into the rosca to celebrate Three Kings Day (Dia de los Reyes Magos) on January 6th. If you grew up Catholic, perhaps you are familiar with this holiday marking the visit of the wise men to baby Jesus, if not, well, now you know that. In Mexico, family or friends gather to cut the rosca, whoever gets the slice with the figurine must provide tamales and atole on February 2nd, Candlemas Day (who knew that was a thing?). It was delicious, although I was a little concerned about the health impacts of baking a figurine in a loaf of bread.

Then we were back in the swing of things and headed up to the Sunday art market at Parque Sullivan and then down to Coyoacan in the early evening for their art market, where Tess and I both bought some art, and ate dinner at Los Danzantes.

Coyoacan was both still in full Christmas mode and in weekend mode. Vendors crowded the streets, Christmas lights hung everywhere, groups gathered for street performances, kids threw pop its everywhere, and there was a large fake Christmas tree near the church.

Monday we both went back to work, but I did get to introduce Tess to sopa de lima.

Tess’ last day. We both kinda blew off work, I’d started not feeling 100% and went to La Ciudadela, the massive artisan market. Tess displayed remarkable tenacity. I’ve never had a guest make it through pretty much the whole of the market, but she went for it.

And then in the evening, Lucha. We met Gus & Fran at Ataratandos for tacos before and Tess was overjoyed to find a dessert quesadilla with sugar and melted caramel on it, vindicating her years of sugar quesadillas, before we walked over to Arena Mexico.

As always, Lucha is entertaining as hell. Although, I did start to feel increasingly under the weather by the end of the night. As we left we had an opportunity to take a photo with a couple luchadores with no wait time, so we snagged it! My darling Tess flew out stupid early the next morning.

And then I really got sick. I took Wednesday and Thursday off work and have now watched season 1 of Mad Men. I tried to watch smart things like documentaries, and artsy things like Poor Things, but had no focus. Got a B+ on my class last quarter, which was definitely better than I was expecting and I got a head start on next quarter by reading a chapter in “The Age of Sustainable Development”, but mostly laid low. Still feeling my cold a bit, but hoping to be all better by the end of this week.

Tacos of the week Atarantandos:

Trompo negro is the way to go. Fran and Gus had also ordered fries enchiladas with carne, which were tasty as well. The Volcan carne asada was delish. Fran tells me Katy Perry ate here. And I like the bathroom mirror “Smile, you have cilantro in your teeth”