Beach is Good

Two weekends ago I finally convinced Meri to take a half day and leave for the Pacific ocean. After much debate we decided to take our car as opposed to a public bus. Either way we were staring down a 6-8 hour trip. Although it's ony 120 miles the roads go up and over the mountains and are rife with speed bumps. We ended up leaving at noon on Friday and got to Hualtulco at 7:30pm. We made pretty good time despite the fact that Meri had to stop the car 5 different times so I could throw up and work my way through a ridiculous hangover c/o Ben.

On Friday night we stayed in a beach town near Hualtulco called Santa Cruz. It's just past several large resorts tucked away to the west of Hualtulco. We stayed in a fairly large hotel with nice amenities about 150 meters from the beach. When we got there we were both starving so we decided to walk around to get our bearings and check out the town. We we more than a little dissapointed that there were hardly any restaurants and all but one were closed. We ended up getting some tacos from a small hole-in-the-wall taqueria which also provided tour services. While we were waiting for our food the tour guy who was already at the restaurant sluggin beers down with his buddy came over to our table, sat down and showed us pictures of his tours. I understood about half of what he was saying but I was secretly thankful that I didn't really understand everything and Meri had to take the brunt of his pitch. We did, however get one useful piece of information from him - the name of a beautiful local beach that was great for snorkeling.

After dinner we walked to the beach in Santa Cruz and discovered it was extremely small. We also found two open restaraunts which catered to gringo tourists like ourselves. After looking at the cartas and seeing the lack of selection and high prices I think both of us were happy that we got good cheap food at a Mexican place. We both agreed that the beach had little to offer and the town had even less - so we decided to get up early the next morning and drive to the snorekling beach called Playa San Augustin. We arrived after about a 45 minute drive (30 minutes down a dirt road). It was worth the trip - the beach was beautiful. We could actually see the coral and fish just walking along the shore. I rented snorkeling gear for the day ($4) and went out to check the coral out which was good, although not as nice as some other great snorkeling places I've been (Belize & the Red Sea) but it was still nice.

Unfortunately I forgot to put on sun screen and got scorched. We decided to leave around 2:00pm and continue on to the next beach on our tour. It was a small beach next between two more famous beaches (Mazunte and Zipolite)called San Augustinillo. We were planning to be such big fans of one particular Saint on this trip, but that's just the way it worked out. It took us about 2 hours to get there but it was well worth the drive. It was by far the best beach yet with a long stretch of beach, big waves, and a great little town that had several restaurants and shops. We aso got a cute little cabana right on the beach. After we got settled we went out for dinner at a gringo owned restaraunt where I got shrimp fra diavlo and got it all over myself. Meri had a tlayuda, which is basically just a giant tortilla filled with beans, cheese, etc folded in half and grilled. After dinner we were both a little tired so we decided to go to bed. The mosquitoe netting was a challenge to navigate into the bed but I'm glad we had it becuase our cabana was infested with them as we fought them off brushing our teeth and putting on our PJs.

The next morning we got up early, headed to the beach for a few hours. We walked down the beach and explored some rock formations just off the shore. We found a lot of crabs and saw a few small fish in the tidepools. The large waves crashing through the rocks were beautiful and I didn't want to leave. Meri and I went in the water a few times to cool down but I couldn't take too much more of the sun.

Both of us didn't want to leave but we knew we had a long trip ahead of us. We decided to leave around 11:00am and took a different road back to Oaxaca. Fortunately the roads were empty and I found a quick driving car to follow all the way back. The trip back ended up only being five and a half hours! We got home around 5pm and had some time to decompress before the upcoming work week.

All in all it was a great weekend getway and I can't wait to get back to the beaches for an even longer period of time. Next on my list is Puerto Escondito. Sorry that there are no people pictures, but we forgot our camera (boo!). All of these pictures have been plucked carefully from the internet to add a little flair to the posting.