Day 27

After consulting with the kind folk at Hotel Eiffel Tower and hearing horror stories about driving in Mexico and decided to continue driving South along Mex 200 to the surfer town of Puerto Escondido rather than attempt a journey east to Mexico City.

The drive South along the coast was uneventful and ended up staying at my first hostel of the trip, Hotel Mayflower, in Puerto Escondido.

Puerto Escondido is an amazing place. Its an internationally renowned surf town, home of The Mexican Pipeline, a hugely powerful wave that reported reaches a height of 60 feet when its big in the summer months before crashing onto the beach. This is the wave that attracts surfers from all over the world to live in this small town. The beaches are full of Mexican, American, French, Argentinian, South African, and Australian surfers. This is also a major backpacker destination as my Hostel was full of European and Canadians tourists. Most of the surfers live in rooms they rent for about $10 a day, surf during the day, hit the bars starting about 10:30 at night, if things go well end up with a girl for the evening, and like the movie groundhog day repeat this process over and over until they run out of money. The more aspirational surfers may take a Spanish lesson during the day or try to find a job at the beach that allows them to live in Mexico a little longer.

In my second day in Puerto Escondido I surfed a relitively sedate 6 foot wave. It was still the biggest wave I have ever tried to surf. I didn´t really catch one of these waves but I did learn to stay back on the board, since if my weight is too far forward I experienced a sensation similar to falling off a brick wall, then having the brick wall fall on my back. I was pretty sure I was the worst surfer in the water day, and if I ever come back I´m going to make a red t-shirt that says "The Worst Surfer On The Beach" so people know to stay away from me. Besides being crushed a few times in the ocean I also got an extremely bad sunburn. I was so burnt I ended up watching a movie by myself, Jimmy Cliffs "The Harder They Come" at a Cinima. Since I was the only guy in a 12 seat theater I got to pick the movie and drink beer and eat popcorn in the airconditioned dark. Heaven! After it was over I hung out with Blue, an Australian surfer and Sammy the woman that ran the theater. We chatted about surfing and living in Puerto Escondido into the evening, and I went back to the Hostel for an early night.