Wednesdays and Saturdays are the official market days in Puerto Escondido, when farmers come into town to sell their freshly harvested fruits/vegetables, seafood, poultry, and meat. We bought avocados, limes, onions, scallions, tomatoes, cilantro, fried tortillas, and soft corn tortillas, pineapple, mangos, red snapper and shrimp. Our menu: fresh guacamole, with crispy tortilla chips. Fresh fruit drinks made in a blender and spiked with rum. Grilled whole red snapper with olive oil, cilantro, garlic and lime; shrimp with garlic and oil, baked potatoes and grilled scallion. It was all so delicious, we made the same dinner a few nights later.
Archive for August 14th, 2008
market days
Thursday, August 14th, 2008surfing in Puerto Escondido
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
The famous “Mexican pipeline” is found on Zicatela beach, the number three surf location in the world, which are huge waves that form a tube when breaking. Only advanced surfers dare to challenge the monster waves which can easily snap a surfboard in two. We went to watch, and, man, the waves towered over the surfers– that’s how big the waves were. I’d also read that the undertow can be so strong that people have been swept out to sea when only standing ankle deep in water. I didn’t want to take any chances, and kept away from the waters altogether while we were at Zicatela.
With that said we went to Playa Carranzilillo to surf. The waves at Playa Carranzilillo are nice and easy, rarely breaking. I was sharing the waters with other beginner surfers, so it was tough to catch many waves.
sea turtles mating
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
Eleven of the 12 species of sea turtles can be found in the waters just south of Puerto Escondido. Nesting season is between July – September, which means mating season is around that same window of time. We hired a boat to take us dolphin and sea turtle watching, and snorkeling. What we didn’t realize is that we would be intruding on the sea turtles mating. We saw a ton of turtles, and pretty much all of the turtles we saw were in the process of mating. Many were shy, and once they spotted the boat, “disengaged” and swam away. But there was one couple who didn’t seem to mind when we got in the water to swim with them.
Dolphins road along side the boat for a while, and off in the distance we saw a giant sailfish jump out of the water and spread its top fin.
Puerto Escondido
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
The road conditions and the mountains make traveling through Mexico long and tiresome. From Oaxaca, a bus took us south to Puerto Escondido a beach town on the Pacific known for its surfing, and the location where we would meet Tracy for the week. Only 130miles, but 6 hours by bus.
We rented an amazing house with an endless pool on a cliff above Manzanillo beach with a view over Angelito beach. It’s hard to imagine after a year of being on vacation that we would need a break from traveling, but a week without planning each day and the following week sounded perfect to us.