Tag: oaxaca

Oaxaca coast

We finished our trip by heading to probably my favourite place in the world – the coast of Oaxaca. We spent a week in Mazunte, Roca Blanca and Puerto Escondido visiting a good friend whose been living there for the past eight years.

This trip was hot and lazy but we managed to get a decent hike in walking from Mermejita beach, over Punta Cometa, along the beaches and over headlands between Mazunte and Zipolite for lunch at the always phenomenal Piedra de Fuego fish palapa. Hiking in 90* at the beach is pretty tough so we had to start early and stop for beer breaks obviously!

Then we headed over to Roca Blanca and stayed at New Ruins, a great little spot of pure relaxation on the beach just around the corner from the main beach. A heavenly place filled with Great Danes, peacocks and turkeys. Everything’s built with adobe and wood and is the perfect place to escape the heat.

Our cabin in New Ruins

Every morning we would be woken by the resident peacock Marco Antonio climbing to the top of our staircase and piercingly call out over the land. It was fun to make a similar sound and listen to the peacocks and turkeys all respond in unison.

Marco Antonio the peacock

After this relaxing week long trip, we were beat and ready for our coming hike! Back to Mexico City for me for a week of relaxing and goodbyes while Jen is off to WA and OR for a week of family time before I fly up to join her to start our hike in the Olympic National Park on June 8th.

Inland Oaxaca /wa-HAH-ka/

We headed from Villahermosa towards Coatzacoalcos, Tabasco. Another veritable crater of a town; it flickered in the light of huge flames sprouting above the refinery towers. I swore it looked like a desert, at least that’s the memory I chose for it. Iraq circa 2005 is what saw followed by concrete bridges.

The pharmacy acquired helping hand kicked in and took us over the clouds to Oaxaca city via every other city on route first. What a beautifully uneventful journey with the promise of a tlayuda at the end. Mexican buses are like Greyhound with a much smaller chance of being murdered on and bigger seats and more respectable stations.

We got into to Oaxaca and headed for coffee in La Brujula Cafe then on to the market for meat and mezcal. We went to the hottest spot for Mezcal in Oaxaca City in the market and talked to the lady about different mezcales, sampling lots and ultimately going for some sweet hand written label madrecuish mezcal for our coming days in the mountains and at the beach. I think that will be one of the things I’ll most miss about Mexico – this stage of the trip to the Oaxacan coast.

  • La Brujula Cafe
  • Buying mezcal

We ate meat and made friends at the end of the long meat alley. You choose your meat combo from an array of sellers. They grilled up our chosen meat as we grabbed salsas and tortillas. (God bless the Oaxacan tortila).

  • I call this meat alley

When we meet people, we always tell people where we’re from: Jen from Washington, USA (“oh”) and me from England (“ooh”). We were talking the previous day about the Mexico experience being a little easier when you’re from England so I decided to tell these guys “yeah we’re from England” as a little joke for Jen to see the more positive reactions one receives.

Turned out one of them was a journalist,  Jaime López Cosme (in the red shirt next to me) and he wrote a short interest article about us on a local news website Esta Mañana. He took a shot of us but we had also taken some group photos so didn’t think much about it. Now that little half truth about us both being English has created some semi-fake news. sad! Check out our article!

Muy hermoso es México: Jennifer y Jacob

We then headed over to the bus station to grab our backpacks and skipped on down to get a mini bus up into the mountains to the next stage of our adventure, San Jose del Pacifico. It was a long hot ride for about 3 hours which ended in the clouds and checking into our cabin overlooking the long deep valleys of the Sierra Madre.

San Jose del Pacifico is a funny little town that is known as being a kind of rural Amsterdam in the mountains. We figured we would do a decent hike to the next town over but in the end we left a little earlier so we could get to the beach. We took part in a temezcal sweatlodge and watched the last episode of Game of Thrones. Ate some tlayudas.