Puerto Escondido

Chad surfing the "Mexican Pipeline"


The guide books promised world class barrels for Chad and world class food for me. Although Mexico has provided us with some incredibly phenomenal food, I was suckered into eating something the previous day that continues to make me tremble and gag. One of our infamous stops at a roadside taco stand was the culprit to this horrendous scene. After I bit into my second taco I noticed some little white bumps on one of the pieces of meat, and after closer inspection I realized this was not carne. Chad immediately realized what we were eating and refused to tell me. After a little research into what lengua was I realized it was cow tongue, gag!!! Although the taste was not too horrible the texture continues to give me nightmares :). As you can imagine, Chad had a lot of fun reminding me of this saying, "hey babe look" and proceeding to bite his tongue to spark the memories. Sick, but I survived!

Thankfully, Puerto Escondido had some of the most amazing food and I was able to clear my thoughts of the lengua for a few days. In desperate need of burning all the calories we have been consuming, I challenged Chad to a game of beer and horseshoes (we decided that it is a sin to play horseshoes without a beer in your hand). We were quite the spectacles on the beach with locals stopping and trying to figure out what we were playing. I think we have started a trend and there may be a huge market for horseshoes in Mexico now :). During the warm-up game Chad won, however during the serious competition I was able to pull off a six-pack/double ringer in the end to win it. Needless to say I was jumping around and screaming as Chad shamefully grabbed his surfboard to show me up in the surf.

Puerto Escondido is know for heavy barrels and it was quite the scene to watch all the kooks from around the world getting hammered in the waves. Thankfully the waves were only a bit overhead so Chad was able to hold his own. Due to my horseshoe win I got a bit cocky and decided to challenge Chad to a sprinting match. I have always told him that I would own him in a sprinting competition so this was a big match. After some intense stretching and crap talking we raced. Lets just say that he thinks he won and I thought I won. So we went for a second round and about half-way towards the finish line Rhino cut me off taking the first place title. That darn dog keeps showing me up...talk about humiliating! There will be more sprinting match's to come to determine the champion between Chad and I, not Rhino. This means that at least I am faster than the "dude" (Kyle Hesley, sorry dude)!

My hypochondriac side was in full effect following this crazy day of activities. I experienced intense flu-like symptoms and was completely bed-ridden with crazy aches that I had never felt in my life. After a bit of travel sickness research, I convinced Chad that I was suffering from dengue fever. Due to my fear of needles and especially Mexican clinic needles I decided to tough it out and avoid the doctor. Within about 2 days I felt way better and have been perfect ever since. Chad is convinced I was just sore from our sprinting and horseshoe throwing the day before and if that's the case then I am pathetic. I prefer to tell people that I had dengue fever because it makes me look like a hard core traveler, not an out of shape hypochondriac!

In addition to world class food and waves, Puerto Escondido has world class "dog in heat" fights. One of the most disturbing scenes we have witnessed this whole trip involved one poor dog in heat and a pack of about 20 dogs chasing her. In the process there is always one dog that looks like he is protecting her while getting in gnarly fights to keep her to himself. This dog eventually gets tired and another one takes over. Within this pack of dogs there were some nasty fights and horrible bloody wounds. We were able to protect the female dog for about an hour while we were eating. She slept under our dinner table while all the males paced around the street in front of the restaurant. It was incredibly sad, "please remember to always spay and neuter your pets" (Bob Barker, 1968-2004).

Upon leaving Puerto Escondido we said our goodbyes to the English group we met in La Ticla and again in Puerto Escondido as well as Mark and Rachael, the San Diego couple we enjoyed mohitos with a few days before. We headed south with a brief stop at Zipolite, the only nude beach in Mexico. Sadly, Chads conservative side took over and he would not allow me to strip down and join the 70 year old gringos on the beach. Bummer, maybe next time! From here we headed to "La Jolla" Chad's secret surf spot. Chad will not allow me to post the real name of the surf break because he doesn't want the secret to get out. As the busload of about 20 surfer's pulled up to the break I told Chad it is clearly not much of a secret. Needless to say he had some awesome rides at this perfect little right point break. I figured it was time to move on after stumbling upon a creepy machete toting man on my mile long walk to the beach with Rhino. He asked me in Spanish if Rhino bites and I struggled with whether to say yes or no. I figured if I said yes he will kill Rhino and if I said no he will kill me, so my liberal animal loving side prevailed and I said no. In case you are scared we survived and the man clearly just wanted to make sure that our incredibly fierce looking dog was not going to bite him. For those of you that don't know, carrying a machete in Mexico is fairly common. This is something I don't think I can ever get used to, however when Chad equated it to people in the US that carry guns all the time I immediately decided that I preferred Machete´s. Regardless, it is scary and not something you want to stumble upon when you are alone in a jungle.

It was time to pull Chad, kicking and screaming, away from the coast towards the Mayan ruins...more fun to come!