A lovely 9 hour night bus ride along twists and turns got me to Pochutla. I took a shared taxi to Puerto Angel, then a taxi from there to Mazunte, where I plan to stay for at least a couple days. It’s supposed to be a lazy beach area. I only paid 65 pesos, unlike those suckers who paid 150 at the bus station and didn’t get to walk through Pochutla or Puerto Angel.
Pochutla was a shithole, so good on them there. But Puerto Angel was an interesting little fishing village and was certainly worth the walk. People were fishing and driving their boats around onto the beach when I arrived. Here was a view from their pier.
When I got to Mazunte, I just chilled there and worked at a restaurant right on the water for a couple hours called Estrella Fugaz, where I got a great breakfast, coffee, and juice for 65 pesos ($4).
And then afterwards I decided to go with an estrella for two nights, which is basically just a hanging bed surrounded by a mosquito net. Seems risky, but you can’t beat the view for $5/night.
There are nice areas around to hike and paths through the woods to nearby beaches like the one you can see below. It’s very quiet, a little tourism, but it’s the down season too. It’s refreshing to see that there are beautiful places like this that still exist that haven’t had resorts built up along the entire coast. Just a scattering of bungalows and ten million mosquitoes.
In the end, the rough internet and plethora of bugs proved too much for me mid-week when I had work to do, but I was still happy I went. After a couple days, it was back to Oaxaca.
So life as usual in Oaxaca – not much to report. Sunday there were tons of people setting up tents and camping in the main square. A demonstration of some kind, I assume? I’m going with homelessness awareness, but I’m pretty sure that’s wrong. Maybe it was just to make a point that Mexicans like camping.
I didn’t really take more pictures of Oaxaca or Mexico City. Wait, one of Mexico City. This is it.
Did some gringo activities with someone I work with in Mexico City, like drinking at a whiskey bar and an Irish pub. Then I decided to take a trip out to San Miguel de Allende for my final weekend.
San Miguel de Allende has a bit of a retired gringo paradise. White people love their Spanish colonial cities. It is nice though, headlined by the pink limestone church.
It has all those quaint cobblestone streets that make the skateboarding Mexicans love to do rather impossible. That’s probably why old white people like the town so much – not for the colorful architecture or cobblestone streets, but because there aren’t any skateboarders.
San Miguel is also known for its nice sunsets from rooftop restaurants. I did see some sunset, but I didn’t do it from a rooftop bar. I also didn’t take a picture of it. But I did take a picture from the overlook where you can see the whole city.
Before leaving, I got a haircut near where I was staying. It cost me 30 pesos, which comes to $1.62. Pretty good deal. Probably because I’m running low on hair these days. But then it was back to Mexico City for a night before my flight back to the US.
My first layover was in Houston, where I was able to get Eggplant Tofu Chinese food with white rice. So now that I’ve taken care of eating the top 3 things I missed all in the first hour, I can leave again pretty soon.