i just got back from a weekend excursion with my 7 program girls to puerto escondido! yeah baby!

puerto escondido is in the state of oaxaca, but is on the coast of the pacific ocean. it’s not super touristy but it’s gorgeous! distance wise it should only be one and a half to two hours away from the city of oaxaca, but because the only way to get there is through the winding roads of the crazy high mountains, the ride ends up taking at the very least six and a half hours. let’s talk about this a little bit.

after we decided that we wanted to use our free weekend here to travel and check out a beautiful beach, we looked into buses, planes, and finally decided that the best compromise between cost and comfort would be to hire a private van. this drive was INSANE. there is no way to describe these roads. the mountains are absolutely enormous, and it’s like the person who decided how to weave the roads around each mountainside took a pencil and just squiggled as violently as possible. there was probably a good sharp 90 degree curve every 10 seconds. we knew the ride would be bad… but we didn’t know it would be so bad that half of us would throw up in the van. personally i puked into a grocery bag four times. not cute.

as soon as we got there, it was worth it (during the ride, i was not thinking that a location worthy of that statement could exist on this side of heaven). our hotel wasn’t fancy, but we didn’t go to a hostel either – the rooms had two double beds and they made us put two girls to a room, so we each had our own double bed ($25 a night per person… not bad, but not terrible, right?). there was a pool on the roof, and tons of hammocks overlooking the ocean… it was beautiful. honestly, the ocean didn’t look THAT much different than lake michigan… but it felt a lot different! saturday we spent the day on the beach, playing in the huge waves in the perfect-temperature water. we met a lot of interesting people, including the argentinian surf instructor owner of the tiki hut we ate lunch and spent the rainy afternoon at. i shared a room with sarah and we stayed up really late each night talking (don’t know how late because there aren’t any clocks), which was a lot of fun.

one girl’s family here in oaxaca has a 26 year old godson named cesar who came with us on the weekend. it was great to have him because he’s from mexico city but was able to communicate a lot of awkward things that we wouldn’t have been able to handle as efficiently, like calling the van company and chewing them out when they didn’t show up when they were supposed to, or finding a hotel where we could get enough rooms for a good price. he talked a lot about traditions here in mexico, such as how machismo is strong, but in dating chivalry is much stronger, and how he once woke up a past girlfriend by singing at her window with a mariachi band. he knows some english, so we had a lot of fun laughing and teaching each other more common and slang phrases in each others’ languages. it is one thing to know formal language as you would use to write a paper, which is the spanish i know so far, but talking amongst friends and family, many more expressions and incorrect language uses come up. our favorite one that we taught him was what is meant by the term ‘hot mess.’ it was pretty hilarious to hear him calling people a ‘hot mess’ thoughout the weekend. we were blessed to have a mexican with us so we could continue learning some more fun things about the culture, even on our weekend out.

the mexican sun is not kidding around. i am burnt so badly that i couldn’t really sleep last night. i feel like my skin is going to crack like a crocodile over here. even if you wear sunscreen, being so much closer to the equator and at high altitude shows no mercy to the pasty wisconsinite.

here are some pictures from our excursion:

this week went really fast as we have been so busy, and i expect this upcoming week will fly in the same way. i can’t wait to see what i am going to learn this week… i hope it doesn’t go too fast!

abrazos,

kate