Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

In April of last year we took a trip to Mexico.  After we came back from that vacation I checked out a few videos from the library on Mexico, trying to relive the vacation experience.  One of the videos was a super low-budget video about a couple of surfers who quit their job and decided to take 3 months traveling down the Mexican coast to surf.  While I was watching this video I got the idea “Hey, we could do that, too.”  Not surfing, of course, but traveling and experiencing this part of the world.  That is how the idea of this trip started.  In this movie, the ultimate destination of the surfers was Puerto Escondido.
Over the last week we’ve really been struggling with the humidity.  I also haven’t been all that inspired to write for our blog.  (It is hard to be really inspired when you can feel the streams of sweat running down your head between the corn rows.)  We considered moving back into the Mexican interior to get away from the humidity on the coast.  But somehow I felt I needed to reach Puerto Escondido, since it was the end destination of my surfer buddies who inspired our trip.  We decided to make one really long drive in the car (which ended up being 8 hours on one day) to head farther south and make it to Puerto Escondido.  Our campsite was north of Acapulco and it took us over an hour just to make it through Acapulco and start on the 400+ km drive.  The map said it would take 6 hours, but there were so many topes on the road it took us closer to 7 hours.
We’ve been here about a day and the humidity is not much better, but this city is infinitely more enjoyable than Acapulco.  Tonight we made it to Zicatela Beach – that is THE surfing beach here and rightly so.  It is ranked the 3^rd in the world in terms of wave size which is currently around 6 meters (15-20 foot waves).  The waves alone are absolutely impressive, and sitting on the beach just watching people surf them is just as exciting.  I could sit there for hours and watch it all.  I promise you, in my lifetime I will learn to surf.  I love the water, and I love these waves, and it is just something I know I have to do.

The only downside here has been all the bad food we have eaten.  If you sit and eat on the beach you shouldn’t expect it to be cheap.  But if I’m going to pay a lot of money for the food, I at least hope it will be good.  I have never eaten so much frozen shrimp in such a short period of time.  Really unfortunate and really disappointing seeing as we are on the coast!  We also figured that we could afford this trip in Mexico because it would be quite a bit cheaper than life in the US.  Totally false.  Mexico is not really all that cheap and we totally miscalculated how much money we would be spending.  We could easily find good campsites in the states for around $20 (often including a swimming pool and Wi-Fi). We assumed it would be less in Mexico, but the cheapest campsite we have had in Mexico was $20.  In Acapulco we paid $30/night.  Hardly cheap at all.  We’ve also stayed in hotels a lot more than we expected to.  We’ll have to see how this works itself out in the long run.  We’ll either have to find more creative ways to save money, or worst case, we’ll come home a little earlier than we expected.  In either case, we’ve all experienced enough to make the entire adventure worth while.
William and Julian also had a great time tonight playing with a couple of Mexican kids.  Julian is used to the Mexicans now.  Since we arrived in Puerto Escondido, two separate girls snatched him out of my arms so their friends could take their picture of them with our blonde, blue-eyed baby.  William is a bit shyer and this was one of the first times William has dared to speak to other kids in Mexico.  He doesn’t feel all that comfortable with the fact that he doesn’t understand Spanish, but he tried to initiate a game of “Hide and Sneak” with two kids.  He kept trying to explain to them how the game went in English, but they only spoke Spanish, and the game disintegrated into playing tag half of the time, and wrestling the other half.  Boys are boys, in Spanish, English or in German.

   

When we checked into the hotel the only parking was valet parking.  So there on the front step of the hotel we had to put all our clothes, toothbrushes, and the few valuables we have into plastic bags so we can carry them up to the our room.  The humidity is terrible and sweat is rolling down my face in buckets.  Needless to say, we forgot a few things, so the next day we had to cross 8 lanes of traffic, which resembled a game of Frogger, in order to get to the parking garage where our car was parked.  There are crosswalks, but no one pays any attention to them here.  You cross the street at your own risk, and if you get hurt or killed it is looked at as a form of natural selection.  The parking garage is dingy and has no escape hatches for exhaust fumes.  At first they didn’t want to let us in and we had to fumble our way through Spanish to tell them we only wanted to get a few things out of the car.  We showed them our valet ticket and they called over to the hotel to verify and then let us up.  Boy am I glad that we went to the car because a bag of garbage and ripe avocados don’t do well in 90 degree weather and this humidity in a car with all the doors and windows closed.
We dodged our way across the street back to the hotel, dropped off our stuff and then set off on our way to the zocalo (town square) to see a bit of the Independence Day celebration.  I should also mention that we have been constantly bombarded by people trying to sell us stuff.  It started with Oscar who tried to sell us a hotel room the second we stepped out of the car in Acapulco.  On the beaches there is a steady stream of people trying to sell you clothes, jewelry, food, drinks, beach toys, massages and lots of other souveniers.  (I was a sucker today and had my hair braided on the beach.)  Even the cab driver didn’t want to take us to where we want to go, but take us to some flea-market.  When we resisted he asked us “Well, then.  What time should I pick you up tomorrow.  We’ll go tomorrow.”  Matthias is starting to get very snippy with the vendors and they are driving him crazy.  The zocalo in Acapulco was no exception.  It was really getting old with both of us, Julian and I were cranky, we were all hungry, I was not feeling well and it was about 2 miles back to our hotel room.  After a couple more games of Frogger we checked out a restaurant, decided against it, hailed a cab, then waved him away and didn’t know what to do.  We stopped on the side of the street for just a split second and a big blue Mexican bus stopped to pick us up. Without hesitation we all got in.  This was the coolest bus ride I’ve ever been on.  The bus driver had decorated the entire front of the bus with colorful trinkets, stuffed animals, a pair of ladies underwear and Mexican carpets.  He also had Cyndi Lauper and other 80’s music blaring so loud we could barely hear each other.  The interior was bright blue and turquoise.  I’m not sure if they have scheduled stops on these buses, but it appears they don’t.  It looked like the way to get off was to stand at the back door and rap on the side of the bus.  It costs 8 pesos for the entire family (80 cents) and this was the best 8 pesos we’ve spent in the last 2 weeks.  It was so much fun to ride in this bus that we all left in great moods.  Trying to figure the rhyme or reason to why the bus stopped for us in the first place (there was no bus stop sign), how to pay, how to get off the bus and just sitting and enjoying the ride are the fun things about being here.  Strangely enough, the bus let us off on the corner where our good buddy Oscar was standing, and he came through with a great restaurant for us where we all enjoyed a nice dinner and only had to fight off one person trying to sell us stuff at the dinner table other than the food on the menu..
The torrential rains have passed for now. Today we had so much sun and we had a great day spent under a palapa on the beach and in the pool.  We’re still getting lots of stares, although only half of them now are staring at Julian.  The other half of them are staring at me because I look absolutely ridiculous with my hair braided.  With my sunglasses on I look like a stupid white version of Stevie Wonder.  Oh well.  William and Julian really like my hair and to be honest, I don’t really care.  I have a lot to be thankful for right now – I’m in such a beautiful spot of the world with my family, and there is only more to come.

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