So we’ve probably spent to much time in Puerto Escondido doing not much apart from sitting on a beach relaxing which doesn’t make for an interesting blog but does make me happy so screw you lot!
We decided to stay a few extra days as we have space in our schedule to use up. Our next stop is Oaxaca which is a city inland and apparently it’s going to get up to 40°C next week so we aren’t in a hurry to rush into that. We did decide to move hostels though so we were close to a different beach, probably a good job as the night before we left grace dropped a litre bottle of water on the guy sleeping in the bunk bellow, which made him scream and me and Grace had to try not to laugh and pretend to not know what happened. The new hostel is lovely and also has a pool which we appreciate in the heat.
On Friday we signed up for a ‘1 on 1’ surf session with the Mexican surfing champion, but to be honest he could of been anyone as were not big on surfing celebrities. The ‘1 on 1’ session cost $600MX (£24) per person and ended up being a group of 6 of us. We were taken to a beach a 20 minute drive from the hostel which had large waves and no-one else about, we were shown the basics of how to stand up on a board and then sent into the water.
It’s safe to say I wasn’t a natural. My first mistake was putting sun cream on the front of my legs, every time I’d finally get on the board I’d soon slide back off, the instructor did mention not to cream the front of your legs….just after watching me do it for 5 minutes. My second mistake was being too tall for the board, to balance the board so that it doesn’t wobble too much on the waves, you have to get right to the back, in my case so much so that your feet hang off the edge of the board, which is fine until you need to use said feet to stand and have no surface to stand on. The instructor took my ineptitude as a personal slight and kept encouraging me with useful tips as ‘Just stand up’, ‘don’t think about it just be good’ and my personal favourite ‘you just have to try’ all good points which I obviously hadn’t thought of or been trying to do until he pointed out the error of my ways. I did manage lots of crouches on the board and even stood up for a brief nanosecond before face planting the water. I seemed to spend more time paddling back in against the waves and trying to stay on the board than I did actually surfing. For me it was less surfing and more fighting a wooden board and trying not to drown, at one point I fell off the board and it hit me in the back if the head causing me to gasp and breath in lots of sea water, as soon as I reached the surface three big waves hit one after another and I couldn’t get to the surface, I honestly thought I might drown. Luckily the instructor saw and raced over to save…the board, but once he had taken that back in it made it easier to for me to swim in against the current. Despite all of my complaining I actually did really enjoy Surfing! I think if I went again I would be a bit chooser with instructors and get a bigger board, but I can see why people like it, although it’s knackering it’s so much fun, especially when you’re riding a wave.
Yesterday we decided to just have a chill day, we needed to get laundry done and get money out so we did that and then had some falafel for lunch at our new favourite restaurant here (which we may or may not have eaten at every day…were sick of tacos Okay, don’t judge!) And after just went to the beach.
Today we went shopping for swim wear as I’ve lost weight and my bikini is now too baggy and keeps falling down when ever I jump in water, which happens more often than you would think, I’m still a little kid around water. We ended up both buying what I refer to as a DIY bikini, basically two strips of fabric which you can tie various ways to make different shave bikini tops or bottoms. I left the shop slightly concerned it would be one of those items that looked great when a sales person was around but was almost impossible to do yourself, but as Grace was treating me as a late birthday gift I went for it, at least it would be adjustable if I lost more weight and hopefully we can change styles to avoid than lined too much.
We headed to the beach in our new bikinis and had an afternoon sunbathing, at 4pm we decided to walk to the next beach along to see if we could take part on a local conservation project releasing baby turtles into the sea but after an long scorching, sweaty walk it turned out no turtles had hatched that day so we headed home again. Hopefully we will be able to go again tomorrow with more luck.
Keep you updated.
Lots of love,
Alice x
P.s. here’s an action shot of me getting hit by a wave while sunbathing that grace decides to take rather than warn me. Hope you enjoy it as much as she did.
