Islands

I forgot about this whole blogging thing. And how I actually have to blog in order for it to acheive the desired effect. Right. So from Oaxaca we hopped a bus to Puerto Escondido and arrived there at about 7 am, found our hotel with little problem and headed straight down to the beach. Marcus having never swam in warm water before in his life (and he made sure to remind us of this astounding fact at least un mil veces) was extremely excited to get into the water. By 9 it was about 90 degrees, and of course it only went up in temp and humidity. Almost a little too much heat. We spent our first day walking for about an hour trying to find a secluded beach we had heard about from other people (it has been dubbed the "steps beach" due to the 167 concrete steps that one has to descend to get to the goddamned thing) and after almost passing out from the heat and extreme frustration we found it and collapsed into the shade. The beach was really amazing (for those of you like my father who want to look it up on Google Earth as soon as possible, it´s called Carrizalillo beach in Puerto Escondido) and we spent the rest of out afternoon lazing around in the unbearable heat, relieving our poor Northwest-climate-adapted bodies with regular floating sessions in the warm, green ocean. Stupendous. Austin and Travis and I also decided to rent surf boards for an hur and go out and make fools of ourselves in the beginner waves. I think we caught more fellow surfers than we did waves, but it was good fun. We also got ourselves out of bed at 6:15 one morning and had a private surf lesson at 7 am, which was awesome. It was just us and our "surf instructor" Jimmy (really a 17 year old local who figured he might as well make a buck off of us) out on the waves. Travis and I caught a few waves, and of course by the end Jimmy was joking that Austin should be the teacher and take over Jimmy´s surf shack on the beach because of how great a surfer Austin is. Anyone who´s ever met Austin knows that he can do literally anything well, which is of course the reason I date him. (jokeflag)
Our time in Puerto was really spent between Steps Beach and our hotel, the Mayflower, where it seemed every single other young backpacker from Australia to Holland to Vancouver, CA was staying as well. At night we had little need to go out due to the constant party on our rooftop balcony. At about 2 pm every afternoon the Germans, Aussis and Brits would re-emerge, having finally slept off their previous hangover and would start drinking promtly while they shot billiards balls at eachother and listened to bad European techno-punk. Just my scene. We did meet some pretty cool people there, but upon reflection it was a bit of a sketchy place. We heard quite a few stories of robbings and assaults and one of the guys staying there got punched in the face by a local one night for no apparent reason, so we were fairly relieved to get out of there and up into the mountains. But don´t worry, we took good care of eachother and no one was going out alone.
So we arrived in San Cristobal de Las Casas yesterday morning and checked into a hostel that had been recommended by a few of the people we met at the Mayflower, and it´s fantastic. Great rooms for 6 USD a night, beautiful courtyards and gardens, and a rooftop hang-out space that we spend most of time in. I think San Cristobal is my favorite place in Mexico so far (a close second to Oaxac though, don´t get me wrong), as it has a certain juxtaposition of cultures that I really enjoy. The Mayan culture is totally inhterspersed with the modern, almost European-Mexican lifestyle. The artisan markets are nuts, the food is cheap and amazing, the people are so layed back, and it´s amazingly clean. One of the guys at our hostel described it as Mexican Disneyland, which we all guffawed at until we went walking around el centro yesterday and saw exactly what he meant. Perfect little cobblestone streets, colorful storefronts, an awesome central square and cathedral, all with a breathtaking view of the lush surrounding mountains. It´s great. And the history of political rebellion only makes me love it more, which I completely blame on my communist education at EMS.
Yesterday we were caught in our first tropical rainstorm, and I was so excited I just about peed my pants. Not that it would have mattered seeing as I was drenched through and through. It definitely took me back to my trip to Bali, during which I established a very important daily ritual called "puddle stomping". Man those tropical storms are like nothing else. The electricity on your skin seconds before the first thunderhead, the rain that comes on like a tsunami, so hard you can´t hear, can´t go out, can´t think, the sound of that thunder...my god. I just love it. Hail stones so big they hurt. Streets turned into rivers. Jeez. The jungle is pushing in on us, or vis versa.
Off to enjoy my daily mango juice,
Besos
Kate