Just outside of Acapulco, we stopped in San Marcos for gas - the car is filthy now after over 2,000 miles of driving in very dusty conditions and we could barely see out of the side windows anymore. Gerald started cleaning the side windows and the attendant began cleaning all of the windows off with a small jet of water - we almost had a car wash while filling up. The windows all had a good cleaning and we could see much better for many miles after that.
It is amazing how everything changes within a few miles from one place to another. The stalls that we passed at the side of the road suddenly became filled with beautiful baskets, clay pots and brooms. A few miles later we were back to the common coconut stalls but we started seeing plantains being sold as well.
In Islaltepec, clothing and salt were the main item being sold, the most beautifuly embroidered dresses and huge sacks of salt.
Can you imagine buying salt in huge sacks like this? It is pure sea salt and very cheap - I guess the amount of salt you use depends on how many margaritas you drink? To be fair it is very coarse salt and is used a lot in cooking. When the weather is this humid (Think Houston or Durban) you need salt to replace what has been sweated out.
The drive to Salina Cruz is all along MEX 200, very straightforward and without all those toll roads. This means that we are following the coast all the way but a lot of time is spent up in the mountains on narrow winding roads. We alternate between good roads and some non-existant roads (rocky dirt stretches) where the road is being rebuilt. The 'Movar Mexico' project is in full swing and the roads are either very good or in the process of being rebuilt. There was one pueblo (north of Pinotepa) though that had huge potholes everywhere all the way through and this leads us to believe that road maintenance is the responsibility of the pueblo within it's boundaries and the national rebuilding project covers between the pueblos. Just outside of the pueblo, there were beggars at some of the potholes standing with a shovel in one hand and the other hand stretched out for 'donations'. There were no topes in this town but they didn't need to spend money building them because even the local taxis were almost at standstill speed trying to avoid the potholes.
Each area naturally has it's own economic generator such as ranching, banana, papaya, mango or corn farming. All labor is manual, there are no harvesters, no big tractors and we have only seen one or two small tractors in the couple of thousand miles that we have travelled so far. We have even seen mounds of corn husks in the middle of fields where a group of farm workers have been sitting husking corn right there in the field.
We noticed a few sawmills along the road with redwood colored sawed timbers for sale. There weren't any large trees in the general area but lots of palm trees and then we noticed palm slabs (still had the bark). They were palm wood! What a beautiful looking wood.
At one point we saw that there is a coffin manufacturer in the region because we saw a couple of loads of coffins being transported. They were magnificent looking coffins and again highlighted the fact that the departed are well respected in Mexican culture - I don't think that we routinely buy such beautiful coffins in the USA unless we fall prey to salesman at the funeral home or are part of a very wealthy family.
Some of those topes are so bad that even when we come to a complete stop and crawl over, the tope hits with a solid thump. Mexicans are great entrepeneurs and there are always hands out (for donations), vendors of anything from Coco Frio to anything saleable right at the topes but we are now noticing muffler shops have also popped up next to a lot of the topes.
Everywhere, even in the poorest little pueblo, the flowering plants and trees are magnificent with vibrant colors popping up in the most unexpected places. Verandas/balconies, at the side of the street, in the middle of a field, everywhere has so much beauty no matter if it is an arid area or the lush sub-tropical areas that we have passed through.
Stopping at a pueblo (Cuajinicuilata) along the way for lunch we drove along the main road looking for a clean place with people eating there (we never stop at the first likely looking place but rather go further up the street and then come back to what we think is the best place for us), we drove around the block and came across another example of Mexico manually at work. Can you imagine any town (even Hardin) manually digging a trench for sewers?
Amazing tortillas with that magic mix of corn and flour, handmade and cooked on a wood-fired stove moments before you eat them, they were so hot we could hardly handle them. A smile and a compliment (in Spanish) to the tortilla cook, produced a couple of extra tortillas for us.
As we pass through Cuajinicuilata bear in mind that we are still on MEX 200, the main highway along the coast. Notice how narrow and crowded the road is!
Of course every town has it's major churches and cathedrals, this one looks very much like the one that we drove up to just after we left Zihuatanijo.
In San Jose del Progresso we saw yet another type of taxi - suddenly the taxis changed from tarp covered pickups to Tuc Tucs.
The roadside stalls changed again as we got closer to Puerto Escondido and we see a signs of a little more 'wealth' in the state of Oaxaca. It is much cleaner and prettier, there are lots of signs alongside the road about not throwing out trash and keeping the roads clean - an attempt at education about a clean environment being a healthy environment is taking place.
The little house in Puerto Escondido is so well built and so beautiful - I did not expect anything this nice for the $38 (US) that we paid per night through Airbnb. There are some bargains to be had if you read the reviews well. The house is very easy to get to because it is right off MEX 200, no driving through other streets to get there but you do have to know where it is. A quick phone call to Ana and there she was, waiting at the side of MEX 200 to show us where to turn in (no addressing standards here!). Lovely big rooms, immaculately clean and very tastefully decorated - everything that we need for a comfortable stay including purified water, new appliances, a very comfortable bed and even a few cold drinks in the fridge. Ana even drew two maps for us to show us how to get to the beach and where everything is around here. There is a little portable swamp cooler in the bedroom and amazingly it actually works well because the humidity is not high at night here at the house even though we are only about 1 km from the beach. If we could find a place like this for a longer term rental in somewhere like Guanajuato or Lake Chapala, I could definitely see us living in it for a few months or so.
After settling in at the little house, we took a drive down to the beach. First we went to look at the area around the Zicatela Point, this is a 'do not swim' beach because it is a crocodile haven but there is a very local little town here and big swamps with a lot of bird life. We drove on towards the main beach (Playa Zicatela) which is a surfing paradise and has a lot of shops, restaurants and hotels - everywhere is clean and well maintained and Ana promised us that all the restaurants are good. After walking a little and checking out a couple of the restaurants we stopped at one little open air restaurant for supper (El Cafecito Zicatela) - chicken cooked in a yellow mole for Gerald and chicken tacos for Rosalind. We washed this down with Orange and Papaya juice for Gerald and Rosalind's new drink of choice 'green juice', this particular one was parsley, celery, cucumber, pineapple and orange but most have also had spinach as well. This delicous meal came with some bread rolls and each plate also had rice and some lettuce one one and steamed green beans on the other and came to 245 pesos, including tip (about $13.60 for both of us).
The night stayed hot but the humidity dropped and we managed to get a reasonably good night's sleep - much better than we had expected to get without any air conditioning. Even the roosters didn't wake me too early, mostly because their crowing only sounded like heavy breathing because it was muffled by the white noise of the portable swamp cooler and the ceiling fan.
We found the most amazing beach, Playa Carizalillo, where the surf is good, the sand is white and the water is cool and great for playing in the waves. It is a small beach with lots of chairs and sun shades which seemed to be for the bars and restaurants that have sprouted up under that roofs the entire length of the beach. To get to this beach you need to go down a lot of steep steps (yes, that means that you have to climb up them again after a day playing in the sun and water). Even though there were a lot of people there, it wasn't really crowded - Gerald found himself a good spot in the shade of a tree part way up another set of steps that led to a hotel.
Gerald gave the car a wash just before we left the beautiful little casita in Puerto Escondido - after about 2,300 miles driving through all sorts of terrain, she really needed it and is looking respectable again now for another couple of thousand miles.
The road from Puerto Escondido to Salina Cruz was more of the same that we had experienced on the way into Salina Cruz. It follows the coast in varying degress from scenic views of the ocean to mountainous winding roads a few kilometers from the coast. We passed through some lush areas where the trees were flowing in vivid colors. I recognized the Coral Tree (Lucky Bean Tree) but I have never seen a tree with vivid blue flowers like this - from a distance I thought they were Jacaranda but these are blue, an incredible vivid blue.
As usual, there were several local transportation choices.
As we got closer to Salina Cruz, the terrain became more desert like and there were a lot of Pipe Organ Cactus - they were in flower, beautiful yellow flowers sprouting out from the top of each pipe.
One more beautiful hill, a tunnel and we had arrived in Salina Cruz.
Since we have had some decent meals at beach front restaurants, we tried heading for the beach in order to get some lunch. Unfortunately this is as close as we got to the beach, this is definitely not like Puerto Escondido and is more of a naval base than a beach town.
Salina Cruz however is not impressive, we have not found much to like about it, it is a busy little town of a lower caliber than Puerto Escondido - that place has spoiled us both with the beauty of the place and with the nice accommodations that we had via AirBnB.
