Oaxaca Coast

The beautiful Oaxaca Coast where we managed to spend over 6 weeks exploring the multitude of beaches…

If only the drive from Mexico City to Puerto Escondido was as nice as one of these beaches! I look back on this drive and without a doubt say it was by far the most horrible long ass drive on this trip. The road from Oaxaca to Puerto Escondido is only 251km but took us over 8 hours. I don’t get car sick but ended up feeling extremely green after this windy trip. You are faced with big semi’s hauling ass up these tiny roads crossing the centre line coming straight at you, definitely not for the faint hearted!

Arriving into Puerto Escondido was pretty amazing, we had a cool group of friends all camping at the same spot whilst the big wave competition MexiPipe Warriors was on. We got to party with the locals and spent a lot of the time hung over or ‘gamo’ in spanish.

From Puerto Escondido we slowly made our way down the coast exploring all the small beaches on they way. When we stopped at San Augustnillo we picked up an Argentinian couple who were hitch hiking, they were heading to a Mexico soap opera audition and as we had nothing else to do we thought f**k it lets go! We never got round to checking online whether we made the cut as extras or not but it was definitely an experience.

From there we headed south and found our favourite camping spot; Playa San Diego! We spent so many weeks here using it as our base. It was the best spot for me to learn how to surf, a cheeky right hand point that you could surf no matter the swell size.

Playa San Diego was the camp spot you dream off: free, right on the beach and a beautiful view. The only downside to this amazing spot was that you had very little shelter from the harsh Mexican heat, no fresh water or tienda close by.

Our Kiwi amigo’s came and stayed with us at Playa San Diego for a couple of nights before we made our way to Barra De La Cruz where we met a group of Aussie boys. I think Jake and Jeremy loved having a group of boys to hang out with and go on surf missions while us girls chilled at the hostel. After the first surf mission the aussie boys were fondly referred to as the ‘aussie olympic surf team’. Barra had a great hostel were where we could sleep in the van but use all the facilities and eat out at the cheap onsite restaurant, giving us a nice break from cooking in the van.

Since hanging out in Barra us Kiwis and Aussies have travelled from Mexico to Nicaragua leap frogging in a lot of different spots. Its a pretty cool experience hanging out with a group of friends knowing you’ll stay in touch!

After Barra we headed back to Playa San Diego for our third time! At this point without realising I had contracted Dengue Fever I was starting to feel very sick and unmotivated in life. I look back at Playa San Diego with fond memories but cant help but also think about how exhausted I was trying to fight the waves and learn to surf whilst fighting Dengue.

Jx