After Guatemala, Mexico seemed cleaner and more organized than it had done before. After the briefest of stops in San Cristobal again I was on a bus heading to Puerto Escondido. By the time our bus strolled into the town on the Pacific coast early the following morning I had been on the road for close to 30 hours from leaving Xela so I quickly found a cheap hammock and collapsed for the best part of the day.

Puerto Escondido is a surfers town with Massive waves and a massive amount of floppy haired blond guys talking about the best time to get the most, ´awesome swell and the most radical breaks.´ After realizing it was all far too cool for me, I gave up the pretence of being smooth and started juming waves and splashing around like a toddler about two metres into the water. The currents were too strong and the waves too big to go much deeper than that without a surfboard.

My coolness ratings took another hit the following day when I was walking back to my camp after a day in town. I had caught a bus into town from my camp which was a few kilometres south of Puerto Escondido. Since it was a beautiful day I decided to save a few pesos and walk back to the hammock along the beach. What I hadn´t realized was that the beach was never-ending and after an hour of walking on the soft and tiring sand I still didn´t seem to be any closer to home. To make things worse I had finished the last of my water spraying a lazard on a palm tree to see what it would do (not much was the answer.) So with no water I walked and walked with no shade until I started to panic that every camp looked exactly the same and wasn´t sure which was mine.

When I saw a gruop of surfers I approached them to ask for directions. I was sweatinglike a pig and at first they didn´t even realize I was speaking English. After pointing me in the right direction i hopped off on my blistered feet and looking extremely uncool while the surfers went back to paddling out and looking like something from Hawaii five-O.

At night we would play beach volleyball with everyone in the campsite until it got too dark and then someone would start a fire on the beach and start passing around a guitar (skipping myself of course - didnt seem like the right time to bring out ´Merrily we roll along´) Puerto Escondido is a very easy place to stay and it´s not surprising I met more than one person who had intended on staying a day or so and found themselves still kicking about 3 weeks later. After three days however I managed to drag myself away, helped by the fact my next stop was another beach further up the coast. It was certainly not going to be as quiet and chilled as Puerto Escondido though, I was heading to the Grandfather of all Mexican holiday resorts...Acopulco.