Vamos a la Playa!

This past week was our last week of Spanish classes at Don Quijote. The strong sense of relief at having made it through was accompanied by the sadness of no longer being able chill with our awesome maestros and maestras. On Wednesday we had a little fiesta (food, piñatas, the works) for Gemma, Allison, Mollie, and Claire’s birthdays. On Friday we had another fiesta for the end of Spanish classes involving an excessive amount of homemade piñatas of questionable quality that we had made the classes before. We had a little graduation ceremony where we received our certificates from our respective maestros/as.

This was also the last week of Oliver’s Communities and Networks class and our group research projects with Jonathan. That same Friday, in the afternoon, we all met to share our projects, some tamales, and some quesadillas. The presentations were all excellent with topics ranging from food systems to original medicine to graphic art and to children’s rights here in Oaxaca.

After all the presentations were taken care of and the food was finished we packed up and hopped in a private van at 11:00pm and settled in for our six hour ride to the coast. From Saturday to Tuesday two groups went to Puerto Escondido, a city on the Pacific coast that attracts many tourists because of its various ocean activities. It is most famous for its surfing waves and is ranked third in the world behind Hawaii and Australia for its waves. Our four days there were filled with entertaining activities. Some of us went surfing at La Punta (the point) where the waves were broken up by rocks and so were easier for beginning surfers. Some of us went on a guided excursion on the ocean where we saw all manner of sea-dwelling creatures: dolphins (two types: spotted and break-nose), sea turtles, and manta rays. We also got to do a little fishing during this excursion and we pulled in about eight bonitos, a native fish, and went to a beach front restaurant where we had them cooked up and shared them with our two very nice guides. Que rico! On Monday night the two groups from Puerto went swimming in Lagoon Manialtepec with bioluminescent algae. We took a boat out to the middle of the lagoon and the captain did a couple donuts to stir up the algae to the surface. When you move the water the algae give off a greenish sort of light so that when we jumped in, the water glowed with little green specks. Our adventures also involved a lovely climb to some of the cliffs on la punta where we explored and watched the sunset.

With the bulk of us going to Puerto Escondido, there was a group of five of us who went to the beach town San Agustinillo.  San Agustinillo is about 100 km to the east of Puerto Escondido, and is smaller and more rustic than Puerto.  San Agustinillo is right next to the town of Mazunte, which is known as the “Turtle Capital of Mexico”.  Our group had a nice house on a cliff overlooking the Pacific.  We made a lot of guacamole, surfed a lot of waves and ate a lot of fish.  San Agustinillo dies down after about 10pm, so our group walked to Mazunte each night to hang out at the bars there, which close at around 1am.  Mazunte is about a 15 minute walk from San Agustinillo along the road.  The two share the same beach, but you can’t get from one to the other along the beach because of a large collection of rocks.  Mazunte has a lot of 20 something year old hippies, all of us agreed that they looked like your average young adult that you’d find in Burlington.  A lot of barefoot, long haired people with guitars who are very friendly.  

All in all, everyone had a great trip at the beach, a very much needed vacation after a last week of finishing up projects and presentations.

Hasta luego,
Mateo y Jack