Puerto Escondido

After staying so many nights in San Cristobal we managed to arrange 3 free nights stay in our hostel.  Being bargain travellers we took this as a sign to stay a few extra days.  Once we`d used up our free nights we pulled ourselves away from our layers of blankets and our daily bonfires with the hope of hot December days on the Pacific coast.  Our first night was spent in a hostel which had most amenities anyone could want, including a swimming pool, but we found ourselves lonely here as there were few other guests.  The next day we missioned to locate a better living arrangement and found ourselves in love with Cabañas Edda.

At Cabañas Edda we made good friends with some Italian guys staying at our cabañas and are both excited to have an opportunity to actually use and practice our spanish daily.  In fact, when we went to a bar one night Kendra found it hard to switch to talking English.  It was pretty entertaining sometimes trying to communicate with them (they speak spanish with a pretty strong Italian accent, which we both started to pick up a little bit) and 2 French men who only speak French with a few English and Spanish words thrown in, but with plenty of gestures and facial expressions that we can usually somewhat figure out what they were trying to say.  It was like playing charades and we all got a lot of laughs about our ability and inability to communicate with different languages.

We celebrated Christmas here on December 24th.  A couple of our Italians chavos happened to be chef´s, so we had a fantastic Italian Christmas in Mexico.  We started the day by all waking up at 8 for a quick breaky and some coffee in our communal kitchen, then all hopped on a collectivo (basically a pick-up truck that acts as a bus system) to the market where we stocked up on fresh veggi´s, chicken, seafood, firecrackers and other Christmas essentials.  When we got back to the cabañas the fire that would act as our BBQ was lit and the coals were thrown on and we began a day-long feast.  We started with roasted veggi salad, fresh ceviche and bread.  Then came the BBQ´d fish, more veggi´s, more ceviche.  It was a magical experience lying back in a hammock in the shade, looking up at the palm trees, listening to reggae music, and watching Italian guys slaving over Christmas dinner for us.  The chavos (that´s Italian for guy) finally took a break from cooking for an hour or so to relax and have some refreshing cold beer before continuing the feast with chicken and prawns.  Yum.  We were literally eating from 1pm until 9 pm and were definitely stuffed.  It was an amazing Christmas.

Our new years here was very memorable as well.  We had another big dinner at our Cabañas courtesy of the boys.  We all went to the market together again in the late morning then a bit of a swim in the ocean to cool off and refresh in the afternoon then started helping prepare dinner.  It wasn`t as huge a feast as Christmas but it was just as delicious: lots of prawns, fish, stuffed eggplant, etc.

Kendra and I had a great 3 week holiday season here in Puerto Escondido with our interesting Familia International.  It was really nice to find people that we got along with so well and felt so comfortable around. We spent pretty much all our time together with the Italian boys.  We'd all go to the beach together: the boys would surf while Kendra and I worked on our tans, or we'd all go in to body surf if the waves were small.  We took trips fishing together: the boys would fish, Kendra and I would work on our tans.  We went out to bars and dinners and cooked and ate together.  We'd wake up and all congregate on the balcony and take turns lying in hammocks.  It definitely felt like a family.  We didn't always understand each other.  The Italians would do their best to speak in Spanish and/or limitted English with us, or use actions until we guessed what they were trying to say...We weren't always sure we actually understood, because they couldn't tell us if our guess was right or wrong, because they didn't understand our guess.  Our key phrases those three weeks were "¿entiendes?" "mas o menos"; "mañana"; y "tranquilo."  Kendra and I would do our best with our limitted Spanish and the few Italian words we had picked up to get our point accross.  Again, we were not always great at this, but we had a fun time trying.  And it didn't ever really matter if they others understood us or not.  We were also easily able to have very open yet private conversations right in front of each other and not feel like we had to hide anything, because the French and Italians couldn't understand our conversations anyways.  And they talked openly about themselves in front of us, and we didn't understand a word.  It was fun trying to guess what the others were saying.  Sometimes, even though the words were foreign, the tone of voice and gestures gave the person away.  It's hard to explain the bond that formed between us.  It was an unimaginable comfort between strangers who didn't speak the same language.  It felt like home where there was no rush and no pressure to make yourself understood.  It was relaxing and refreshing feeling so accepted as part of such a special group.