Chacahua (More out of order updates)

While we were frying our brains with spanish classes and excessive heat in Puerto Escondido, we decided to take a little break, like a mini-vacation within our bigger trip. If you ever take an extended trip, you'll find you need these little mini-vacations to keep your motivation up to keep traveling. We took the advice of Dan, the owner of our hotel, and headed out to Chacahua for an over night stay. We left most of our stuff at Hotel Casa de Dan y Carmen, so we traveled pretty light.

This was essential because it took a taxi ride to the bus stop, a 1 hour bus ride to Rio Grande, a colletivo ride to Zapiotalita (see photo - left), a lancha (see photo and video below) followed by an off road collectivo ride.

A collectivo is small truck or taxi on a fixed route that picks up passengers as it goes.

The trip wasn't that bad actually, because everything lined up nicely without much delay between rides. It took about 2 hours total. The lancha ride was beautiful, but brief. It's possible to take the lancha across the entire lagoon, which we did on our return trip. Below is a link to a video on You Tube that we took during the boat ride.

Chicahua was a cool but strange place. The people are decendents of African slaves that escaped the Spanish centuries ago. It is now a small community based on fishing and tourism. The beach is lined with small, primative cabinas (one room huts with palm roofs) and accompanying resturants (palm covered beach area with shack that serves as a kitchen). They also allow campers to setup tents or sleep in the hammocks that are strung up between the poles that hold up the palm roofs.

The beach was pretty nice (safer to swim than Puerto Escondido) and a long right point break.