Down Bad in Oaxaca
The healing sea air at Puerto Escondido
We don’t ever forget how lucky we are to have experienced all the things we have done in the last ten and a half months. But when normal life becomes filled with highlights and bucket list ticking activities on a weekly basis, bad luck feels a whole lot worse. And bad luck is the only way to describe our experience in Oaxaca.
On our list of things to do in Oaxaca was a cooking class, a day trip to the stunning Hierve el Agua and, direct quote from our notes, “free time to eat EVERYTHING!”
It’s the Mexican food capital and we are two food-lovers, after all. We even went as far as to book accommodation without a kitchen, thinking we would use those few extra pennies saved along the way whilst in town. How wrong we were.
Leaving San Cristobel de las Casas, we were both struck down with a horrible stomach bug/food poisoning/possession by the devil. My fever and sickness started first, making the 18 hour bus ride an absolute low point of my life. Seriously… worst day ever. Graeme managed to keep it together and got us to the Airbnb, where he came down with it too.
And that is how we spent 90% our time in Oaxaca. Our illness came and went in relay, so one of us was always able to carry the other and muster enough strength to buy more water, collect the takeaway food from the gate or find our way to the doctors. We became loyal customers of Rappi - the Deliveroo equivalent - ordering plain chips and other bland meals to our door… a far cry from the food fest we had planned for.
In fact, in my first 48 hours in the food capital of Mexico, all I could stomach was half a banana and an energy drink. It’s a fate so cruel I can only laugh about it!
Speaking of the doctors - stumbling our way there on day five with no improvement was the most we saw if the city… and it looked beautiful, dammit!
It’s taken ten months to need it but thank god for our travel insurance. A week of antibiotics plus consultations and other prescriptions brought the total to over £200. Yikes.
The only silver lining was that our enforced bed rest coincided with Taylor Swift releasing a double album, so I had plenty of time to digest 31 new tracks... +100 points to those who got the blog title reference.
The most upsetting part of the week was missing the cooking class. We had booked it as a treat to finish our trip in style. It was more expensive than we would usually pay, and very non-refundable, unfortunately. I’ll admit, I had a little cry over it. It’s not the end of the world by any means, but after the highs of the last year we were determined to make the most of our last few weeks… this certainly was not what we had in mind.
So, armed with a truckload of prescription medicine and starting to improve, we decided a change of scenery would help and made the relatively risk-free 3 hour bus ride to Puerto Escondido. What better to help us heal than some sea air?
We stayed to the south of the main town in Punta Zicatela.
Even with our improving health, we took it very slow. We would emerge for brunch each day, followed by a walk on the beach. We’d have a lazy afternoon reading our books, getting some juice and relaxing before heading back to the beach for sunset then dinner. Repeat. Even that much exertion took it out of us, but being in a beach town rather than the city meant we didn’t feel like we were missing out on lots of potential activities. People come here specifically to take it slow, and that’s exactly what we needed.
I’ve mentioned our love of pacific sunsets earlier on the blog, and our last look at the Pacific Ocean was maybe the best of them all. Each evening we sat on the sand and listened to the waves: the roar, the swell, the crash, the silence.
We both got a little emotional sitting there - hey, it had been a tough week! We are looking forward to and are ready to be home, but as we reflected on everything we had done and seen over the last ten and a half months, it was hard not to feel sad that it was all coming to an end.
During those nights, April’s pink moon rose directly behind us. The full moon in Scorpio, rising behind us two scorpions where we sat in the sand looking out to the ocean. Signalling growth, rebirth and a period of transformation ahead… sounds about right, doesn’t it? We gathered our strength and packed our bags one final time, determined to go out in style: Mexico City, here we come.
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