We started our trip from Oaxaxa city. Stayed there for two days and stayed a day in Puerto Escondido. The trip was absolutely thrilling, fun as well as informative. We experienced ruins, beaches, mountains, lagoons, nightlife: in short everything a place can have. We learn new perspectives from our trips, but there lot of trips, returning from which I can say I learnt something new. This was one of those places. So, have a read, enjoy the pics and have a good time.
Our day 1 started on Saturday.
The first thing in our list was to visit Hierve el agua, which was, in a nutshell, a waterfall that appears to be frozen. Frozen, because it appears whitish, but essentially these are rocks that have been calcified. The sight is beautiful from there. It also has two water pools where in swimming is also possible. The water in the pool is blue with a yellowish hue on the edges that makes it superb spot for clicking photos.
The place has a nice stairway entry and has a lot of stalls where in you can get decent food.
Our next stop was El Tule, a tree older than 2000 years. It is around 1 hour drive away from Hierve el Agua. The tree is historic as well as the stoutest tree in the world. The tree is pretty picturesque and seems as if the whole centro area has been centred around it. As you can see from the picture below, the tree looks splendid and is still standing strong and lushy. We tried some local flavours of ice-cream there and indeed the flavors were pretty rich. The whole place has a calming aura around it which makes it a good candidate to sit around and relax.
After relaxing for a bit, we moved for the last location of our day, which was Monte Alban. We were already quite starstruck from the previous two sites, but we were in for a surprise when we visited Monte Alban.
Monte Alban is the ruins of the ancient city of Zopotec of the Mixtec era. Zapotec is said to be one of the first cities in the Americas. The people used to literally live on to the hilltops spread across a vast area. The main hill has a view of the city from all sides.The site of Monte Alban is also printed on the 20 peso denomination currency note.
After finishing the places, we returned to our hotel which was around 100 metres away from the centro. We visited a local karaoke bar and tried Mezcal, which is a local drink of Oaxaca. This wrapped up our first day.
The second day, we had a good breakfast in the centro and we started for Puerto Escondido which was a worrisome 250+ kms away from Oaxaca city. Lucky for us, conditions were overcast and we had a great drive. The weather helped us and the songs kept us going. We stopped a couple of times for lunching and snacking and we were not disappointed. The food was always delicious and always had a unique flavour, whichever food we selected. After 8 hours of approximate drive, we reached to our hotel in Puerto Escondido and after a little rest, we went to explore the nightlife. We chanced upon a club named ‘Dubai Discotheque’ which had a great space for dancing. We sat, drank and danced our tiredness away and called it a night.
The next day was special and my favorite part of the trip. We experienced unique things that are exclusive to Puerto Escondido.We got ready in our beach wears, and started for Carrizalillo beach. Its a surfing beach where you have to descend 160 steps to reach the beach. They have shacks made for you to relax and have some refreshments while admiring the beach. The closed structure of the beach allows for a good scenic view that can be captured in the camera really well. After relaxing and having a sumptuous sea food lunch, we moved to Playa Bacocho(Bacocho beach). Bacocho beach is one of the locations from where sea turtles are released in the ocean. The beach in itself is a huge one, but what makes it special is that the local organisations effort to help out in the turtle’s survival. The turtle release activity starts at 5pm, where they first huddle you up and explain what they are doing. They have made special structures where they keep the turtle eggs until they are hatched. Then they are released into the ocean. Turtles are given to tourists in a coconut shell costing 100 pesos each. These donations help the organisation to keep these efforts going. Now out of the remaining 7 species of sea turtles in the world, 4 of them come to the beaches in Oaxaca to lay their eggs. Interestingly the sea turtles have this memory, wherein they return to the same place where they were born to lay their eggs again. So, the turtle that we released will return in 10-12 years to lay their egg again and the cycle continues. The guides also told us how these species are being endangered due to climate change as well as man-made risks.We had a chance to release Oliver Ridley species of the turtles into the ocean. They are pretty abundant sea turtles species found on the world.So, after releasing the baby turtles and watching them struggle to get into the ocean, we returned to hotel to prepare ourselves for the final point in our trip.
The place is called Laguna de Manialtepec. Its a lagoon, which is famous for its bioluminescence. So, obviously you have to visit the place after sunset. The water shines really nice when stirred. We were taken a little away from the city lights into the center where it was easy to observe and since the water is warm, the guests are encouraged to have a swim to get a better experience. The water was indeed magical and observing bioluminescence firsthand really made the experience special. We spent around an hour enjoying the water and then returned back to the hotel as we had early morning plans to return to the Oaxaca city, return the rented car and take flight back to our home town.We started in the morning, had a rough ride in the mountain, ate some lovely local food again in lunch and reached Oxaca city centro to do some final shopping.
This kind of wrapped our joyous trip of Oaxaca.