Greetings from Surf City.

Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico

Can I just say I love the fucking beach?

Mexico, however, is a bit weirder than that.

I´ve almost been here in Mexico for two weeks - its really feels like forever, and yet Mexico continues to confound me quite a bit. Yes, it´s relaxing and the beaches are incredible, but maintaining my balance and finding my bearings has been a great deal more difficult than I expected. I now understand why my friend Courtney hates to travel - we are both similar in that we like having everything we need within immediate reach, and being ´´on vacation´´ is anything but that.

I came to Puerto Escondido to relax and chill out and be near the beach. I´ve managed to accomplish those goals, for the most part, and that´s been very satisfying - however, as I´ve come to realize and say often to people I meet here, ´´ín Puerto Escondido, sin is cheap. But essentials are rather difficult to come by.¨´´

Generally speaking, I´m not the sort of person who lives in hotels and eats out every meal. Hostels are my general place to stay, and I´ve come to discover here that hostel living is really quite wonderful not just for cheap per-night fees, but for the fact that there is a shared kitchen with refrigeration, burners, oven, and dishes. The first week I was here, I lived at the Hotel Rockaway, a marvelously cheap place to stay at $12 per night, but an incredibly difficult place to stay if one is used to cooking most of one´s own food when on vacation.

The idea that Mexico is a ´´cheap´´ vacation seems to apply only to where one stays, as rooms as certainly cheaper than in the states. Here in PE, ten pesos equals a dollar and ten pesos is spent like a dollar - hence, dinner is 65 pesos and up ($6.50), coffee is 12 pesos ($1.25). Not to say that the food isn´t marvelous - most places it really is, and I have embarked on a diet of eating only fruit, vegetables, fish, coffee and beer (can´t win ´em all), but when I came I budgeted for around $600 a month based on buying food and making it yourself (which is impossible to do in a hotel) and living this way it is very easy to hit the $30 or even $40 a day mark.

This had me anxious for much of the first week (not to say I didn´t love going to the beach every single day and living in shorts and drinking Sol beer, which runs about $1.50 a bottle) so I began to look for apartments. Serendipity arrived in an odd way = I was hanging on the beach one day, looking around for someone English=speaking to leave my stuff with. I saw these people, who turned out to be Canadian, and as I was wondering how I would go say hello, I saw thousands of these tiny blue creatures washing up to shore with the waves. Clearly some kind of jellyfish, I captured one in my hands, and brought it over to them.

''Habla engles?'' I said. And they said yes. ''Check out this thing. Does anyone know what it is?''

friendship was immediately established as we examined the thing, then swimming together and combining stuff followed. Leaving the water, they took me to their beach bar = a place called Liza's = and we sat for drink. I went up to the bar to get them, and on the bar was a package of cigarettes. I was dazed from the surf, thought they were mine.