Believe it or not folks, this is Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca circa 1977. This is the view from the house I lived in while I was there. The photograph is grainy, but it is the original one. It has gone everywhere with me over the last 50 years. It carries the kinds of memories that we are hard pressed to let go of. That place changed my life in ways that affect me even to this day. It’s one of the best and one of the worst memories I have.
I “discovered” Escondido while I was traveling solo in Mexico. I had a well-worn road map, and one day I closed my eyes and plopped my finger on a spot on the page. When I opened my eyes, there it was: my next destination. Escondido appealed to me for a few reasons. One, I had never heard of the place, and two, it was far, far away.
I was into losing and discovering myself then, and this was the place to do it.
In the 70s Puerto Escondido was no more than a fishing village with a few hard-core surfers that followed the waves from California to South America. The village had a bank, a post office, and a telegraph office, a small market, and a church.
There were very few travel options at the time. You could take a four-seater, double-propeller airplane from Oaxaca if you wanted to brave the landing in Escondido which was on a strip cut out of the foliage on the hill above Highway 200. Since I traveled on a shoestring I opted for the more economical lose a space here) route. The very economical route. I always traveled on third class buses. For the experience. The third-class bus at that time was Flecha Roja and cost a few pesos, and was a twelve-hour hair-raising ride through the Sierra Madre Mountains on a two-lane winding road.
The bus left about 6 pm at night and arrived in the port between 6 and 7 am the next day. I liked to travel by night because I could save on a hotel room that night. ( lose a space) The Flecha Roja buses were not much more that yellow American school buses that had been repainted and I am willing to bet, not at all refurbished. Passengers loaded everything onto these buses: chickens, goats, pigs, and baskets of fresh produce cut right from the fields that day. Whatever didn’t fit inside the bus was thrown onto the roof and tied down with heavy ropes. The smart thing to do was get off every time the bus stopped at an adobe hut or a lone gas station to let passengers off, and check to make sure the driver didn’t throw your (lose space here ) backpack off the roof along with the other passengers’ belongings when they disembarked. The bus would roll away on the only dirt road in town just as the sun was rising, marking the beginning of a new day in paradise.
The trip was hell, but the payoff was so worth it.
For a short history of Puerto Escondido click here:
https://www.vivapuerto.com/vp35/short-history-of-puerto-escondido.php
For a short History of recent tourism in Puerto Escondido click here:
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