Monday, July 1, 2013
Hurricane party and Mazunte. | Travel Blog Howdy people, Just back from Mazunte's turtle reserve so I figured a blog is in order before I nap and decide whether or not I'll go out tonig. www.travelblog.org/North-America/.../blog-792717.html
Hurricane party and Mazunte.
North America » Mexico » Oaxaca » Puerto Escondido
Published: June 22nd 2013June 22nd 2013
Just back from Mazunte's turtle reserve so I figured a blog is in order before I nap and decide whether or not I'll go out tonight.
The Hurricane party was a remembrance of Carlotta from last year. Held at Brad's split coconut bar. Bar name is fitting since the hurricane nearly killed brad haha! There was a live band covering Led Zeppelin tunes....but they sucked! So I didnt hang out long and wound up wandering towards home slowly where I ran into a local teacher I'd seen earlier at Brad's. She invited me to sit down and listen to the Latin band playing so I did for a bit until at midnight we shuffled to another spot where I strangely found my pasty white a** dancing....haha.
Ok so this morning I woke at 445am to ready myself for the lunchbox trip to Mazunte. As I entered the main palapa, the usual suspects were still partying from the night before! I am glad I'm too old to pull off crap like that anymore. An uneventful trip down although I arrived wayyyyyy too early so I found a little restaurant got to know the owner and she and
her husband fed me eggs and ham black beans and rice tortillas and juice and 3 beers for 30......yes 30 pesos!!!!! Had a fun chat session till the reserve opened then I shuffled on over to buy a ticket in. All told it was small and not very impressive but still worth the 27 peso entrance fee. (pictures to follow). So as it's 5 pm here and I've been up 12 hours and I'll be worthless should I decide to go out if I don't get rest, I'll post and annotate pictures and go shower and visit my hammock.
Hasta pronto a todos
Mountain Biking Near Mazunte, Oaxaca » Tour in Tune Some dirt road mountain biking I found above Pochutla and Tonameca just north of Mazunte on the Oaxacan Coast. www.tourintune.com/mountain-biking-near-mazunte-oaxaca/
Mountain Biking Near Mazunte, Oaxaca » Tour in Tune
Some dirt road mountain biking I found above Pochutla and Tonameca just north of Mazunte on the Oaxacan Coast.
www.tourintune.com/mountain-
Some dirt road mountain biking I found above Pochutla and Tonameca just north of Mazunte on the Oaxacan Coast.
www.tourintune.com/mountain-
Mountain Biking Near Mazunte, Oaxaca
Whilst staying in Mazunte, I started getting cravings for some off-road exploring. Jenny’s Spanish maestro and local rafting guide, Daniel, kindly gave me some tips for some dirt road networks near Pochutla and Tonameca. I mapped out a few tracks for the Garmin and set off to explore!
This shows the routes that I actually rode as marked on Strava and overlayed together.
I created the map above to load some tracks onto my Garmin GPS. You can download the KML file and then convert it to GPX using GPSVisualizer.com.
I was lucky to have stumbled on some fantastic riding on the quiet dirt roads. There is plenty of climbing with some great descents. You can cycle on the paved roads to reach Tonameca where it then turns to dirt for miles and miles. If you want to skip the paved roads, you can throw your bike in the back of a ‘collectivo’ truck for about $10-20 pesos (£0.55-£1.10).
You can ride on the road from Mazunte or take a collectivo truck to get a headstart up the dirt roads above Tonameca.
The collectivo trucks were still crossing this river when I took this photo. The water level has since risen a few feet after massive downpours. Now the collectivos stop at either end of the river banks. Who knows when they will finish the bridge!
The river crossing for the collectivo trucks near San Francisco.
It’s also pretty refreshing in the midday sun!
Only the most clever of goats shall pass!
Long, windy dirt roads with almost no cars; Just the way I like it!
The flooding after the big rain takes its toll. Many of the roads become washed out and impassable for cars, whilst making for more technical mountain biking!
I encountered far more animals than people and trucks. Aside from the goats, you might also be able to see the massive 3 metre snack in the bottom right corner. It was weaving up the side of the road with some sort of rodent in its mouth.
I love water crossings and the rustic climbs on the other side!
More dirt roads with no people, climbing up, over and back down to Mazunte.
Happy to be riding on dirt without all the touring weight for a change!
Another water crossing, before another big climb.
A cloudy, smokey sunset looking SW about 15km northwest of Mazunte.
The same clouds a few hills later.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Things To Do In Mazunte, Oaxaca
Things To Do In Mazunte, Oaxaca
Whilst planning our itinerary for the Oaxacan Coast, we heard good things about the quiet eco-tourism beach town of Mazunte. We came across a Spanish school there called El Instituto Iguana. So we decided to stay for two weeks to study and take a break from bicycle touring in the 35 degree heat (our new daily grind). We have concluded that Mazunte is a great escape from noisy Puerto Escondido to the northwest and the all-inclusive resort city of Huatulco to the northeast.
El Instituto Iguana Spanish School
Lars and Janet after finishing the morning class at El Instituto Iguana.
Upon arriving in Mazunte, we met with Ana and she helped us decide on our class structure. We opted for two hour classes five days a week. We were visiting during the low-season, so the group classes were not available. However, this meant that we had our own private teachers at a reasonable rate of $145 pesos/hour. This might not be as cheap as the schools in Guatemala, but it’s less than what we found in Puerto Escondido, and with a nicer atmosphere. High season pricing is shown on the Instituto website here.
Our three maestros at El Instituto Iguana. From the left, Daniel, Janet and Ana. Daniel and Janet are also expert rafting guides who run Ola Verde Expediciones in Mazunte. They offer 10% discount to students at El Instituto.
Rafting With Ola Verde Expediciones
Loading the river rafts for a day trip with Ola Verde Expediciones.
Our spanish teachers Janet and Daniel offer fantastic river rafting at Ola Verde Expediciones and students of El Instituto receive 10% the normal prices. If you enjoy paddling rivers, this is definitely recommended! We did a half day on the Rio San Francisco, just north of Tonameca (link to our GPS route here). Rio San Francisco is home to an incredible variety of beautiful birds and trees. If you have more time, you can run a longer section of the river which includes a great canyon, also known as Daniel’s playground. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to get any photos on the river because we don’t have a waterproof camera. However, there are plenty of other photos on their Facebook page.
Eat Oaxaqueña Style With Doña Sara
La cocina de Doña Sara
El Instituto Iguana has an arrangement with a local family who offer habitaciónes and comida de casa at very reasonable rates. Our room was $100 pesos per night and our food was $40 pesos each per meal. The rates may be different during the high season. We stayed with Doña Sara and her family whilst enjoying her traditional Oaxaqueñan cooking, eating two and sometimes three meals a day! Any time we got hungry, Doña Sara was quick to prepare hearty meals. We both put on some of the weight we had lost whilst staying there. She said that she was trying to make us mas gorditos (chubby) to prepare us for our trip! It definitely worked! Doña Sara and her husband Feriman have been living in Mazunte for over 30 years, in which time they have seen the end of the turtle hunting trade, the growth of eco-tourism and endured the destruction caused be Hurricane Pauline in 1997. Their storytelling was a great way for us to improve our Spanish comprehension.
Mole con pollo y queso de Doña Sara
Homemade tacos pescados de Doña Sara
Jenny even learnt how to make tamales de pollo from scratch. With the help of Ali (left) and Rosa (right), they made about 200-300 tamales in this little makeshift fabrica.
Enjoy La Playa Rinconcito
La Playa Rinconcito, the main beach in Mazunte, has several restaurantes with WiFi and protected in the bay for nice swimming.
Playa Rinconcito looking West towards Punta Cometa, as seen from El Arquitecto
Playa Rinconcito looking East, as seen from El Arquitecto
Walk To Punta Cometa
We met an interesting Hungarian/Austrian guy named Atilla who lived in Mazunte making and selling organic yoghurt. He guided us out to Punta Cometa, where you can get an amazing 210 degree panorama looking east and west, for amazing views of both sunrise and sunset. We posted some photos of Punta Cometa in our recent post here.
Visit Centro Mexicano De La Tortuga
Turtles are Jenny’s favourite animal, so this is something we had to see. The Centre has a huge variety of different species of sea turtles and a few land turtles as well. It’s great to see these little buddies being protected and appreciated. See our video post of some sea turtles at the Centre here.
Mountain Biking Near Mazunte
A cloudy, smokey sunset looking SW about 20km northwest of Mazunte.
There is excellent off-road riding to be had near Mazunte, especially in the hills above Tonameca. It helps to talk to someone who knows the roads and bring a GPS if you have one! I wrote up a separate post about mountain biking in Mazunte here.
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