Just 40 minute drive from Puerto Escondido is the adorable village of Mazunte. Along this stretch of the Oaxaca coast are three fantastic beach towns, San Agustinillo, Mazunte and Zipolite, all in close proximity to each other. San Agustinillo, the smallist, is just a fifteen minute walk from Mazunte and Zipolite, the largest, is just twenty minute truck ride.
We initially picked Mazunte as it seemed to promise the best WiFi which Jonny would need to work and WiFi was becoming increasingly sparse as we ventured further from the Yucatan. If you had time and no WiFi commitments, spending time in each of these towns would be highly recommended.
Mazunte is how I had expected Tulum to be, small, full of hippies, beautiful beaches, dirt roads, no English and scorching sun. It was also as if covid didn't exist, we didn't see a mask or hand sanitiser during our time there. Mazunte is the type of place you can't sanitise. Everything was organic, the buildings were wooden with palm thatched roofs. The electricity would sometimes flick off and on at night time. International hippies had made it there home but spoke Spanish to one another, never wore shoes and played drums, flutes, violins or accordions in the streets to try and raise money from passing tourists, others made hand made jewellery, or offered reki or tarot reading.
Mazunte felt timeless, it could easily pass for 1960 if it weren't for the odd truck, though even they weren't so modern.
The locals were as laid back as the hippies who had invaded, seemingly accepting of their presence and not phased by the fact their drinking rituals started at 10am outside the local corner stores.
I loved everything about Mazunte. It had a magical and peaceful atmosphere and it felt a million miles away from the rest of the world and all its problems.
Jonny, however, could not stand the hippies. His unexplainable hatred would case him to curse them under his breath in the street and privately verbalise his distain to me but could never fully explain what it was exactly about them that brought about his very real fury. It became an ongoing source of amusement during our stay.
Our Mexican routine kicked in, I found a language school behind the village up some dirt roads on a hill, where I would attend spanish lessons every morning while Jonny worked. The school offered a cheaper rate if you agreed to be paired with another student, so I did. I can only hope they made the pairings based on convenience rather than ability. I was paired with a Californian called Keith. He was tall with long unwashed hair and sometimes with a distinct fragrance of body odour. He had been going to the classes for nearly a month and seemed reluctant to utter even a sentence in spanish, or to even attempt it, much to the teachers and my frustrations. 'Just try!' she would plead in spanish, always refusing to speak English with him, but her pleads were usually to no avail.
Our teacher was as hippy as Muzante itself. She had visited from her native Mexico City seven years ago and never left. A story that was a common one for the village. She had a husky voice as though she'd smoked far too much, but was impossible to age. Like everyone in Oaxaca she was short, at 5 foot 1 I had become tall. I liked her, she was enthusiastic but our classes were a struggle because of Keith's unwillingness.
On my first day during our break I asked him about himself, in english. He was traveling with his girlfriend Natalie, who from what I could gather, could already speak Spanish. He'd been in Mexico and Mazunte for 3 months. They had no return flights but he spoke of returning for a job. 'Oh what's the job?' I asked.
He planned on growing and selling weed in California.
'oh because its legal there now?' I tentatively asked.
'No, no, illegally, you get more money that way'.
He told me he liked Irish people because he had lived and travelled in his van in the past with an Irish couple from Donegal.
For the afternoons Jonny and I would go to the main beach. It was a beautiful inlet surrounded by cliffs. In the distance you could see whales and dolphins out at sea which was incredible to watch with an evening beer. Mazunte also offered some amazing sunsets. Crowds would gather at Punta Comata, up on the cliff for the occasions, and hippies gathered to play drums and sing as the sun went down. Clever locals would come with gallons of home made Pulpe or Mescal to sell. The sunset and sound of the waves crashing on the cliffs below made the experience truly magical.
Nightlife was fairly tame in Mazunte, day drinking was more the hippies vibe, but there are plenty of incredible restaurants. As well as traditional Mexican, there was an amazing pizza restaurant, run by Italians and a Chinese restaurant run by a Mexican who'd spent years studying in China.
One night which was not so tame was after an afternoon trip to Zipolite. We took a twenty minute ride on the back to a taxi truck (Mazuntes version of a collectivo). Zipolite beach is the only nudist beach in all of Mexico. It is long open and expansive, but not as pretty as the beaches of Mazunte. The town is bigger with more of an evening buzz. We happened to stumble upon an Irish bar called 'The Bar'. We decided to go in for 'just the one'. How wrong we were. The pub was small and dark with a lone tall ginger pale deadlocked man behind the bar, who was unmistakenly Irish. Not only was he Irish, he was from Swinford in Co. Mayo, twenty minute from my hometown. He was beyond thrilled to have two Irish people, and even more thrilled to hear I was from Mayo. I was the first Mayo person he'd had in the bar. He was excited to introduced us to his Mexican girlfriends mother who was working across the road. A bottle of Jameson was taken out, shots poured and we knew were in for a long night. Also perched on the bar was a Danish man, who was an enormous fan of Irish Trad music, to the point that he knew the lyrics to every Irish Trad song we put on, some songs I'd never heard of. The bar filled with people as the night wore on and we had some sing alongs which any pub at home would be jealous of. It was an interesting mix of people, some local expats, one from Australia who claimed to be a retired 'spook' (spy) for the Australian government. He had been working in Turkey after 9/11. Apparently the Turks were very accomodating to the Australians given they had beaten the Australians during WW1. The information he gathered was then passed onto the American government. It's impossible to know if his stories were true but he was very convincing and either way it was entertaining.
Paul, our mayo barman, at one point decided he didn't want anymore customers because they were only distracting from our conversation and closed the shutters. As people left we were able to find more out about Paul's life in Mexico. He'd been in South America for 8 years, starting in Argentina and had set up the bar three years ago. He wasn't much older than us, his parents had died and he had one sister who lived in the UK. He told us how hard it had been when tourists stopped coming when the pandemic first hit. We asked him why Mexicans seems so unphased by the pandemic, 'because they die every day here, they're used to death'.
He told us there was no covid in Zipolite. 'Nobody gets it here, of course not!'
We asked him if he had to pay money to the cartel. No, because they like him, he said. But everyone else did.
At two in the morning it seemed it might be time to try and get home, something which turned out to be a problem given we were twenty minute drive away. Paul went out to look for a taxi but none could be found. So he said he'd have to drive us. He had had more that a few whiskeys but left with the prospect of sleeping on the bar floor it seemed the best option. Luckily there was no one else on the windy dark road between Zipolite and Mazunte and we made it in one piece.
While staying Mazunte we decided it best to extend our trip again and changed our flights once more. We kept a keen eye on news at home and in Europe about air travel, there had been announcements about hotel quarantine in Ireland being brought in but was a long, long way off from becoming reality. More disturbing was an unexpected announcement from the French president that flights from outside the EU would no longer be allowed into France. Our return flight transited through Paris. After a weekend of panic, it turned out to me little more than political showboating, flights would not be cancelled, planes would still fly, we would just need to fill out a new form. Which I'm sure was good news for the thousands of french tourists in Mexico.
With our extra time we decided for more time in Mazunte. However, our hotel was booked out so for a change of scenery we went ten minutes down the road to stay in San Agustinillo. We spent three nights in a fabulous Cabaña on a steep hill which overlooked the sea. San Agustinillo is a slightly fancier Mazunte. We were shocked when one restaurant told us we needed a reservation to dine there and turned us away, despite being half empty. Reservations were unheard of in Mazunte.
The beaches in San August were fantastic, and much quieter than Mazunte. My favourite thing about the Oaxacan beaches was the late afternoon food sellers. Little old ladies would walk the beach with baskets and bags full of mysterious treats. From Pescititos (mackerel tacos) to chocolate flan for a minimal price. I still think about the chocolate flan we had on San August beach.
We also did a boat tour from San August to see the whales and dolphins which was incredible. We got amazingly close to a humpback whale, so close his giant tail almost hit the front of our boat. Next were the dolphins which swam all around us, one jumped out of the water right beside us to say hi. It was an unbelievable experience. We also saw plenty of Turtles who come to the surface to warm up, birds often land on the shells for a rest.
After two incredible weeks on the scorching Oaxacan coast it was time to leave for the state of Chapias.
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