Far From The Banda Crowd

After trawling the strip at Playa Zicatela, the main beach, upon my arrival to Puerto Escondido in the painful aftermath of a new bout of food poisoning 24 hours before I procured a surfboard against my better financial judgment. After finding no spare rooms in the hostels and hearing advice about the availability of beds out of town further towards the distant rocky point at the other end of the bay, I merrily blundered out into the heat of the bay along a dirt track until I realised some ten minutes later that it was a far from opportune time to wander around with a board, my possessions and a notably absent plan.

It was at this point that I crossed paths with my place of refuge from the intensity of Puerto Escondido during the sinful distractions of Semana Santa; the Sexto Senso hostel, run by two wonderful ex-pat Italians, who wreaked havoc with the development of my accent with their version of the national language. The place was full to bursting, but after recognising the frendliness in the owners and the few people drifting around the place, I snapped up a hammock spot, hanging in an open air shaded spot on the first storey of the building that overlooked the ocean. I hung intermittently in that spot, lulled to sleep by the waves and woken by the sunrise for the next week.

The hostel was a fantastic spot, quietly located in the absolute middle of nowhere on the beach front; whitewashed meandering buildings bordered by palm trees, furiously tended grass and lopsided busts of naked women and cherubs dotted about the place.


Puerto Escondido
13th April 2009