Travel Diaries - Part III (The Oaxacan Coast)

After spending 10 days miserably sick with Salmonela in Chiapas, we felt strong enough to finally catch the 17h bus to the beach.

The Oaxacan Pacific coast.

First Puerto Escondido, land of endless watercolour sunsets, a slightly gentrified surf haven with açai bowls and big waves. Where I managed to do absolutely nothing for a week, belly up, drinking coconuts and resting after the purge. I would wake up with my feet in the sand and would go directly to the sea, lukewarm waters and intense waves in between sandy naps.

Then I ended up in Mazunte, a beautiful little town with generous green nature in between rocky beaches, where every day you can say goodbye to the sun at the same time as flocks of whales and dolphins - sunsets in Punta Cometa. If you’re into yoga, dancing, contact, surfing, this is the place for you. I left two murals there - one in Panchatantra, which doesn’t exist anymore, and another one which I will show you soon.

Finally, we decided to make our way to secluded Chacahua. To get there you had to get a bus, then a boat, then another bus and you will find yourself slightly in the middle of nowhere. There are a couple of restaurants, some cabanas and hammocks to sleep in at the beach, and a couple of surf camps.

It’s one of those places where people end up slightly by chance (we were told about it from a few random encounters), and where they tend to stay.

The quiet Chacahua life is the antidote to the modern capitalist city life. You wake up early, go see the sun rise over the perfect waves in your surfboard, go for breakfast in the only cafe with internet (there isn’t any phone or internet signal anywhere else in the island), hang out with new friends, go surf again or walk around (or in my case, paint), then you meet everyone again for dinner at one of the few restaurants there are. One day a week there is pizza night and on Saturdays there’s a reggaeton party. It isn’t uncommon to see a whale tail in the horizon as you drink your morning coffee, an eagle flying over you, a pelican fishing in the sea, a mother turtle surfacing from the ocean, carrying her heavy body somewhere safe to bury her eggs, only to make her way back to the water and disappear from sight. When there is the new moon and the night is darkest, you can go swim in the lagoon with bioluminescent fitoplankton - it feels like you are dancing in a constellation, each movement igniting thousands of little shinny stars. I would be walking at night back to my room through the beach and every step I took, the sand would light up around my feet.

I didn’t really get it at first, but I soon understood how people who came for three days ended up staying for 8 months. It’s a beautiful, healthy, quiet life, so close to generous, gorgeous nature.

I created a mural in a local hostel with an outside bar, in exchange for accomodation and access to a surf board. Although I am from Portugal (a country known for its surfing culture) and spent a few years of my life growing up in front of the beach, I had never picked up a surf board.

This felt like the perfect place to start - the waves are famous in Chacahua and people travel from all over to world to enjoy them. I learned a lot about surfing etiquette, how to read the waves, but mostly how to challenge this very loud voice in my head telling me to run away each time a gigantic wave approached me. The sea is terrifying, yet so, so beautiful. I gained a lot of respect for this sport, you have to paddle incessantly to try to catch a wave, then you fail, then you have to repeat and repeat the same tiring motion, all in an attempt to catch the perfect wave. But damn, when you do, it gives you such an adrenaline rush you have to go again.

I must reiterate that I was incredibly bad at this - but I worked very hard on being persistent, and in fighting the fight or flight mode that was very present in the turbulent waters. It also felt amazing to be in the ocean so regularly, for so long, to see the sun rise and set in the midst of the mirror of the water, which was persistently warm and allowed for you to delight in it for hours, never getting cold, getting tired in the best way. I got properly scared a few times, and caught in the washing machine of the wave, but I slept like a baby.

“The Muse of Chacahua” is my celebration of this magical island. I imagined its terribly beautiful sea as a feminine figure, her hair as waves that house the many wonders of this place: the mother turtle that comes to leave her eggs in the warm sand; the whale that visits you in the horizon; the jellyfish dancing in the motion of the ocean; the siren resting on her edge; the bioluminescent stars left behind each touch. And all the surfers that come here to delight in her magnitude, to play in the wavy infinite movement she provides, a perpetual, infinite action, the symbiosis of humankind with the elements, the sweet respect she imposes, the beauty she provides.