#prosepros

 My visit to Mazunte is a testament to the fact that you really can’t trust anyones opinion. That one must always see for oneself. I believe it is doubly true for a person whose intention in traveling is to experience the unexpected or serendipitous. Such is the lesson of my unplanned visit to Mazunte.

Mazunte sits just north of Puerto Angel on the Oaxacan coast. It’s a small town with long spanning beach that stretches in a slight curve toward a naturally occurring rampart of grey and black stones that meet the sea and demarcate it from San Augustinillo and then Zipolite. Looking to the south and out to sea you can not help but notice an enormous white stone called Roca Blanca, half a mile out jutting up from the pacific.

  In San Augustinillo just south of Mazunte upon entering the town one notices the many boats waiting, sitting on the high sands. There is a wave that breaks cleanly in both directions just outside a gathering of stones in the water.

 For the past several days and for some days more the town of Mazunte has become like a mecca for dreadlocked internationals, hoola-hoopers, jugglers, handmade gemstone jewelry vendors, drum circle enthusiasts, acro-yogis, and many other performance artists and persons from beyond the beautiful fringes of my ordinary American existence. It’s pretty chido. I’ve noticed at least three cafes around town that use the term Namaste in their advertising and I believe this might be resonating deeply in the travelersphere drawing out the dready, the rootsy and the inbetween such as myself. I don’t know why this is happening but it’s a very welcome change of vibration from the scene in Puerto.

Mazunte has an enormous sea turtle breeding ground and depending upon which group of locals you ask, Mazunte derives its meaning from a Nahuatl phrase that means “please lay eggs.”  There’s a ban in effect on the illegal harvesting of eggs and I believe a moratorium on the trade of their flesh. There is a turtle breeding center and research facility at the southern tip of the town. Mazunte was once the epicenter of the Mexican turtle egg and meat industry until some hippies or scientists convinced them to stop the insanity a couple of decades ago.

 I had asked roughly six people in Puerto about Mazunte; their thoughts, feelings, analysis of the community (as a destination for your humble blogger,) only one person gave an even remotely fair and balanced review of the place. Most commentary focused on the stench of the people gathered here for the circus festival (which is what I’ve recently learned is currently going on here,) and the supposedly far out feeling of the town.

   To escape Puerto Escondido I caught a ride with a mother and son dynamic duo, Sam and Nadine, in their van. Nadine and Sam are traveling for a year in a Ford Econoline from Canada to Guatemala and back. Nadine was working as the den mother, so to speak, of Hostel Pakololo in Puerto Escondido where I had an unplanned extended visit due to my over consumption of powdered white rhinoceros horn. Which I must insist I neither regret nor am I proud of but have basically acquiesced to the reality that I too in my formidable heart of hearts am also susceptible to the energy of peer pressure and deep seated FOMO.

Originally I was planning on posting up for a week in Barra de la Cruz until this fabled swell arrived Monday. I was hoping to tear into some Gary Snyder poetry and get at least three quarters of the way through Roberto Bolanos 2666. So Sam and Nadine and myself left Puerto shortly after noon driving south at a leisurely pace in the van. Them bound for Salina Cruz and myself supposedly Barra. As fate would see fit when we stopped in Mazunte to get Sam some pizza (because he is sixteen, ravenous and knows no patience when it comes to issues of the intestinal tract,) I scoped the mellow vibe and saw some Namaste signs and regretfully informed Nadine I was hopping out. She was hoping I would share some driving duty so I think I burst her bubble a little but she insisted she saw it coming and not to worry. We hugged, kissed, exchanged email and then I took my shredsled and backpack and went to find a super dank dank tlayuda. For I too have the stomach and intestines of a sixteen year old boy.

 I mowed through a tlayuda and ran into some folks I had stayed with for two nights in Oaxaca City. They informed me that the town was basically booked up for lodging as a result of the circus festival. They pointed me in the direction of the turtle center where there were supposed to be at least one or two empty rooms. We parted and they wished me luck. I found a hostel with one moldy mattress in an adobe building on the very edge of town and paid a hundred pesos to a man with a portrait of Che on his left shoulder and an asscrack that was dangerously exposed. I dropped me stuff on the floor and went to check the town out.

I walked the streets and the beach and sat on a small stone wall at the northern edge of Mazunte where there is a cove beach. Three friends I made in Oaxaca found me. As fate would see fit their fourth companion had parted ways back to the city and they had rented an apartment where there was an extra bed available and a full kitchen. They invited me to stay over and cook dinner so I obliged without hesitation. Their names are Anders ( a Dane) Tessa and Rosslyn (both from Nova Scotia.

 After having a drink together (because were are on vacation, as if that deserves mention,) Rosslyn and I grabbed my stuff from the first hostel and took the collectivo to San Augustinillo. There were about two dozen men and a few women spread out across two peaks where the rocks end and the wave breaks. I stayed in the water until the sun dipped for the evening behind that aforementioned natural rampart of now slate grey stone. Rosslyn was asleep lying on my towel and board bag and I woke her with a holler. We jumped into the sea like children for my last rinse and then walked off.

 The collectivo was coming as we disembarked from the sand of San Augustinillo and all the seats were full. We stood upon the rear bumper and came back to Mazunte dangling from the steel bar like little monkeys. Three other Canadians were on the back of the truck with us and Rosslyn caught up with them, made small talk, cracked jokes and then we hopped off.

 At the cabana Rosslyn and I cooked dinner. Cabbage. Coconut. Carrot. Leek. Garlic. Arroz. Pepper. I went into my backpack and withdrew a very special treat I bought at the market in Oaxaca. Chile Oaxaceno. A rich aromatic smoked pepper that smells intoxicatingly of chocolate and wood fire. We ate dinner quietly around the tiled kitchen island, drinking Bohemias and laughing about assorted nonsense. We discussed elaborate plans never to come to fruition, lovers, our families.

After the post dinner wrap-up we walked the dirt streets of Mazunte until we happened upon people dancing to live drummers. Men and women with single dreadlocks strung back beyond their skull whose sides are shaved and persons with hair wild and reminiscent of a world I have never known but imagine in my sleep to have existed were dancing loose and free int he dirt kicking it up and the drummers drummed rhythms in tune to one another and jugglers were juggling alone and together standing perhaps ten feet apart lobbing their bowling pins and catching them and I was hypnotized.