My Novel of a Spring Break

According to Mark my blogs are too long, so here is a Sparknotes version of my spring break:
-Beach in Oaxaca
-got sick
-Tuxtla

Friday, April 3/Saturday, April 4:
Chris and I left on Friday night for Puerto Angel in Oaxaca, a day later than everyone else b/c he had an exam and I wanted to stay for Dario's birthday. Our bus was 45 min. late, and Chris was really anxious to leave, he kept asking everyone if it was there yet. The ride was fine, I'm just still stumped why they have so many speed bumps on the highways here, or why there are so many stops for the guards to come on the bus to check for...stowaways I've been told. We got to the bus station around 7 on Saturday morning. As we were getting off the bus, a bunch of taxi drivers in uniform were asking people if they needed a taxi. I was getting my bag, and another man in a t-shirt asked if we needed a ride. I wanted to find someone in uniform, but the next thing I know, Chris was saying, "alright, let's go" and we were walking to the man's taxi. I was nervous. Why was everyone wearing a uniform except him? He helped us put our bags in the trunk, and another man sat in the front seat. Why is there another man in this taxi? They were talking to each other, about where they were from, where the man was going, etc. Are they just pretending to not know each other? The whole time I was thinking of ways to strangle him with the strap of my bag, or roll out of the car, If I keep my bookbag on, hold my pillow...My stomach was doing flips, and Chris kept talking, telling them information they didn't need to know, until I elbowed him. Finally, we made it to the bed and breakfast. It turns out, that it was a collective taxi, which means they pick up more than one person, and go to multiple destinations. Phew.
We opened the gate to the bed and breakfast and walked through a palapa (thatched roof hut) which had a kitchen/bar, hammocks, wooden couches, a table and a bookcase. We walked down a series of 4 or 5 concrete stairs that wound around three or four brick cottages, down to ours. Everyone else was sleeping (Liz, Haven, Rachel and Erin), but woke up to greet us. We ended up sleeping for a couple more hours, then went up to the palapa where Lluvia was cooking us breakfast. She's 25 and has an 18 month old daughter, Padme who just wandered around handing you things and when she dropped something, would make and o with her mouth and widen her eyes. Lluvia and her husband, Josuelo (who looks like George Clooney) are the owners, she lived in Oregon for 8 years, therefore speaks perfect English. She speaks to Padme in English, and Josuelo speaks to her in Spanish.
After breakfast, we got ready to go to the beach, San Agustinillo. The road to the beach was winding, and hilly, and since it is the dry season in Mexico, brown. The whole coast area is really poor and relys on all income from tourism. When we got to the beach the sand was almost white, and the water royal blue. I was shocked at how few people were there. There were several restaurants along the beach which all had little palapas to sit under on adierondack chairs. The waves were easily 10 feet tall, which made the shore line at a pretty steep angle, so where we were sitting was 8-10 higher than the water. There were huge rocks seperating the different little beaches. We didn't leave until sunset that night, which was great because we watched it set behind the mountain.
Later that night, after showering, we went to a little town Zipolite for dinner at this place a German man at the beach recommended to us. We had a little time to kill, so we just walked around the "town" aka-one street about a quarter-mile long. Needless to say, the streets were full of hippies. I swear I've never seen more dreadlocks and cotton pants in one place. Everyone was sitting around talking, eating, selling things, hanging out with friends. We finally got to the restaurant around 9:30 and we definitely went to the right place. It was all open air, nicely lit, had a lounge area covered in a white canopy, the food was gourmet too. The plates were decorated with the garnishings, colorful, and well thought of. Reasonably priced too! After dinner we went for a walk on the beach, and Rachel stubbed her toe on a rock, so we went to a hotel/bar/music venue/hangout to clean her up and found out they were going to have live music the next night. Down the beach we saw a campfire, and walked closer to it. There was live reggae music, people dancing, people sitting around the fire, hanging out. We only stayed for a few min. because we were all so tired.

Sunday, April 5:
The clocks finally changed so I'm back up to pace with you! Woke up a little later on Sunday, had chai tea and toast with homemade jam for breakfast. Josuelo let Chris and Haven borrow his boogie boards so that they wouldn't have to pay to rent them at the beach. There were quite a few more people there than the day before, but for how beautiful it was, it still seemed deserted. We found an area where the water wasn't so rough and I swam and attempted to body surf until Haven got stung by something, or maybe a jellyfish just grazed her and didn't cling on, either way, I remembered how creepy sealife is and got out. There are always people trying to sell you something, which after about 10 times gets annoying, but there were people selling fresh fruit, so we bought bags of sliced mangos, and coconut. I walked down to the neighboring beach and could count on one hand how many people I saw on the half mile stretch. We left the beach around 7, showered, and ate some of Lluvia's cookies that she had made for the family dinner they were having in the palapa (the owners live in the cottage next to it, so basically we were guests in their house) then went to get some pizza at an italian restaurant in Zipolite. There we met two guys from Denmark, Jonas and Tobias who were on a tour called Trek America. They are spending 21 days in Mexico with about 10 other people from all over Europe then going to California for a month themselves. We went back to the same place were Rachel cleaned her foot for the live music and another bonfire. I'm pretty sure the entire town of Zipolite was there. We hung out until we couldn't stay awake anymore, but by then there were no more taxis to get back to our hotel, so we ended up sleeping next to the fire for about an hour or two and at 6:30 walked to the main street to find a taxi. We waited for a while and finally a collective taxi covered-truck came by. We went to sleep and didn't wake up until around 2.

Monday, April 6: Happy Birthday Grandma!
We felt terrible because we asked Lluvia the night before if she would make us enfrijoladas for breakfast and when we woke up at 2, we saw all the food layed out ready to be cooked. But she made them for us anyway, and even though in most hotels guests leave before noon, we hung around and played with Padme until around 5 and walked down to the beach of Puerto Angel. It was hard to get to, we had to hike down a huge steep hill to get to it, but it was totally worth it. It's a cove with rocks and fishermen in boats. The water is so calm there's hardly any waves at all. I felt like I was in a movie taking place in Greece or somehing. We didn't leave until 6:30, because our bus left at 8. About and hour into the bus ride I started feeling nauseous. I threw up 8 times on the bus, once at the rest stop and once outside a bus station. I also had diarreah. I couldn't keep water down, or anything else and after tasting bile three times I was about to go insane. It was the longest 11 hour bus ride ever.

Tuesday, April 7:
When we got to San Cristobal at 7, I was still feeling really terrible. We were getting off the bus and I woke Chris up to tell him we had arrived and he said "WOAH, I just had the coolest dream. We were in a candy store full of any type of candy or sweet or ice cream you could ever want!” At the time, I wanted to punch him in the face, but looking back on it, it’s hilarious. And ironic. We went to get breakfast and I ordered tea and orange juice which I quickly saw in the toilet, so everyone decided that I needed to just lay down and sleep instead of walking around the cold damp town. So we finally found a hostel for 50 pesos (less than $5) for me to crash. My friends left and came back with an electrolyte drink, medicine, and crackers. And Chris left me his phone so they could keep in touch with me. It was super nice of them. Dario and his friend Roberto were planning on coming to San Cristobal to meet up with us anyway, and he came to the hostel to check on me. I ended up just going back to his house in Tuxtla instead of going on to Palenque and Villahermosa because I can't remember the last time I was that sick. It even hurt to talk, so the thought of getting back on a bus later that night for 5 hours and walking around all day the next day sounded like ripping off my finger nails for fun. When I got there, I said hello to his family and went straight upstairs and fell asleep at 5:00. I didn't wake up until 10am the next morning.

Wednesday, April 8:
Went to the bus station to exchange my tickets, later that night Dario and I went to his friend Roberto’s house and met up with some of his friends there. But I went upstairs to sleep.

Thursday, April 9: Happy Birthday Corey!
Slept late again and ended up taking a nap. We went to his cousin’s restaurant (the same one we went to the last time I was in Chiapas), and there was live entertainment: a band who kept imitating famous Mexican musicians. His other cousin and uncle picked us up and had a truckload full of fish in coolers, and cheese that they raise/make on their ranch and sell in the city, and went with them for a couple of sales. His uncle was trying to speak to me in English but his English was even worse that my Spanish, which is pretty hard to believe, and he insisted on calling Dario “Daytona beach boy” since he used to live there. We went to his cousin and uncle’s house and I played with Becca, the 8 month old baby. We kept each other entertained for about 2 hours until we all piled in the car to go to a lookout of the city. Along the way we bought snacks.

Friday, April 10:
I was almost bored to tears. We didn’t leave the house the entire day. So I took the dog for a walk. Thankfully his sister lent us a movie to watch. I thought my bus left at 11, and packed up my suitcases and we were all waiting in the living room for the taxi, looked at my ticket and realized it was 11:40, not 11. So we postponed the taxi, got to the bus station, and waited for my 30min. late bus. I actually slept the whole way, but when we stopped at the rest stop at around 6:30, we were about to get back on the road again, but our bus needed jumped. So everyone got back off the bus and waited for it to be fixed. It didn’t take too long though.

Some random things I’ve noticed about Mexico:
-Yellow and orange are far more popular colors here than in the states.
-there are some neighborhoods where the houses are really huge and nice but the streets/sidewalks are just rocks or even dirt. Then there are others where the houses are tiny but looks like out of a movie, with green ivy, bushes, hibiscus, roses, etc.