After a couples weeks completely frozen in the mountain towns of Mexico, we took a bus down to the southern coast for some warm, relaxing beach time. Our Christmas present to ourselves was booking 6 nights in one place, and planning to do absolutely nothing while we were there.
The bus ride from Oaxaca took 12 hours, and we arrived in Puerto Escondido in the evening, only a couple minutes walk from our apartment. We found a restaurant around the corner, and had a quick bite before settling in for the night.
We had a great Christmas Eve sleep-in the next morning before heading out to explore and look for some food. I’m not sure if it was just because it was almost Christmas, but we couldn’t find any open restaurants! However, we did stumble upon a place selling roasted chickens, and we got the great idea to buy one for a Christmas feast for tomorrow! They were absolutely slammed, it seems like everyone in Puerto Escondido had the same idea.
After some more searching, we finally found a taco truck that was open, and ordered some lunch to eat there and some to go for dinner — we are entering into full hibernation mode!
We spent the evening in, eating tacos, calling Wini’s family in Taiwan to wish them a Merry Christmas, and introducing Wini to one of my family’s classic Christmas movies: Annabelle’s Wish. Just the relaxing Christmas Eve we wanted.
The next day we said a big Happy Christmas to each other! It’s Wini’s first one without her family, so it feels a little weird, but we’re happy to have each other and this chill beach town.
That afternoon we went out for a Christmas Day float in the ocean. Manzanilla Beach, was completely packed, but it was a really good vibe with everyone out with their families having a fun day. We walked down the beach and found a great little spot to set up.
It was a scorching hot day, so we immediately ran into the water, which was the perfect shock of cold to cool us off, but as soon as you were in for a second it the feeling of cold passed and it was just perfectly refreshing.
We spent the day in and out of the water, reading our books, and people watching.
In the later afternoon, we packed up our stuff and headed towards home. Stopping in the best grocery store ever to pick up some sides for our Christmas feast!
At home, I called my family for Christmas — this year we were a little spread out, with my brother at home visiting my parents in Calgary, my sister at home in Victoria, and us in Mexico!
After a sweet catch up with everyone, we went to the seating area on the roof to have our delicious Christmas feast! It wasn’t the most glamorous plating situation; we only had one bowl and one fork, so one of us had to use a spoon, but the food was scrumptious! We had a roast chicken, potatoes, and delicious garlic bread!
It was amazing ambiance too, with a nice little sunset and a big Christmas moon looking down on us.
We cleaned up, and went down for a movie night which Wini immediately fell asleep on (as usual haha). Overall, it was a cute day, but we came to the conclusion that family & friends Christmas is always better.
The next day, we made plans with Lorenzo (our Italian friend from Oaxaca), to visit the bioluminescence in a lagoon that evening, and to meet up at the beach for the day. We walked to a different beach, a little further away from the one we went on Christmas, called Playa Bachoco. It was gorgeous, huge, and practically empty.
Lorenzo met us and we jumped into the massive waves. We spent the day swimming, reading, and drinking beers on the near empty beach, watching the many pelicans dive into the water for fish.
As we headed home, my sister Nicola was messaging us freaking out because we had planned a trip to Panama and Colombia together, but they were finally getting around to checking on flights and they were worried that it wouldn’t work for them anymore! We got home and called them to try to figure out the best solution, but didn’t settle on anything specific yet.
That evening, we got picked up at our hotel by the tour company & Lorenzo to take us to the lagoon. It was a full moon so they explained that it would be difficult to see the bioluminescence, but they had little floating tent structures set up for us to swim under that blocked the light.
It was about a 15 minute boat ride out to the structures, near a mangrove forest. We hopped in and as soon as we swam under the floating huts the water came alive with shimmering lights! It was so special. Wini had never seen them before! We had so much fun splashing around the water and seeing the lights go flying.
We got home super tired but happy to have had such a full, beautiful day.
The next day was a bit of a nothing day. We were tired and it was overcast so we decided not to go to the beach or anything, and spent the day relaxing at home, only heading out to get street tacos. Honestly, we sometimes love days like that when we can simply rest and reset after we’ve been moving around a lot.
On our last full day in Puerto Escondido, we had an email from the company we had booked the Panama to Colombia tour with, saying it was possible for us to reschedule and to refund Nicola and her boyfriend Chad’s portion. We decided to do that and just plan some time in Panama with them before we do the boat trip with my brother, Adam. It was really disappointing, because we had all been looking forward to doing it together, but the way back from the trip was a lot more complicated for them to do if they were ending in Capurgana, Colombia, so this option was better for them.
After we got the ball rolling on that, we headed back out for another beach day at Playa Bachoco. We spent another beautiful day at that beach, and Lorenzo joined us around 4pm. We were told there would be a turtle releasing event put on by Vive Mar a turtle conservation company happening around 5pm, so we decided to wait around to watch that.
They didn’t get started releasing turtles until around 5:30, which was right around sunset.
People were given a little baby sea turtle in a half a coconut shell (so they wouldn’t touch it) and they brought it to the waters edge to let the turtles go make the final stretch to the open ocean on their own— however there were a ton of seagulls who were coming at the turtles to eat them!
There were people there to chase off the birds off but a lot of the birds were still successful and able to catch the baby turtles!
Lorenzo told us later that the seagulls can’t actually eat them (FACT CHECK?) because of their hard shells so they do end up dropping them in the ocean eventually. But how scarring to see your baby turtle get scooped up!
We headed home after the gorgeous sunset, a great send off from Puerto Escondido.
On our final morning, we packed up and went to wait at a local cafe before our 6pm bus. Lorenzo met us there because he was also leaving that day, so we relaxed together, and then said our goodbyes as we went our separate ways thankful for the amazing memories we made with our new friend!
We boarded our evening bus ready to take us to our last stop in Mexico: San Cristobal de las Casas!
