Cacaluta, Maguey, Organo and Violin

I've been losing my pictures. Too many places to put them. I have no idea where they end up sometimes. All that has survived recently is the vid of four beaches I visited one Sunday. The plan was to go to every beach I could in one day. I think it's possible to visit every beach in Huatulco in one day if you just show up, take a picture and run off to the next but I walked each one, took a swim, read a bit of my novel and so on. I plan to visit the beaches systematically just for a lark. i wonder how long it's going to take. At least by the end, everyone will have a complete account of each one.

Acid Toes

For the past two months I've had an annoying problem with cracked and sore skin between my toes. It comes and goes and even almost disappeared for good after a week at Zipolite during Semana Santa so I'm thinking the problem starts from the heat and my choice of footwear. Zipolite has softer sand than any of the beaches here in Huatulco but more importantly, I'm bare foot most of the time there. Here at school, I'm wearing shoes and they get pretty swampy by the end of the day. I'm making it a point to take them off in the classroom now but I usually forget.

I'm fairly zen with the heat down here. It doesn't really bother me that much but I sweat an incredible amount. Lunch hour is from one o'clock to four. I change from the shirt and tie to shorts, short sleeved shirt and sneakers for the ride back and forth on my bike. The ride back in the afternoon is the hottest. Best to avoid carrying anything on the back for that trip. I don't sweat too much until I reach the school and then, as soon as I drink my my first half liter of water, it all gushes out my pores like a cartoon character shot full of bullet holes. Every inch of me is slick. My clothes are saturated. A quick washdown in the bathroom, a change of clothes and I'm ready to go. For all that, I don't think I even smell that horrendous. A minimum of three cold showers a day goes a long way.

Every time I have one of those full body sweats, I think of all the toxins that must be being purged. Here's hoping that will give me an extra edge of protection against this potential pandemic of swine flu.

I first heard about it from Mike last Friday. I was giving exams last Thursday and Friday and I was suddenly more aware of how many of my students were sniffly with colds. This is not unexpected. Lots of students get sick around exam time. They stay up late trying to catch up on everything at the 11th hour. Their immune systems drop and little flus circulate everywhere. But Friday, after hearing the news from Mike, I noticed every little cough, especially how many of them used their exam papers to cover their big fat wet sneezes.

Once all the exams are finished, the pressure is on to get them all marked and the grades passed in to the head office so I took them all home with me on the weekend. And never touched them. I watched movies and went to the beach instead. Which is fine because that will give all the sneezes of death a chance to dry up and die. And the pressure is off as well. Students have been sent home all over the country. UMAR just got the word today. This could be for a long time. I can take my time. I'm just glad the exams are finished and we can all have a fresh start when we get back. Until further word, teachers and support staff will remain on the job but it's a much safer job for everyone now that the crowds of students aren't around. Here's hoping all of our students return safely, happy and healthy.


I finally made it to one of the prime beaches for seclusion last Sunday, Playa Violin. I've heard good things about it from others before and even went looking for it one day but failed. This time my friends were there ahead of me and their scooters marked the trail. It's a well hidden place that not too many people know about.

The trail is a bit steep and slippery with that fine mountain sand that turns into wrestling mud at the first drop of rain. Definitely inaccessible in the rainy season. There is an official park sign on the shore but no indication of anything by the road. It's one of the beaches that gets most of its traffic from charter tour boats and lucky locals such as ourselves.

When I first arrived, there were only my friends there, splashing and tossing a frisbee, like it was our private beach. We had the place to ourselves for hours. I looked around for some obvious reson for the name of the place, like a musical curve to the shore but there wasn't anything like that. A cave on the left, beyond where it would be wise to swim, gets a big wave now and again and spits it back out harder that it went in. Matt thinks it might make a musical note under certain current and wind conditions. We'll see. This won't be our last trip there.



Not much else to say. We did the expected: swam; snorkeled; maintained our intake of fluids and took lots of underwater pictures. That doesn't mean a ton of those pictures turned out. It's hard to even tell if the camera is turned on sometimes. I kept diving to take a video of these manta rays and people were diving to provide a bit of motion but the camera was set to compact mode and everything came out like an old vhs tape printed from an overexposed print.




Alright. Just got the word. We've all been released from work (with pay) until at least the sixth of May. It seems the Mexican government is taking this health situation very seriously. But don't worry about this kid. I lived through SARS in Toronto and I'll be sweating like crazy every time I get on my bike.
Adios. Good health to all

Playa Entrega

The Detour: After a solid Saturday of snoozing, I needed to exert myself a bit. Santa Cruz was too close for a good stretch. I rode my bike to Playa Entrega for the maiden trip of my fancy new mask and snorkel kit. It´s hillier than I remembered. William, Jasmine and myself started to hike there last September and waved down a cab after dragging ourselves up the first hill. After that, it wasn´t so bad. I´d forgotten how, from that point on, the trip becomes even steeper. Next time I´ll use the shortcut. The road has been designed to keep traffic moving in a loop. I bypassed the wrong way exit and ended up putting at least another half kilometer on my trip. Not much until you realize it´s almost all straight up hill. The reward for obeying the signs is a panoramic view by a lighthouse, a complete bonus as it´s off the main route on a flattish side road and a welcome rest stop for a cyclist. The Drop: After all that climbing, the last piece of road to the beach is an extreme drop. It´s another good reason to take that detour. The brakes haven´t broken on my bike yet. They will. Everything does. I just started home from school one night and my chain fell apart. That has never happened to me before. Most of the trip is downhill so I coasted most of the way and made a pitstop at the bike shop. The young mechanic from Chiapas had it fixed in two minutes. No one there speaks English but we understood each other and all agreed that the derailleur would probably go next. As I faced down that hill, I wondered about the odds of both brake cables breaking at the same time. The Beach: Entrega may well be the best snorkeling beach of Huatulco. Lots to see. I could have reached out and touched or swum right through a huge school of yellowtail tuna. A channel leads straight around the bend to a smaller isolated beach. There were a lot of us out there in the water, everyone so captivated by the world below there was an inclination to bump into each other once in a while. Some man said "Sorry. Sorry" when his little girl, on this cute little boogie board with a window to peer down through, bumped into me. Naturally, I forgave. I was just as likely the guilty party as anyone. He pointed out the cave I´d heard about and recommended a closer peek but I was feeling the chill and inclined to warm myself again on the sand. That will be good for another weekend. Oh. Here comes another one right now. 30 minutes to go.

The all inclusive/gorge on food and beverage day at Xhela

A few people warned me that XelHa was not much more than a tourist trap but I didn't listen. And I'm glad. Considering that 11 bucks bought me a tiny omelette on two pieces of Bimbo white bread with a flavorless cup of coffee and no refills on the beach where I was staying, I made the admission price back on the all inclusive food and beverage I consumed. High end stuff. Smoked salmon for breakfast. Steak for lunch. It might have lacked rugged backpacker cool but I enjoyed a day of luxury with no shame.



Lots of cenotes to check out. Mostly, it was all about the snorkelling.

I've never had very good luck snorkeling before and I chalked it up to all the years of heavy smoking destroying my lung capacity. I could never get enough air through that straw called a snorkel. Inevitably I'd get a mouthful of water and panic - "Ah! I'm drowning. Get me out of here!"- yanking my head out of the water, ripping the mask out of my way. That all changed after Xhela when an American lady taught me the secret. "Just bite down on the snorkel. I don't know why it works but it does. It sort of focuses your breathing." By golly, it worked. I ended up spending hours out there on the lake. Snorkelling is such a blast and it works up a great appetite for the buffet. I got to keep the snorkel as a souvenir. I think I'll invest in a pair of flippers since I'll be spending a year in Beachland.
I wonder why no one told me this before. Did they have poor communication skills or was I just not listening? This woman changed my life. I returned the favor by warning her about the moray eel I'd seen poking it's snout out from under a rock in the Mayan cave. You can see it for yourself in the video.

It was a park alright but it still had authentic underwater wildlife and the "Don't touch the fish" signs should be the order of the day; not just for the sake of the fish but yourself. For example, I wouldn't have dreamed of touching the stingray on the sandy lake bottom. It's not like these are tamed domestic sea critters.





I still had the waterproof camera bag from Carribean Bay in Korea and put it to good use, snapping pictures of everything. I couldn't see much through the view finder but a lot of pictures turned out very well. I kept seeing so much incredible stuff long after the batteries died.