Six of the Best Things about Puerto Escondido and the Real Reason I Love Her
A Love Letter to My Soul Place—Puerto Escondido, Mexico
Puerto Escondido (which I’ll refer to as Puerto for short) is one of Mexico’s fastest-growing beach towns. Kanye West came here last year. Tourism is rising by the month. Construction is in the air. Trash is on the beach (unfortunately). My partner and I moved here from Mexico City six months after the start of the pandemic, and it’s changed a lot in that short time. I can see eight new restaurants from my balcony. Restaurants that weren’t there in October 2020.
People are drawn to Puerto for a litany of reasons. So, let’s go through some of the top things people love about this charming Oaxacan coastal town, quickly growing into an international tourist destination. Let’s flatter the town with compliments, like a beautiful friend who has a bounty of positive qualities.
Not one of these six things, however, is my favorite part about her.
1. She’s stunningly beautiful:
The entire Oaxacan coast is a babe. The sun slips behind the ocean along the Pacific coast every night, putting on a light show as the sound of waves crash on the fine-sand beach. Palm trees and cacti shoot out of the rich earth in every direction. Fruits that I love and fruits that I’ve still yet to taste ripen and fall to the earth. This time of year, the air smells of rotten mangos because there are just too many. Birds, bats, lizards, squirrels, and critters of all kinds relish in the lush environment.
True, it’s intensely hot and dry for much of the year, but—boy oh boy is she beautiful. She’s posing, just waiting to be painted. Just waiting for someone to take a picture of themselves with a surfboard in front of her.
2. She’s delicious:
¡Dos tacos fritos de cameron coco, por favor! Typing that made my saliva glands do the macarena in unison. The food and flavors of Puerto are undeniably special. Oaxaca as a state is world-famous for its culinary contributions. Oaxacan cheese, chocolate, mezcal, and mole are loved worldwide.
Puerto has all of that, with a seafood twist. You can eat delicious fresh seafood while your bare feet chair-dance in the sand in over a dozen places. My favorite fresh-sea-food-sand-floor restaurant is tucked behind a car mechanic. The food scene is already amazing and constantly expanding, without too many of the pretentious decorative or performative aspects of the industry at large.
3. She’s sporty and healthy:
You can take six different types of yoga in 6 different yoga studios every day if you really wanted to. You can surf on a number of different breaks depending on your skill level or the type of break you prefer. You can join the “Hikers of Puerto Escondido” crew and get lost in nature (I helped my friend David, the hike guru, run these activities for most of 2021.) You can play daily volleyball, then drink a $1 coco. You can eat healthy, unprocessed foods without much effort, practice breathwork, hang from aerial yoga ribbons, try a type of exercise you’ve never heard of, and sweat out the demons in 100 different ways on a daily basis in Puerto.
Personally, I’m in the best shape of my adult life, and I haven’t even really tried that hard. Puerto will make you sweat, and it’ll make you sexier by accident. This is also my explanation for why Australians are considered “so hot.” They are, but it’s mostly because living by the ocean makes you hot, and the middle of Australia is entirely empty. For example, if I still lived in Wisconsin—no matter HOW HARD I TRIED—I would look a lot more like a cheese curd than I currently do. My lived experience tells me this is far closer to fact than opinion.
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