Day 6 in Mexico (or How I learned to stop worrying and love the thief)

So we saw a rather plump Mexican girl wearing a T-Shirt bearing the confused slogan "Serial Butcher Ready to F%ck You". It seemed to sum up a lot about Mexico.

Mexico is a land of contradictions. On one hand you have a nation of cheerful people who will bend over backwards to help out a foreigner with a limited grasp of Spanish. On the other you will be cheated, robbed, hoodwinked and taken advantage of at every turn!

Take Miguel Pepe for instance. On our penultimate day in Puerto Escondido we headed to the very end of the beach. Warned that going into the waves along the length of Playa Zicatela would lead to "Certain Death", Roger and I decided that we probably should first learn to surf. Accordingly we headed to a shack named Natua at the end of the beach to book a surf lesson in a quieter bay. An old and slightly sun- (dare I say drug?) addled man eventually understood what we were looking for and sold us a 2 hour surf lesson for the princely sum of 600 pesos (30 quid). The transaction took the best part of an hour. Even with our limited Spanish, we understood we were to come back at 12:15 to meet Miguel our instructor who would teach us to surf. At five past one, Miguel slumped up phenomenally late and hurried us into a taxi without the hint of an apology.

The taxi delivered us to Playa Carrizalillo a beautifully sheltered bay where we would learn to surf without breaking our necks. One look at the water however and Miguel started asking questions like "Are you a very strong swimmer?" whilst shaking his head and doing his best to persuade us to come back tomorrow. We agreed to meet at 8am the next day back at the shack. Miguel must have repeated "ocho hora" about 15 times. We promised to be there and watched rather forlornly as he departed clutching our 600 pesos.

We spent the day swimming in the fantastic waves, eating the best Mexican food we've had to date (pescadillas can't be recommended strongly enough), drinking ice cold cervezas and later swimming again in a deluge of tropical rain.

The next morning we arrived at the shack at 5 to 8, somewhat sure that Miguel would be a couple of minutes late. At 9 our sense of misgiving was such that we abandoned hope of meeting Miguel and jumped in a taxi to the beach hoping to catch him there. Needless to say he wasn't at large. Biting our frustration we signed up for a lesson with Donovan another instructor who claimed to know him. The money we understood would not be an issue.

An hour later, elated and exhausted we crawled out of the water only to be frog-marched to a taxi with the instructor to recover the money. The only hitch... no one seemed to know where Miguel might live.

The taxi driver perked up however and proffered that he knew Miguel the instructor and that as luck had it he was a minute's drive away. After banging on the door of a derelict building for a while, the door swung open to reveal a very different looking Miguel. He had aged by 20 years and acquired a fine dusting of construction dust in the process.

Somewhat dejected we handed over another 600 pesos to our surf instructor and sent him on his way.

Over lunch I decided to head back to Natua, the surf shack, and see if I couldn't track down Miguel and cajole him to hand back the pesos. What luck! Not only was the old guy who had sold us the lesson there, but also none other than an extremely hungover Miguel, curled up in a fetal crouch in a hammock, stinking of a 600 pesos binge!

Miguel of course had neither the money, nor an excuse, but promised to meet us at 3pm armed with the cash. He even proffered his number.

Needless to say, 3 o'clock came and went at the now deserted shack. No old man. No Miguel. The phone was occupado each time we rang, and after an hour of waiting in vain, feeling ever so slightly foolish, we left Puerto Escondido behind us, grabbing a night bus to Oaxaca.

I did however leave a huge somewhat offensive message for Miguel daubed in the sand, which, though I'm sure will be like water off a duck's back, made me feel a hell of a lot better. (Photo will be posted shortly!)

Miguel is forgiven but not forgotten! Lesson learnt - never pay for anything in advance... A lesson I seemed doomed to learn over and over again!

Rx

ps. Now installed in a basic hostel in Oaxaca, having traded down from the relative luxury of Aqua Luna boutique hotel in Puerto Escondido. Shared bathroom aside, it's been a great base for exploring. Today we saw grand Cathedrals, museums, street markets, drank the best hot chocolate in Mexico (good... but not all that) and ate Chapulines (fried grasshoppers... which were actually pretty damn tasty).

Hasta luego for now!