Mar 1 – This morning we bid adios to Huatulco, and took the bus to Puerto Ángel. Unlike Huatulco, cruise ships don’t stop here, and Jim remembered it fondly as “real Mexico” when he traveled here in his youth.

It was a one hour ride on a big air conditioned bus, which in my little mind went right along the coast, so I wasn’t prepared for the rocking, rolling mountainous route we took. Whee! Who needs roller coasters when you can ride buses in Mexico?

The chatty taxi driver who took us from the bus station to our hotel asked if we knew about the earthquake that Oaxaca had experienced last week. He wondered if we had heard about it in Virginia, and we told him that we had. He said the houses shook “like paper” and it was very scary, but no damage.

When we got to our “hotel”, La Casita de Marlen, I got a bad feeling. Although it had gotten some high reviews on Booking.com, we stood out in a courtyard while the lady told us that the apartment with kitchen we had booked was not available, and instead she offered us a sad, bare room with a flimsy metal screen door, one lightbulb, no air con, no warm water, two sad flat pillows… Whoops, I just used the word “sad” twice in the same sentence. This was a sad place. We walked down a steep hill to check out the beach, past shacks and shanties, with people cooking out in the yard, and places that appeared to have no electricity. Poor and sad.

Although the beach was beautiful, we had to walk back up the steep hill to arrive, breathless and sweaty, to our poor, sad room.

Jim got back on Booking.com and was able to cancel our reservation without penalty. As “real” as it was, I just couldn’t picture us spending a week there.

So now we are on the other side of the same cove, in a happier hotel, La Cabaña. (Look at the guy photobombing Jim! He was very pleased that he got in our picture.)

Air con! Hot water! A pool!

Just across the street from the beach!

The walkway to our room!

Now we are in a happy place, with lots of fluffy pillows, although we won’t have a kitchen or fridge here.

Don’t expect much news this week – we’ll be swimming and sunning!