Mazunte

Now this is more like it. Mazunte is so lovely I was almost tempted to give it the kind of bum blog review I gave to Puerto Escondido...just to help keep the numbers down! But this is about as far from barfbag as you can get.

I've been staying in a 'penthouse' cabaña called Concha with gasp-inducing view of the bay. The complex - Balamjuyuc - is run by an excellent cook from Chiapas and his Argentinian wife. The name means Jaguar Mount in one of the Mayan dialects, but this is still basically Zapotec country.

Quibble time. Aside from the fact that it's dead dog hot for around three hours of the day, there's also something a little bit girly about Mazunte. Most of the visitors you see on the streets are attractive, earnest-looking young ladies, travelling in pairs for the most part. The only non-local blokes you tend to see are a bit girly as well, too busy plucking their guitar strings, or twisting their ringlets in their sun-bronzed fingers to actually pick up a board and surf - Sol drinkers.

Meanwhile the native, naturally-pigmented surfer dudes and the beach chuchos hang ten in much the same way - running after the retreating wash and flipping around in the follow-up batch of breakers as they crash on the beach.

There's a faintly Caribbean vibe here too. Wander down the narrow alleyways between the local homes and you could almost get high. But the ocean is most certainly the same Pacific I came across and learned to respect in Monterico - the one which left me face down underwater with a mouth full of sand. On the other side of the isthmus the most there is to fear is a sudden infestation of your swimming trunks by a passing shoal of tiny fish. Here you can be in water up to your navel when it suddenly drops to your ankles with an undertow which yearns to topple you before that humungous wave does...

Back to Chiapas tonight and the Sumidero by lancha tomorrow.