Finding Myself in Mexico: Part IX

    Easing into Puerto Escondido has evolved into a sensation of feeling at home. At first, that feeling was warmly accepted, but recently the sensation has flipped. I am now becoming restless, a different version of those churning nights here where I roamed the streets and hopped from bar to bar. This is the same restless sensation that forced me out of NYC, out of LA and the greater California area. The previous two days I left my sweltering room only to grab water and snacks from the closest store, or to watch the sunset before slipping back into the swirling vortex of wind my ceiling fan is constantly creating to stave off the thickening humid air. The biggest routine I am grateful for, yoga, even slipped between my fingers as I slept in too long and dragged my feet in getting ready, resulting in me spending another endless day surfing my phone and binging Netflix. These characteristics are my least favorite part of myself - even though I am slowly learning to love all parts of me - and I don’t like that I feel the slippery slope beneath. There can be a couple of factors that are contributing to this downslide: perhaps the uptick in heat and humidity I tried to paint for you a few sentences back, or the insurgence of vacationers travelling for the Easter holiday and Semana Santa, or perhaps I plateaued on the rush PE was giving me and this is all a sign to move on. Perhaps that time has come.

    If it’s about the heat and crowds, I should say I was fairly warned about that. A PE veteran of 15 years did tell me this was the perfect time to skip town and find exploration in the parts of Mexico that empty out in search of beaches and hammocks. The only reason I didn’t listen is because I had already booked three more weeks. And she was not wrong. The humidity has sky-rocketed, leaving only a few hours in the night with reasonable temperatures for activities involving something more than swimming or hiding in the shade. Even my favorite rooftop cafe - that sits in the constant breeze swirling off the nearby ocean - leaves me with a puddle on my seat and my shirt stretching from the weight of the sweat it has soaked up (regardless of the fact that I'm nearly naked), which has scared me off and whittled my writing down to tepid journal entries that hardly fill a page, for if I continue on too long, sweat eventually drips down my arm to soak the paper and spread the ink.

    As for the crowds: they are real. My first visit to PE was over the New Years, and I thought I understood what busy meant here, but I was wrong. Beaches are crowded, lines form outside restaurants, bars that begged for patrons now charge covers, streets are filled with chanting brunkards, the peace of sunsets is ruptured by the rolling cheers of volleyball players, even the waves have multiplied in their abundance and crowd the waters, making it nearly impossible to swim. My days have gotten earlier in response to this, so my nights are capped once my yawns get large enough to crack my jaw, usually around 10pm. That solitude I sought when escaping to PE has been overrun and perhaps I need to run away. 

    Now of course, these could all be excuses. Perhaps I just need to realize that my urge to keep moving and exploring, challenging myself and taking chances, is still at large and the portion of that journey has reached its limit in PE and there is some other port or mountain or village or beach that I need to help me expand this understanding of myself I have begun to build. One thing is for certain: a journey of self-discovery is never ending, and because of that, perhaps I will never lose the urge to keep moving and searching. But at least I know now that I have found a semblance of home in PE, if ever I need to re-acquaint myself with the pieces of me that are soft as sand and green as palm trees.