Two of the biggest buzzwords in today’s media-dominated culinary world are “fresh” and “local,” and on a recent visit to Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, we found the food to be both. Taking advantage of the region’s abundant fresh ingredients, we shopped, cooked and ate our way through the beach town of Puerto Escondido. We had […]
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It was an evening to remember. The final chorus of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” bombarded the barren shore, the vocal crescendos punctuated by nature’s own rhythm section: the waves crashing on Zicatela beach. Off in the distance, scattered among the sand dunes of this world famous Mexican surfing “pipeline,” huge bonfires spewed Stygian sparks high […]
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When we return to Canada in the spring, we are cheerful, rested and tanned. We tell our friends that, yes, we had another glorious extended vacation in Mexico. After the exchange of a few pleasantries, some people are likely to blurt out: “Six months in Mexico! Whatever do you do every day? What do you […]
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In Spanish, Puerto Escondido means ‘hidden port’, and the little beach town tucked away in the southern part of Oaxaca certainly lives up to that name. Part of its elusiveness is because there are no direct jets from Miami, New York, Denver or L.A. This discourages some travelers and tones down the ritz and glitz […]
Continue Reading In December 2000, I watched the sleepy fishing village of Puerto Escondido wake up from its summer slumber. When I arrived during the first week of the month, this beach town south of Oaxaca city hadn’t even begun to yawn and stretch from its months’ long, low-season nap. You could shoot a cannon down the […]
Continue ReadingYour cab deposits you outside the arched entrance to the pastel stucco hotel, and as you pass through its main portal, you are transported to another dimension, another time, to a village in Spain perhaps, or to a romantic hacienda or convent of the colonial era. You pinch yourself, thinking this unusually attractive place cannot possibly be […]
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Puerto Escondido is a travelers’ and vacationers’ market right now. Tourism is down this year to perhaps a third of its normal level. One government official told us that if it were not for “old timers like you we would have no one here.” [ Aside: The “old timer” comment referred to the fact that we’ve been […]
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