Swimming with the Natives

Sarah and I are passing time in Mazunte for now. It is a bit east of Puerto Escondido and much, much smaller. Mazunte´s main industry used to be hunting turtles for meat and eggs. Since the early 90´s when killing turtles was outlawed Mazunte has switched to tourism, still based around the turtles. Today we jumped in a boat with a few other visitors and went out to sea. We caught some nice mellow 8 am sun and a different view of the coast... all very tranquil. We spotted our first turtle about 5 minutes into the ride, as one of our guides was explaining where we were going and where we could expect to see turtles. "¡Buena suerte!" the captain yelled and took off for more sightings. We soon found our second turtle of the day so we cut the engine and coasted up to him. Turtles have internal ears so if they don´t look up to see you approaching they have no warning. I imagine this turtle was even more suprised than I was when the guide at the front of the boat (Juan)dove out and tackled the poor unsuspecting fellow. Juan held him up by the back of the shell so his front flippers and head were out of the water and invited all of us to jump in. Five tourists swarmed into the water, found that we had stopped the boat in a mess of jellyfish (medusas here in Mexico) and just as quickly jumped back in the boat. I had been scared of jellyfish for years, hearing all sorts of horror stories in Hawaii, but honestly it wasn´t that bad. Not pleasant, but not bad. I was imagining all the turtles watching the antics of these strange, awkward land creatures and having a good laugh. "Serves them right for sneaking up on Terrance like that." We had more success hanging out with the other turtles we found... we probably saw about 50 today but only harassed three. Sarah held on to one for a while and then got a swimming start to release him. Watching him dive with such speed and grace only increased my awe of these long living creatures. Just before we turned around to head homeward we found a huge pod of dolphins going about their business. We saw one young fellow showing off for us... he leapt out of the water 7 times, waving his tail and nodding his head. Once again I was humbled by the grace of the animals who live in the ocean. We jumped in the water to see if they wanted to hang out but the dolphins had other things going on today. After three and a half hours of swimming and climbing out of the boat it was a welcome relief to get my feet on the sand, just in time for lunch and siesta.

Above is the view from our little room. The sound of waves breaking is a perfect backround for a quiet nap.

-Dirk