The Scenic Drive to Escondido

The first time I had heard about the drive was from Paco, my Mexican advisor.  We were trying to figure out if there was an error in the Lonely Planet. “Really?! Seven hours to go 250 kilometers from Oaxaca City to Puerto Escondido.  That sounds wrong!”  On Google Earth the satellite images looked reasonable.  There were a number of mountain passes, but there is seemed to be a well-marked road. 

Paco advised us that we either needed to be messed up on every substance to be found or mentally prepare for the ride of your life.  He started with a list, “Don’t eat breakfast, don’t drink anything but water, don’t drink alcohol the night before, take Gravol, focus on anything that seems to not be moving and pray to whatever god seems the most appropriate.”…mmm…well could it really be that bad?

We got picked up at the hostel in Oaxaca city by a white van being driven by a guy who couldn’t have older than 16. The van had the usually array of holy trinkets on the dash and a wide variety of Mexicana CDs in the sun visor.  Over the speakers some trance music was pumping and this seemed like a great pick up service to take us to the bus station. When we arrived at the station, we starting taking our bags out of the van as I was appraising the vehicle parked beside us: a large new Mercedes mini van with AC and nice seats that seemed very reasonable.  This was going to be good.

Our young driver then took my bag and handed it off to another guy who was climbing on top of the roof of the piece of crap we just arrived in. No, this is a joke, I thought.  Catherine figured out that I was not impressed and asked what vehicle we were taking, and of course, it was our marvelous beater of a van.  Ok, no time to freak out, I immediately got up on top of the van and started to assist the kid tie down our bags because if the drive was half as bad as Paco had mentioned, this was going rip our bags apart. 

I was getting nervous and then it got better, the kid that was tying down our bags got into the driver’s seat and told us we were leaving.  We got back into the van and noticed that not only were there no seat belts accessible, they were actually removed…(really, who actually takes the time to remove the seat belts from a vehicle? Isn’t that like taking the time to remove emergency slides from an airplane or lifejackets from a boat?) 

So, the trance music started back up and our young driver hit the gas.  There were only 2 speeds in this van from hell, Stop (like you landed on an aircraft carrier) and Go (like you got away at the end of a horror movie). For the first 30 minutes after getting out of the city the road was relatively straight and it was nice to check out the small properties and people selling goods on the roadside as they went by in a blur.  Then we started up into the mountains.  Our driver started passing every car he could and often with opposing traffic within spitting distance. Then the turns started and this guy thought he was in a rally car. People (us) were thrown around the back and the luggage was sliding side to side.

Side Note: This was the week before the Lady of Guadalupe holiday and there were people doing pilgrimages over the mountains.  There were dozens of people in white shirts running and biking with lit torches on the highway.  Our driver was passing them and their support vehicles within a foot or two and I am sure he was trying to see if he could put out the torches with the wind from the van. 

Every 5 seconds or so we were drifting left or right around another turn with no guard rails and easily a 500 meter drop.  After years of working in boating safety industry, you often think about how crashes happen and what the outcomes may be.  This is a little morbid but it was an important skill for that job.  I started to think that seatbelts were not that important when you were dropping 500 meters to your death.  Somehow that actually made me feel better and I stopped worrying about the seatbelts. We avoided head-on collisions at a regular rate through winning the continuous game of chicken in the middle of the road. At least the van could not get up to a speed above 60 kms because of the turns.

I knew it was getting bad when even the Mexican passengers started to curse the driver.  I started clocking time on my watch in 15-minute increments to try to figure out how long we had left.  After about 3 hours we mad a stop for a guy, who on the way out of the van was mumbling something to me and patted me on shoulder.  Somehow, I think he was wishing me luck.    

I realized that I was white knuckling the seat in from of me where a kid was actually fast asleep.  It is amazing what kids can sleep through. At this point I figured that either I needed to give up or get out of the van. There was something about being in a mountain pass in Mexico in the late afternoon that made me think that if we got out we would be riding in the back of a pick up truck in another hour, 500 pesos poorer and wishing we had stayed with the crazy kid driver in the sketchy rave van. 

Really, could it be 7 hours? The rave music stopped and there was going to be a change in disks.  Good, maybe some Phil Collins or something to slow the kid down. Nope, Mexican heavy metal came on, and with it the race against some invisible rabbit continued.  I was actually becoming physically tired by hour 6.  We finally started to see the coast and we started losing elevation.  We came into an area that had been washed out and our driver decided to move though the pot holes without considering where on the road he was and if there was any traffic.  

Finally after arriving 6.5 hours later, I realized why people go to Escondido and stay for so long. There’s no way a sane person who do that drive again while they could still remember the first time. It was also one of the most beautiful places I had ever been. It is rated as one of the most challenging surfing destinations in the world, but surfing there seemed to be much easier after the drive down.