One last stop in Oaxaca state, before entering Mexico’s southernmost state of Chiapas. From Hierve el Agua, we convoyed with Jon and Jenna towards the beaches around Salina Cruz, one of Mexico’s major port cities. Salina Cruz itself is more highly rated as a good place to move shipping containers than as a tourist destination, so we guided ourselves just to the north of the port, towards a campsite recommended on iOverlander.
From the MX200, Mexico’s Pacific coast highway, we turned off onto a dirt road that led us through a simple town and onto a sandier dirt road that dead-ended at our destination. Our campsite was a grassy field behind a beachfront restaurant and the price of camping was dining at the restaurant. This was the first night that we would camp in our car in a humid place. We had built a fold-out bed into the car, but the space is a bit tight and the thought of waking up sweaty and stuffy with only 14 inches of head space was a concern. Fortunately, the sea breezes that swept through the car kept things at a pleasant temperature and we woke in the morning refreshed and ready to explore surf breaks before continuing on the road.
Our explorations brought us to the quiet marvel of Playa la Bamba, a secluded and sandy beach perhaps 30 minutes west of Salina Cruz that effectively evades the all-seeing eye of Google Maps. A single tin and wood shack adorned the beach, its lone tenant an old man native to the place. The beach itself was a long stretch of white sand, broken in places by berms of sea-smoothed rocks and one short rocky spire protruding from the flat sand like a misplaced tooth. To the west, white herons hunted in a shallow lagoon and to the east, a high and sandy peninsula reached into the Pacific, a mountainous sand dune too large for the sea to beat down.
Although waves formed in the first surf spot we explored, they were too soft for us to catch and I broke off to explore the rock spire while the others sought out better waves in the opposite direction. The rock spire offered a bit of easy bouldering, but its best feature was a short cave going through its base. Inside this cave, I found a clutch of small bats, who chittered at me until I had sat quietly long enough for them to return to their roosts, creeping along the cave walls.
We regrouped after our respective adventures and battled the fierce wind strafing that empty coast to make breakfast. Bellies full, we jostled back up the sandy track from La Bamba to the coastal highway, sights set on our penultimate stop before leaving Mexico: San Cristóbal de las Casas.
