When we arrived in Puerto Escondido, Lauren and I grabbed a taxi to a hotel listed in the Lonely Planet named Las Olas. Its primary features were that it was near the beach and it had a refrigerator in the room — a luxury we had never been able to afford ourselves.

We were excited to discover that the price was right — just $25 a night — and Lauren was able to swing getting us a balcony.

We had to wait half an hour while our room was cleaned, so we relaxed in the backyard hammocks. A couple of cats were relaxing back there too, including an orange kitty that looked like our cat Benny and a fat white cat that Lauren started calling White Chocolate. Before our time there was up, we’d see nearly a dozen more cats and dogs. Clearly the owner was an animal person.

We walked into our room and marveled at another luxury item — a huge watercooler of potable water. Lauren opened the door to the balcony and we were stunned — we had a great view of the beach across the street. It was a perfect place to relax and watch the sunset.

And that’s how our stay in Puerto Escondido got extended. We were planning on staying just a couple of days, but after checking out our calendar, we realized we could relax here longer. So we did.

We went to check out the beach and find food and settled on a beach-front restaurant that had “huevos mexicanas” — scrambled eggs with onions, green chilli peppers and tomatoes with refried beans and tortillas on the side.

The beach was long and wide, with beautiful white sand and lots of waves crashing down. A cliff on the other side of a cove made it picturesque. But I quickly noticed big red flags on the beach and went to check out the signs near them. “Danger. Not swimming!” the sign incorrectly declared, but as we looked out into the ocean there were lots of people wading in. Dozens more were on surfboards and boogieboards.

“It doesn’t look that dangerous,” Lauren said. “Maybe that sign is just for stupid tourists who don’t know how to swim in waves.”

I hoped she was right.

Later that afternoon Lauren went jogging while I laid around on the beach nursing my still-unhappy tummy. When she came back she decided to take a dip. I, ever the more cautious one, passed.

I diligently watched Lauren the whole time, not exactly sure what I’d do if she appeared to be in trouble since she’s a far superior swimmer than I, but she didn’t seem to have any trouble. When she came back out after twenty minutes, the wind had picked up considerably, whipping sand against us; so we decided to call it a day.

We grabbed a 6-pack from a local market (our first in 11 months!) and sat on or balcony watching the sun set over the mountains, beers in hand, and more cold beers waiting in the fridge. We reveled in our happiness.

That night we went to another beach-front restaurant and splurged on some seafood paella. The food was delicious and the sound of the waves crashing in the background made it a perfect in to a great day.

The next morning we decided to go to a doctor’s office. I had been having stomach issues since Ecuador, more than one month and one continent ago, so it was time to see a doctor. I was not feeling fully prepared to go poo in a cup, but Lauren insisted we go anyway.

The maid at the hotel gave us directions, but as we walked, we never found the place she was talking about. We stopped and asked another woman, who gave us different directions. We didn’t find that office either. We stopped a third place and got a completely different set of directions. Frustrated, we ended up hailing a cab who said he could take us to the city center to a clinic.

When we got to the clinic, we quickly realized it was not for tourists. A very long line of Mexicans of all different ranges of health were waiting outside and in chairs. Lauren asked a nurse what was going on and she told Lauren they’d start seeing people at 1pm, more than an hour wait.

I didn’t want to wait that long, knowing that we’d be waiting even longer to see a doctor since at least 20 people were in front of us, so I convinced Lauren that we should just leave and try again to find the doctor in the tourist area we were staying in. Lauren was displeased but agreed to go.

We hadn’t walked more than 2 blocks when we stumbled on a huge sign in front of a hotel that said “Doctor.” We peaked our head inside the office and a woman told Lauren the doctor would be coming in a little while. This looked more like a tourist doctor, so we sat down outside and waited.

Ten minutes later a man in slacks and a polo shirted walked into the office and shut the door. We were confused. Was that the doctor? We figured it must be and decided to patiently wait. In the meantime, we noticed a sign that said the office hours started at 3pm, much later, which concerned us. But surely he’d be done seeing these people in a few minutes.

More than forty minutes went by and we hadn’t heard a peep from inside. The “doctor” never told us that he was coming out or that we should wait or that it would be a few minutes longer. I started arguing that I should just take the CIPRO, the antibiotic we had for stomach issues but Lauren didn’t want me to take it unless we were certain that’s what I needed. Unlike her stomach issues, mine were low-grade but long-lasting. She was concerned that my symptoms weren’t exactly what CIPRO was prescribed for and wanted a doctor’s approval.

It was past 1pm now, and Lauren insisted we go back to the clinic, but when we got there, the line looked even more ominous. We walked back the doctor’s office one more time, where there was also no movement. I declared I was going to take the CIPRO while Lauren paced around, clearly annoyed. We are both pretty stubborn but this time I won out. We left.

We wandered around for a bit and found a grocery store where we went crazy and bought cereal, milk, ham, cheese, bread, mayonnaise, mustard, olives, chips, salsa and splurged on a $4 bottle of Argentinian wine.

Down the street Lauren and spotted a tortilla bakery so we topped off our groceries with a 2 pound stack of fresh, warm tortillas for 9 pesos, or 90 cents. We grabbed a taxi back to our hotel, packed things into the fridge and then sat down to a lunch tortillas wrapped around cheese and salsa, with chips and salsa on the side.

That afternoon my stomach was still not up for jogging, so Lauren and I went for a long walk down the beach. On the way back we stopped and marvelled at the several dozen surfers who were chasing after some pretty intense waves. Lauren went for another dip, but I stayed back on shore.

A storm looked like it was blowing in, so we went back to our hotel and enjoyed a ham sandwich dinner. We had the wine, which was surprisingly good, while we watched the rain pour down, flooding the streets below. And I started my CIPRO regimen.

We started our third day in Puerto Escondido off on the right foot — with a bowl of cereal. Neither of us had eaten cereal in months, and the Raisin Bran hit the spot.

We relaxed on the beach all morning, reading and snoozing, and after watching the surfers again (including several newbies), Lauren and I decided to rent a surfboard. We went back to the hotel to grab lunch and then walked down the street to a place where we saw we could rent a surfboard for 24 hours for $10.

The first thing Lauren noticed is that the woman running the store has a glass eye. She wanted me to put that in. But I don’t have any more to add to that.

After debating board sizes, we went with a board slightly larger than Lauren. It was a little daunting for me, but I figure since it was unlikely I’d be able to surf anyway, we should get something that fit Lauren. But by the time we got back to the beach, the winds had kicked up considerably. Lauren was struggling to just carry the board.

Since I have basically no experience surfing, we decided Lauren should go in first and test the waters. She paddled for a bit, sort of caught one wave and came back.

“It’s too windy,” she declared.

I was disappointed that we had just rented the surfboard and now we couldn’t use it, so I wanted to at least try. We both went back into the ocean, but the surfboard nearly knocked me over. The waves were so strong I couldn’t get out very far and I kept getting washed off the board. (More than a week later, we both still have bruises from this excursion.)

“You’re right,” I finally agreed, “We can’t do this.”

We decided to take the board back to the hotel and go swimming instead. But as we started walking out into the ocean, I saw something move just a few inches from my feet. A small oval disc emerged from the sand, and I realized it had a tail. I froze.

“Lauren!” I yelled. “I saw a sting ray. There was a sting ray right by my foot!”

Wide-eyed, we both retreated for a few minutes. Lauren ventured back out to play in the water again, but I was done for the day.

That night we walked around looking for a place to hang out. We found a low-key bar called Cafe Bohemia. From outside we could see a book exchange and, even better, several Scrabble games.

Although we had planned to work on blog stuff, we grabbed the Scrabble game and decided to play a few rounds first. Lauren got a beer and I got an amazing freshly-made lemonade, and we settled down to play. It was after midnight before we finally called it quits, and we decided we’d have to come back the next night.

Our last morning in Puerto Escondido, we wandered around in the morning, finding a cliff that had a great view of a cove where the water was calmer if we wanted to go swimming.

But we wanted to get some use out of the surfboard. And this day, we were more successful.

Lauren went out first and was quickly able to catch some waves. She was even able to get up once. Then I went out by myself. I was shocked that I was able to get the board past the intense waves, but when I “caught” my first waves I realized why Lauren was having so much trouble — the waves crashed so fiercely that the board shook too hard to easily pull yourself up. I struggled to get up, never getting past my knees, and brought the board back in after half an hour.

We each went out once more before the tide started going out and the water got too shallow to safely “fall” off the board. (Lauren: Beth is being modest - she did get up once! I was really impressed by how well she did. These waves were killer, but she kept paddling out and catching them regardless.)

We returned the board that afternoon and spent the rest of the time playing in the low tide. I didn’t spot any sting rays this time, and I decided the water wasn’t really as dangerous as the signs implied. Although there was an occasional current, it pulled us down the beach, not out. I think they just wanted to keep swimmers on the other beach and leave this one for the surfers.

That night we went straight back to Scrabble, again neglecting our blogging. Lauren joined me in having the lemonade, and we each had two glasses. (Mrs. B, you’d be proud. Lauren managed to use all her letters for one word “Close-ups” but we had to look up online how many extra points she got because we weren’t sure.)

We finally pulled ourselves away from Scrabble at midnight and went home and packed. We had to get up in just 2 hours, at 3:30am, to catch our 5am bus to Acapulco.