Baby Turtles in a Tempest May 30, 2022
After a 13-hour bus ride, we arrive with all of our possessions at the ADO terminal in Puerto Escondido, Estado Oaxaca. Our timing could not be more fortuitous for adventure writing, as we are one day away from receiving the first on-shore hurricane of the season. The category-2 storm is called Agatha—perhaps after Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot collection I have been reading, but more likely because A for Agatha represents the first tropical depression of 2022. I am no stranger to tropical depression.
Now is hardly the time for house-hunting, so we hunker down for the approaching low-pressure surge in Hotel el Tucan, unfortunately on the first floor. The locals do not seem at all concerned by Agatha, so I suppose it is up to me. Chiefly, there is one tiny storm drain outside our hotel room. Should it fail during a deluge of the 10+ inches of rainfall expected, our rented space might become an indoor lagoon, which the accompanying high winds might serve to electrify. I am assured to relax by the hotel staff, who are well experienced with living in a coastal hurricane zone. They are also more seasoned at living with the aftermath of devastation.
On Bahía Principal, a couple of blocks away, bare-footed boatmen are busy hauling trawlers onto trailers, while excited surfers take advantage of the rising waves. The rain at this point is just a drizzle, the wind barely detectable, but this will change overnight as Agatha’s swirling eye focuses on the mainland ahead. At the nearby Chedraui grocery store, panic buying is on full display—drinking water, pantry supplies, batteries, and, of course, alcohol—that is, before the store announces that liquor sales are to be halted. As is true on election days, it is deemed better to keep everyone sober to allow any terrifying event to be properly appreciated.
The coastal region here is hilly and punctuated with deep ravines, so the roadways twist and cross in confounding ways, leaving me with few reliable landmarks, other than the crashing waves on one side and the thundering traffic of Route 200, the modern highway built in the 1960’s to connect the remote Oaxaca coastline with civilization in Acapulco. Between here and there is Puerto Escondido Airport. We see the commercial jets descending and walk in that direction, due west, to explore the expanding outskirts of a city bursting with new vacation homes.
At the top of a steep eroding ravine, we follow a sign down to Bacocho Beach. The difficult access means that this cove will receive fewer visitors, and even fewer in light of the inclement weather, but we instead encounter a truly incongruous scene on the beach. Thirty tourists have each received in their hands a tiny sea turtle hatchling, which they cuddle and caress like bunnies before releasing them into the wild surf. Each has paid handsomely for their part in turtle preservation, but I doubt if these man-handled infants stand much of a chance against what faces them in the coming days. One tourist kneels in the wet sand to bless the offspring she has set free. The spectacle is photographed for posterity, a record of innocence retained, just before the gull moves in for the kill. Hey, a bird’s gotta eat.
In Vanessa’s adolescent memory, this place was a sleepy beach town. Not anymore. Now it is a growing city approaching a hundred-thousand. On the eve of a hurricane, these numbers lay hidden, except perhaps at Chedraui, yet my first impressions of a new place are rarely accurate. It is up to Vanessa to remind me that the word Escondido means hidden. She suggests this city needs a new name: Puerto Encontrado. The found port.