Zica Sketches: when plans change

Zicatela Point

I had a specific agenda and intention when I booked my trip to Puerto Escondido on the Pacific coast of the state of Oaxaca. An entre- preneurial worm had crawled into my brain, spewing a flood of possibility bubbles, all bright and shiny. 

By the time my friend Bette Brazel and I arrived, reality had popped the bigger bubbles, but there was still a fizz of “what ifs” ebbing and flowing like the tide. The first morning, we woke in our off-kilter airbnb with plans to follow, taxis to call, places to go: breakfast followed by the Dreamweavers weaving expo which was the prime reason for coming to this rather hard-to-get-to piece of beach, and a major factor in my entrepreneurial scheme.

Gazing from our top-of-the-hill balcony at the long Pacific view, I began to strap on my serious, follow-the-plan regalia. Perhaps, if I had turned my head just a little, I might have heard the soft sound of chuckling drifting up the canyon. However, I wasn’t listening, so I didn’t even hear the barked guffaw nor the sound of a thousand plan-dominos collapsing. 

Bette getting the boot

What I did hear was a sharp cry. Bette tripped and didn’t get up. Obviously, injured and in pain, our airbnb host whisked us to a local clinic where Dr. Emma marshaled the local forces of healing. A few hours later, (and amazingly few pesos) Bette hobbled out and we proceeded to the Santa Fe Hotel on Zicatela Beach, the location of the weaving expo, now approaching its closing time.

Having missed breakfast and lunch, however, food came first. Eating on the hotel's ocean front balcony, watching the waves coming and going from the blue Pacific, contemplating the machinations of the Universe, suddenly the definition of perfection flipped like a light switch and the entrepreneurial fizz flat-lined. I forced myself to make an appearance at the weaving conference, but in spite of all the incredible work and glorious color, nothing called to me.

Well, actually, something was calling to me … the beach and the

View from Santa Fe Hotel restaurant

lovely hotel we were in, which, in addition to all its charm and proximity to the beach and walking, offered a minimum of stairs, something Bette needed for the next several days. The airbnb we had rented was a hodgepodge of stairs and was way too far away from everything for us to be comfortable. What we needed was a ground floor room with two beds, close to the pool. I asked and the answer was “yes.” Within a couple of hours we were moved into the little bit of paradise that cuddled us like footy-pajamas for the next several days.

Me and my shadow, contemplating life.

Now we’re on our last day here; Bette’s healing rapidly, and the entrepreneurial whirring of my brain has been replaced by a slow-molasses quiet and a lot of art. The Universe always seems to get these things right. 

 

In our forced inactivity, Bette has discovered Shonda Rimes's A Year of Saying Yes, and I have taken to spending long periods of time in one of the few early morning coffee shops in Mexico, which happens to be just down the beach walk from our hotel.

 

El Cafecito is one of those boundary places, where locals, tourists, expats, anyone called by early morning, and a need for caffeine, comes to get their fix. This is the first of a series of "Zica sketches" born in those early mornings.