The Life Of Robert: Chillin' at the Pacific coast...

At every trip there are some moments more random than others. Around midnight at a beach in Puerto Escondido a group of young people just met and are sitting under the palms, looking at the stars, smelling the salt from the Pacific Ocean, and sending both a joint and a guitar around in the circle...maybe I should play some tunes of The Doors this time....

Kids playing at the beach

I arrived yesterday to Puerto Escondido, jumped into the sandals and strolled along the beach, grabbed a "fruit-in-bag", and asked the vendor to put some chili on the mango - the Mexican way. The hiking-folk from the mountains are swapped with a lot of fit and tanned dudes and dudettes, surfing boards and sunscreen products, and I just hoped I would remember some of the surfing skills I achieved in Florida two years ago.

After I bought my Nikon D80 camera in 2008 I either bring my guitar or the camera with me. To bring both is simply too much of a hustle. Luckily there are many others that love the guitar and have realized how it brings people together on the road. And as many times before, it was a guitar and an incredible voice that brought us together at the beach yesterday.

One of the girls came from Alaska, and she had been on a sailboat for 8 months and just arrived. As me she had just been walking at the beach and found a Canadian guy singing and playing the guitar. And then came the guy from Australia, a surfer that came to Puerto Escondio last year and never left. One of the girls there came from Japan and had travelled alone for 21 months (!) and proved that the Asian habit of saving sometimes really pay off. And then it was the American dude that was fed up with his work back home, left the office and jumped on a plane. The girl from Holland that started to miss her friends back home after 3 months of joy in Central America....I could go on and on, but we all one by one just sat down on one of many beaches in Mexico. Everyone with his or her story, randomly at the same place.

For me these kind of moments are something I love about travelling. People just meet like that. You enjoy the moment. You leave, and you never meet them again. I don't even remember their names, I only know that wherever they are now, they are open minded people in search of good times. And I am quite confident that they also remember that night. Happy days!!!

The banana picture!

Can't travel without playing the guitar!

But some people you spend more time with. In Puerto Escondido I had to many beers with the party dudes, Bill and Matt from the US. And I spent the days at the beach with Shiran and Carmel, two charming Isralites that celebrated that their years in the army is over (for those of you that don't know, in Israel it is mandatory for girls to serve 2 years in the army, while guys spend 3 years as soldiers).