Welcome to Eat,Baila Travel this is Jenny and i'm Kevin if this is your first
time joining us we're two mexican americans that decided to move from Chicago to Mexico.
We started to explore our options in January in Veracruz then Yucatan and now Oaxaca
Be sure to check out our previous videos so you can see what cities we've considered as our potential home.
In today's video we reflect on the time we've spent in Puerto Escondido and on whether or not it's a
candidate for our potential future home. When in search of a new city to call home these are the
things that we look for the most we're looking at size, safety, climate, food, health and a dance scene
Starting with size Puerto Escondido is considered for us a small city it has a population of
about 45,000 people living in it. It feels like a very small city but at the same time it feels
larger than a small city because of the beaches alongside Puerto Escondido make it feel so much bigger
But the truth is that walking around when you go get a haircut you might catch
your barber at the beach you might catch him at Chedraui and that's the magic of a small city
And that's why we like it. It's also super walkable i really like that that
you can walk from one end of town to another if you really like walking about 30 to 45 minutes.
So the fact that it's walkable is great I really like that but there are also really great modes
of transportation there are colectivos and combi's like shared shared rides there are of course taxis
and there's an there's a taxi app that the local taxis use called DIDI so if you're in the area
and you want to get a taxi um definitely check out DIDI. It's a great option for more affordable
transportation and of course um there's the airport Puerto Escondido does have its own airport.
Very small but it is very tiny it's in the most of the flights are in and out of mexico city
it's they also there are some that also go to Oaxaca city but you're more more likely to
find cheaper flights to Mexico city to then travel wherever you need to go because Mexico city pretty
much travels anywhere. It's kind of a pro and a con to have an airport obviously a pro but the
con is that you really have to leave puerto and go to mexico city in order to go anywhere else
you can't just fly from Puerto to Chicago so it's kind of a small con small little nitpick but
hey we have an airport. Another pro/con also kind of a con is you have Oaxaca city
relatively close and i say relatively because in distance it's not really all that far but it
is at least a seven to eight hour drive if you're driving so you can do an overnight or a daytime
mini what is it they're like shared minivans like 16 passenger vans yep and there are
pickup locations all over the city.
Moving on to safety Puerto Escondido tends to be a
relatively safe city. I think the most dangerous thing you need to be careful with is the ocean.
This is no joke like yeah the waves can be pretty seriously dangerous so if you're
not an avid swimmer definitely be super careful with the waves or at least check out the beaches
that have calmer waves. Even if you're an avid swimmer sometimes there's currents within the
oceans you want to be careful make sure you always ask the surfers that they would know the best in
terms of current. i mean walkability we can walk anywhere really yeah in terms of safe is
it safe to walk around at night absolutely we've always felt safe walking around at night there
tons of police but not overly intimidating police presence. The locals tell us that puerto
is a really safe city that they love it in terms of compared to safety in the rest of mexico they
We hope that it stays that way and i hope so too so we've not only felt safe but we we like to go
and ask the locals to confirm that what we feel is in fact true.
Next up climate,climate is super
important to us because one of the reasons that we're leaving chicago is because we're
so done with winter. So yes, puerto because it's on the coast is definitely quite hot it's
a tropical climate very hot and humid but how hot it gets to be around 90 degrees fahrenheit high
during the day pretty much all year round and then the evenings what would you say it's like around
70s 80s high 70s maybe low 80s in the evenings so yeah it's pretty hot and there's a
rainy season and there's a dry season. Rainy season is from about May to July August and dry season is
around November to March.Dry season is really nice because there's no mosquitoes around during
rainy season you get a whole lot more mosquitoes yeah they get you they get you so that's that's a
little con but also the clouds. Puert has some of the most amazing sunsets i have ever seen
But when during rainy season there tends to be more clouds in the sky obviously so sometimes
you know if you're lucky you'll still get a good evening with a sunset and it's not too cloudy but
if you are a sunset lover and you definitely want to visit during during dry season so you're better
chances of having an amazing sunset every single night. Puerto's heat compared to Merida
it's not even close because Merida is so enclosed such an enclosed city that the closest beach is
about 35 minutes away but Puerto gets that help from the beaches surrounding it or lakeshore the
beaches next to it that you get a nice cool breeze at night to have a good night's sleep.
So even though it's super hot it's not just like heat that's like unbearably blazing on top of you
the ocean breeze helps to kind of push it out of the way and it's still enjoyable i think that's
why it's it's hot but it's super super pleasant still
Moving on to my favorite subject food
oh where do we start with food it's it's it's hard to say that it's my favorite place to eat
but it's easy to say that it's my favorite place to eat. I'm like looking at you like why are you saying
that i've heard you say time and time again . Oaxaca thus far has been my favorite place to eat
aside from veracruz is also delicious but oaxaca is my place to eat. Like i've always liked you know
food that's not so fried and in oaxaca you get all these varieties of tortillas
Big tortillas small tortillas corn tortillas the healthiest versions of tortillas i've ever
seen in Mexico and they're so thin they're so delicious so crunchy i love crunchy tortillas so
oaxaca is a place for me in terms of food.
Cheese! One of the amazing cheeses there are tons of others right then there's seafood oh my god
we love oysters and shrimp and fresh fish like there's an abundance of that and then oh octopus season!
Okay i'm getting hungry fruits oh fresh fruits every single day all year round not
the same food all year round but all year you're gonna get some sort of fruit fresh and it's just
amazing it makes me feel so healthy and happy and there's so much fruit that it's bad for your
safety you could be walking around and get hit by a mango oh yeah i forgot to say that but there
are mango trees that if you're not careful you might get but damn oaxacan food so far the best
of all the Mexico. And on top of that puerto happens to have some of the coolest international
food options i've seen in a city of that size it's such a small city so i'm super impressed to find
japanese restaurants, polish restaurants, middle eastern restaurants, pierogies yeah right like we
left we used to have pierogies back in Chicago now we can find them here amazing italian food like it
just goes on and on and on and i think it just speaks to like this really cool combination of
local authentic culture but coexisting with this metropolitan like welcoming of foreign cultures as
well like it's such a cool oasis to me granted it's not perfect but in food wise it's quite a paradise.
Obviously because we eat so much in Puerto Escondido it's important to stay fit i mean
you have so many options here to stay fit you can go swimming you can go hiking
surfing you can take surf lessons there's gyms everywhere for you to go work out and again
walking around town because of like it's not a flat city has ups and downs so just
walking around you'll definitely get a workout in so if this is yeah it's a huge check mark and
it's easy it's easy access there are tons of um social gatherings like groups of people who get
together to play basketball to play soccer on mondays to play volleyball every day around 6
p.m on the beach like there are there's an endless opportunities of ways to stay fit and active and i
love that! that's awesome and health-wise hospitals there's two hospitals a public one and a private
one we hear that the private one is really good thankfully we haven't had the chance to go there
maybe they had the need to go they need to go there yeah but uh there's they have pretty much
everything like we went to the dentist and we got dental cleanings for 600 pesos i had some cavity
fillings replaced really good work but anyway they have everything except one downside is
that it doesn't look like they have a really great trauma center so if you know there was ever a bad
car accident or something of the sort they don't have the best equipment there we've heard of some
cases where people have had to get flown out to a different city for emergencies but yeah
that would be a downside but otherwise there are there's pretty much all kinds of specialties there
and then if you know the need was there to go to a different city well then airports.
H opefully that's not gonna be the case and of course last but not least the dancing what do
you think of the dancing oh i love it so the dance scene in puerto is relatively small
yeah there's a it's a really really small dance community but there's lots of potential there
because there is a place to dance everybody every night of the week um sundays that's right because
of the pandemic a lot of places have been shut down so we were hoping to get some cool footage to
show you all and let you know where all the good dancing spots are but because things are shut down
right now that's gonna have to wait for a future video but while we were there we did get to
talk to lots of people and visit a few places so there is there are a lot of dance options.
and live salsa groups too there was a really great cuban dance i mean cuban salsa group that
that we met one night right before everything started right yeah right before everything
started shutting down so there's potential for growth and we like that because maybe we can
share our skills yeah exactly so those were our six priorities when
searching for a new city to call home so in terms of puerto escondido as we reflect and think about
where that sits in terms of our choices i think it's definitely a very strong contender and
might even be quite close to beating out Merida it has a lot of what merida
has in terms of the climate the food is great maybe even a little better i think
and safety size transportation um but for being such a small place for being such a small people
it feels so good to take to walk three blocks and have italian food and walk another block and go
get your groceries and then walk another vlog and have tacos so that's what's nice about Puerto Escondido.
and i will add that it's also more affordable than Merida in terms of houses and rents and food
We do like that so it might even come out on top at the end but remember we're not done exploring
yet we're gonna be making our way up north next so if you have any suggestions for us
please let us know in the comments let us know which cities we should check out i think someone
mentioned Queretaro let us know if you think. That's good we're going to check that out maybe something
um well we went to san miguel yeah we were there for two days we were there for two days
i feel like that wasn't quite enough yeah but we're gonna head up north and so far the way
we have it planned is that we're going to go to Zacatecas, San Luis, Queretaro maybe Hildalgo maybe come
back to San Miguel so make sure you stay tuned and subscribe so you can follow along with our journey.
So far that brings us to three cities that we really really like as potential future homes
that's Orizaba, Merida and now Puerto Escondido and who knows there might be some more strong contenders
coming up soon um so thanks so much for watching hope to see you come back soon and as always