Puerto Escondido

There are several beaches in Puerto Escondido, and most of them are kind of dirty and covered with fish debris, but one of them, Zicatela, which if P.E. were shaped like an arm bent at the elbow would be the bicep, is notable in that the water for some reason crests twenty feet or more above the surface before crashing down in a way that is really nothing short of apocalyptic. The first time I went there, I stood watching the waves, trying to get a sense of their size; I thought they only looked about as big as the waves at one of the previous beaches I had been to, which is to say maybe five feet. They broke far out into the ocean, giving the water enough time to form smaller waves near the sand, which I thought were maybe a foot or so tall--Lake Michigan waves. Then I saw someone actually go into the water, and realized that the Lake Michigan waves were as tall as a full-grown man and the ones further out had to be several times larger. It takes the water so long to fall from the top of the crests that the whole thing seems to be moving in slow motion, and then the spray when it finally reaches the surface again is as tall or taller than the original wave--it seems like something that should only happen when nature is really out of whack, or angry at us, or something. It's also completely mesmerizing; I probably spent at least an hour and a half during my four days there just watching them.