We are at 400 km south from Acapulco, in a Mexican village called Puerto Escondido. A very tropical landscape, thousands of palmtrees, mango and papayatrees, bananatrees. Nicole's very excited.
 

Puerto Escondido is alive with pensioned Amercians. They are passing the winter season here. We met Juan Carlos, a father of three. He and his 12-year old son organised an amateur-snorkeling trip. So off we went ! After twenty minutes we stopped at a rockformation. There we could snorkel for two hours. The little boy told us that he went back to pick up other tourists. No problem, we thought . We enjoyed the silence and the beauty of the sea. But after two hours there was still no boatsman. Three hours later, no boatsman. He had probably forgotten all about us ! There we laid, in the water, no beach, no place to rest. The rock are covered with algae and shells of sea mussels, razor-sharp. So no question of sitting on these rocks !

We cursed ! Who the hell leaves his tourists behind !! So there was nothing left to do than to swim back, struggling against the strong waves. An hour later, still no beach. It felt as if we were swimming backwards ! Thank God, in the distance we saw a cockle boat. We wore our fluorescent frogmen's flippers and held them high above us. We screamed and screamed.
The fisherman had seen us and came to our rescue. He was a pensioned American, from California. Vincent was his name. He thought he was funny, making jokes about our misery. It became clear what kind of 'fish' we had caught.... he was too familiar....
Are you guys intend to swimming to China ? he rattled. He wanted to fish for awhile and we were allowed to help him. When we eventually arrived at the beach, we went looking for our boatsman. He looked as white as a sheet when he saw us. He stammered that he had fell asleep. He had gone looking for us but he hadn't found us. He got so scared and therefore he hadn't said a thing.....