Pochutla

My first time in Pochutla I was just changing colectivos. Bag between my knees, sweating through my shirt at the corner of Calle Lázaro Cárdenas, watching a woman negotiate the price of a kilo of dried shrimp with the confidence of someone who has done it ten thousand times. The colectivo to Puerto Ángel came and I didn’t take it. I went and sat at a plastic table in front of a comedor and ordered a bowl of pozole instead. That was two years ago. I still stop here when I can.

The Sunday Market

The thing nobody tells you is that the Pochutla Sunday tianguis is a different category from the handicraft markets you find in Oaxaca City or along the tourist coast. There are no painted alebrije animals arranged for photographs. What there is: stacks of dried chiles pasilla negra in plastic bins, vendors from Huatulco selling still-moving shrimp by the kilo, Chatino women from San Gabriel Mixtepec with tamales wrapped in local leaves that are nothing like the masa you get at the beach. I have bought black clay pieces here — modest, functional ones, not the tourist-facing San Bartolo style — from a man who drives in from a village I cannot find on any map. The market spills off the central plaza down several side streets by eight in the morning and starts folding by one. Go early, bring a bag, eat whatever someone is cooking on the corner.

The Town Itself

Pochutla has no particular charm in the magazine sense. It is a working town of about 50,000 people — pharmacies, hardware stores, a bus terminal that operates at a volume that suggests everyone on this coast is going somewhere. What it has is a density of ordinary life that the beach resorts, by design, scrub out. I like eating at Lonchería La Central on the plaza, where the menu is written on a chalkboard and changes daily and the agua de jamaica comes in a plastic cup the size of a plant pot. I like the way the light falls on the market square at six in the evening when the heat breaks and everyone seems to emerge at once. It is not a destination in itself. It is the place that makes the destinations around it legible.

Eating and Staying

Beyond the Sunday market, there are decent comedores open every day along Calle Independencia. Look for the places with handwritten signs and plastic tablecloths — the caldo de res on a Wednesday morning after an early bus is as good a meal as you will eat on this coast. A few small hotels sit within two blocks of the plaza; none are exceptional, all are clean and cheap enough that stopping for a night makes sense if you are in transit and want to catch the Sunday market from the start.

Getting There

Pochutla sits on Highway 200, roughly 60 kilometers from Puerto Escondido. Colectivos run constantly between the two — expect 90 minutes and about 60 pesos. From Oaxaca City, OCC and Estrella del Valle run overnight buses that arrive early morning. From Pochutla, colectivos to Puerto Ángel leave every few minutes from the corner near the market; Mazunte and Zipolite are another 20 minutes beyond that.