Sabina's birthday at a strange beach house

We spent a glorious long independence day weekend celebrating Sabina and Arlo's birthdays down on the pounding Pacific coast. Independence Day is popularly known as the day of the "grito" or scream, which remembers independence fighter Father Miguel Hidalgo's rallying cry to guerilla fighters to retaliate against the Spaniard colonial army.

We settled into a strange beach house for a few days, mushed up into the side of a jungly hill. The house sat on the sand and opened right onto the beach, a lovely cove with no riptides - the open ocean here is renowned for sucking even accomplished swimmers out to sea. The house also opened up to scorpions, bed bugs, sand crabs - when I went to make coffee in the morning, crabs skittled in the metal kitchen sink -, and I think a tarantula - I saw an eerie, hairy leg extend out, probing, from under a pile of stored wood.

The house was an acquired taste, much more likeable in the daytime than the uncertain night. We probably should have just set up our tent in the house and called it a day. Nevertheless, it was lovely to be exposed to the elements - all of them. Down the coast is a destination resort called Huatulco, into which the government has poured billions. I understand that there the houses are more of the California condo type, shut in with no natural ventilation. You might keep out the bugs but there is no architectural learning from the way folks tend to live on the coast here, under palapas and the like, letting the wind cool you rather than having to resort to air conditioning. Don't get me started on the infrastructure required to power these resorts - hydroelectric dams that have displaced thousands of families to cool these vacation homes and a new toll highway to get to Huatulco that razes Oaxaca's stunning biodiversity in its wake. The hammocks by the sea were glorious as was bobbing in the sea celebrating Sabina's 11th and Arlo's 10th birthdays. Read Sabina's next blog on Mazunte to hear more about the turtles.