One of the reasons V and I were so excited to move to Mexico was the thought of being near waves large enough to surf and water warm enough to leave the wetsuits behind. V was especially excited about this perk of our new life as he had fallen in love with surfing in his early 20’s on previous trips to Mexico. His dream life for years had been to have a little surf school on the beach where he could share his love for the sport and ride everyday. While my dream life tended to be situated in an old Brooklyn brownstone, complete with built-in floor to ceiling bookshelves, I was happy enough to put cold winters and public radio on the back burner and give the ocean the chance it deserved.
We decided to purchase our surfboards in LA on our way down which is how we ended up at an old warehouse hidden in a sea of dilapidated buildings. We were searching for a guy named Mani who was selling his line wholesale if you were willing to risk life and limb trying to find him in the maze of old warehouses and littered streets that constituted LA’s downtown core. Much to our relief Mani turned out to be a great guy. He was from Chicago but had fallen in love with both surfing and a girl from LA and was happy to sell us two new boards for half the retail price. The day before he told us he had sold some boards to a couple of Norwegian guys who had just bought an old Volkswagen van from the drummer of Frank Zappa and were heading down to Mexico. The van was painted to resemble a shark complete with a huge mouth and sharp teeth illustrated on its front hood. Months later as we drove along the one-lane highway to Sayulita a shark’s mouth loomed in our rear view mirror and the van impatiently passed us, two Norwegians making our day without even knowing it.
It took us a few weeks to find the time to head to the beach and christen our new boards. The week before we had spent the day in Sayulita, a popular surf town about 40 minutes north of Puerto Vallarta, and the water had been a sea of heads bobbing on boards. I had no desire to learn how to surf in front of a crowd of strangers and so we decided to see if there was a beginner’s break at Punta de Mita, a little beach town just south of Sayulita.
I had only ever been surfing once before, off the coast of Vancouver Island, in the middle of February. In a full wetsuit I had waded into the ocean, confident that no sea life could flourish in such cold water, and spent the next four hours using my board more as a flotation device than a tool to gracefully slice through the water. This was before I had heard of cold-water sharks. It donned on me as we drew nearer to Punta de Mita that in Mexico I would be floating in a warm ocean that is teeming with life. I have always loved the water and had spent my youth swimming both on competitive teams and training to be a lifeguard. The one hitch in my aquatic pursuits was my intense fear of all things found lurking in lakes and seas. Just the day before we had been swimming in the Romantic Zone and a pelican had swooped down and scooped up a fish as large as a dinner plate. The fish had been swimming right beside me and I hadn’t even seen it. With sand still below my feet I felt awed by this brush with nature but the thought of being meters off the shore, floating on a small piece of foam oblivious of what lurked below, made my stomach churn with fear.
We found a nice quiet break just before the main point where the waves rolled in at a gentle pace. There were only five other people out in the water – three Mexican boys that were catching everything in sight and two gringos sitting on bright red and blue long boards. I decided that if a shark were to come in for a snack he would head for the brightest thing around and felt a little relief in the fact that our boards were plain white. We paddled out and as soon as we got into position the waves stopped. As we bobbed in the water waiting for a set to come in I started to look around. The sun was hot on our backs and the beach was a dusty cream colour, dotted with palapa restaurants and forgotten resorts. The pelicans soared in the sky, occasionally swooping to the sea below for a light snack. There were teenagers camped by a small river that fed into the ocean and every once in awhile a dog would race by trying to catch a seagull or plunge into the water lured by a fishes jump. It was beautiful, and I realized as I sat calmly in the water that I was a part of it. That is when I decided that no matter how scared I was of the darkness below I was going to learn how to surf - it was just too beautiful an experience to miss out on.
Deciding to do something and actually doing it are two very different things. When the waves started up again I proved to be a dismal surf student. No matter how strong a swimmer I had been in my youth I had just spent the last six years at a desk job and was no match for the arm strength required to both paddle into position AND push myself up to standing. My timing was off and I had a talent for always betting on the weakest wave. To get us excited about moving to Mexico V had spent the winter showing me surf videos. While they had moved and motivated him they had had the less than desired affect of putting me to sleep. Now that I was actually trying to catch a wave I could see how awe inspiring the professional surfers in those videos had really been. I vowed to re-watch ‘The Endless Summer’ with the respect it deserved.
I didn’t catch a single wave but it didn’t matter - four hours later I paddled in exhausted and content. V and I ate lunch on the beach, packed up and headed home.
It was a perfect day.
