Reading and Surfing - Mar 5
Late start to the day after I decided I wanted to put a dent into the book I’m currently reading, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I went down to the beach alone with the idea of catching up with Sascha as he surfed. The plan was executed perfectly. Let me tell you. I got through about 100 pages and got to watch the surfers battle for wave supremacy. Sascha told me later that the lineup was quite unforgivable and selfish. Too bad. From what I saw, Sascha is quite a good surfer but he was barely able to work his way into riding a wave solo. It seems everybody feels that they have waited long enough and that the next wave is theirs.
For the rest of the day, I remember a lot of people being hungover, watching the tail end of Kill Bill 2 up in the bar in the afternoon, and attempting to download Aladdin 2 but failing because of slow download speeds and calling it quits for the night as a group. Pretty crazy.
A Complete Surf Day - Mar 6
Fairly early wake up today as we planned. Sascha, Jake, and I were outside of the hotel waiting for Cabiri and Sam at 8:30am and we left hitchhiking as soon as we were assembled. We quickly got a ride from a couple Californians in their pickup truck straight to La Lancha. Once a quick survey of the surf had been made I set out on the WaveStorm, the foam beast. I proceeded to get my ass handed to me enough times that Bryan, one of the Californians decided to call me in and give me a quick lesson. Much appreciated. We cruised in the white wash on the far right of the beach for a while and I got a bit more comfortable with the feeling of catching something. After I got out of the water Bryan and Chester, the other Californian, left to some other beach down the road that we had passed on the way. Shortly after, the group hung out for a bit then we back up to the road to get some lunch.
Here’s a video that I recorded of the walk down to the beach. It was a little longer than I wanted but I think we know that I’m not one of those people who cares to edit or spend much time in general on this blog. Vertical videos for the win!
After lunch Sam and Cabiri hitchhiked back to Sayulita. Sascha, Jake, and I grabbed some more supplies from the Oxxo and went back down. The next few hours were spent in the shade trying to read, talk, and sleep. It was relaxing. Around 5pm the time was right and we went out surfing again. This time went a bit better than before in the wash. I managed to stand up on quite a few of my attempts and I felt quite accomplished. At the tail end of my turn I think I may have even caught what may have looked like a small wave from a distance. But who knows. Two quick hitchhike rides later and we were back in the heart of Sayulita. We spent the rest of the night drinking only a few beers, eating tacos al pastor, and chatting. We all went to bed quite early which I was happy with because I wanted to grab some waves before leaving the next day.
Oh My God, I Did It - Mar 7
Since I had a solid white wash sesh the day before I decided to get up early and hit the surf one last time before we headed out to Guadalajara. I woke up at 7am, got myself together, got to the beach, and proceeded to wait for the ocean to calm down. It was a pretty choppy go for a while but I eventually plunged in, got tossed around pretty good, grabbed a bit of wash, and realized that the current took me down beach. I got out, walked back up and tried again. Standing up on the board is easier now but I got tired enough that I headed back to the hostel, arriving at 8am.
Jake, Sascha, and I went for breakfast at La Esperanza, which is where Cabiri works and to be blunt, it is a bit overpriced and little bit too far to the hipster side for me. I think I’ll stick with my golden recipe of oats, banana, apple, yogurt, milk, cinnamon, and vanilla for breakfast from now on. So good. Jake and I packed once we got back to the hostel, I said goodbye to all of my newly acquired friends and promised that there was a good chance I would return in the future. Maybe I’ll come back for a month, maybe I’ll visit for a couple days. Who knows, I do like it there though.
Here are some faces for names. These were basically the people that were hanging around as I left. There are others though.
Ebony, the lovely bartender.
Jake, who accompanied me to Guadalajara.
Luna, the hostel dog.
Maria, the lovely front desk worker and my Spanish conversation partner.
The Australians Mel and Geoff. Sorry, Mel, I forgot to change the aperture on
this photo. Also, “Jeffs/Geoffs gotta stick together. Unless you spell it Geff,
then you can piss off.”
Rumer, Romper, Rompel Stiltskin, whatever the name. The youngling not looking
too stoked about having her photo taken.
Sascha, the German, purveyor of the candid photo. I literally just said his
name and this is how he turned around. We plan on Skyping when I start learning
French and German.
Wes, the man behind the counter. Master of the dead pan bullshit answer.
This was the second photo I took, he asked for another one after the first
middle finger photo was a little blurry.
I hope to see as many of you as I can in the future. Until then!
Three or fours hours after the drive started it ended. We were in Guadalajara, Osvaldo and Anna invited us to watch some luchas the following evening and we checked into our hostel. We took a walk around the town, seeing the cathedral and surrounding buildings. We decided that we were both tired and would go see Deadpool, then we grocery shopped and eventually rested at the hostel in wait for the 9:45pm subtitled version of the movie.
It turned out that we were more tired than we thought. 11 hours of sleep isn’t a bad thing though, right?
Tequila Tuesday and Las Luchas - Mar 8
Jake and I awoke from our long slumbers and moved a bit slowly, eating some delicious oats with yogurt, banana, milk, vanilla, and cinnamon. I suggest you try that, so good. We then decided on taking the tour to Tequila which eventually flopped out at the last minute due to a language barrier somehow. Apparently they didn’t have room for today but they had some for tomorrow. Oh well. We found a bus company to take us there instead, the drive took about two hours and I read and looked around the whole time. We arrived and I enlisted the help of a nice girl who told us where the actual bus station was located and how to get around the town. I had to ask her to slow down while speaking but I managed to get most of her Spanish, though she only slowed down for about one sentence. It seems either people don’t deal with tourists around here much or they straight up forget who they’re speaking with. No matter.
We got into a smaller sized tour that cost much less than the hostel tour and were driven around town in a barrel-looking car to a distillery. We got a tour of the place and an explanation of the tequila making process, in Spanish, including tasting of the pre-fermented tequila and pre-aged tequila. It was pretty interesting but I don’t think Jake and I were listening to much of the tour, even though we both speak at least some Spanish. I’m not sure where Jake is at with his. We then had a tasting of almost all of the tequilas they make at the distillery and continued the tour. We saw the place where local women used to do their washing but they don’t anymore “…porque pinche Whirlpool…” We also stopped at a few other distilleries for a minute or two while still in the barrel to chat about some history. Lastly we ended up in a small store that sold flavoured liqueur.
Don’t bother searching Google for a picture of an agave plant, I’ve got it right here! Model included! And the quality can’t be matched!
We finished our time in Tequila by walking around the town and eventually finding some extremely late lunch in the form of meat, veggies, rice, and beans for Jake and three awful tacos for me. The tacos only had meat in them, the two chorizo tacos were fine but the barbacoa or BBQ was unbearable, I only took one bite. We caught an early bus back to Guadalajara and I read my book. The book is becoming interesting again which I am excited about because it lulled a bit. I’m not sure if I’ve recommended it yet but you should read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance if you get the chance.
Once at the bus terminal we waited for Osvaldo and Anna to show up to drive us to the wrestling match! We met Osvaldo’s friends Alejandro and Eduardo, whose nicknames are Tortilla and Lalo, respectively. The wresting was insanely Mexican. There were costumes, ring girls, ridiculous referees, silly moves, crazy fans, even a little person showed up at one point as part of a team of wrestlers. I would definitely recommend you go see some luchas libres, they are pretty impressive at times and a lot of fun.
Here’s the most characteristic photo I took at the fights. Wrestlers, referee, skantally clad women, cameramen, and fans.
A Day for Planning - Mar 9
I’m having a bit of a mental boxing match with myself lately. The question at hand is how to spend the rest of my time in Mexico, which should be about two more months. I’ve got a gigantic list of places to visit but I also want to put in some roots in one to three cities/towns as well, hoping that sticking around one place will help me meet locals and improve my Spanish. The kicker is that I’ve got some people I want to visit on the east coast before I return to Canada.
Today I’ll be spending my time doing research into the places I want to visit and, at this point, it looks like I’ll be culling a lot of cities from the list in order to facilitate my Spanish fluency. In all honesty, it was the main reason for coming down here in the first place while adventure, meeting people, and other things took second place. But who knows, it’s a rainy day in Guadalajara and there is plenty of day left. Anything could happen. If anyone feels the need to give me some advice I’d be happy to hear it, send me a message on Facebook.