Day 60

Diego was born and raised in Oaxaca, the Mexican state where I was stuck. He had spent his entire life surfing secret locations around the region. He had been a sponsored surfer and was now a local surf guide. With my car fixed, he and I took off on an epic, three-week surfing whirlwind. Hours upon hours, surfing perfect waves with no one around. Or snoozing, cuddled up in a hammock in the shade between sessions. This is the stuff of surfers dreams. Many will pay thousands of dollars for the opportunity to drive up a hidden stretch of sand to see a perfect, barreling wave, no other people for miles. Many others are never able to find such perfection at all. I had hit the jackpot. I was getting to do it all, and in the company of an incredibly handsome and sweet pro-surfer/Latin lover, one who gushed with affection for me as only a Latino can do. I could never have dreamed of anything more.

Diego took me to meet his family. They lived in a tiny village, in a cinder block house with no windows or AC. They had no flush toilet or kitchen. Diego was the second youngest of twelve children, every one of whom had been raised in that house. I met his mother as she cooked tortillas over a stone oven, heated by a fire. His elderly father struggled out of a hammock to greet me with a kiss on the cheek. He took me by the shoulders and stepped back for a better look. I was at least four inches taller than him, and outweighed him by a great deal.

“Dame un nieto.” A huge grin lit his face as he asked me to give him a grandchild. I could see Diego’s smile within that grin.

We stayed a couple of days in Diego’s village. A decent beach break lay out front, completely unknown to white people. As I’d observed in other small Mexican communities, a complete and utter lack of stress coexisted with extreme poverty, and a sense of total contentment prevailed. Families passed the hot days together, hanging out in their open air homes, laying in hammocks and chatting with neighbors. During the cooler hours, people took on small amounts of work, such as basic farming, fishing, harvesting fruit and cooking. Some families earned a tiny amount of money by operating small stores from which they sold a couple of bottles of water or a few packages of chips per day. As much as they were businesses, the stores were places for families to hang out together. The cashier might be nine years old. Seated on woven chairs in front of the store, you might find teenage girls passing their babies among one another.

Families might also draw income from small restaurants, which functioned like the stores, as places to kick back with those closest to you. Occasionally a few pesos were earned. Huge smiles seemed to be a requirement for living in Diego’s village. Earning an income was not. It became clear to me that, for some on this Earth, life was not a struggle. There was a second way. Family, friends, relationships and community.

Diego told me of another secret location, even farther south, and said he’d take me there. We drove on the highway for an hour, and for another hour down a washed out dirt road. I kept asking him if he was sure we were going the right way. The road was nearly impassable. I was grateful for my four wheel drive. Eventually, we came over a hill to see the ocean, spread gloriously in front of us–but no waves. Diego assured me we weren’t “there” yet. The road ended in sand, and Diego hopped out without explanation. He circled the truck, letting about a third of the air out of each tire. He got back in and simply pointed down the beach. I put the truck in the lowest gear and carefully rolled onto the soft sand. The truck slowed and the RPMs shot up, but all four tires gripped and we started to make our way across the beach. What looked like a steep drop lay about a mile ahead, and I grew increasingly nervous as we approached it. The closer I got, the more I could see. I realized we were at the top of a large sand dune.

“Do we have to go down the hill?” I asked.

“Mommacita, no te preocupes. Tengo muchos amigos por aca, pueden ayudar, todo bien, tranquilo.”

I quit worrying and kept driving as instructed. As we crested the dune, two things quickly became apparent. First, a perfect barreling wave–with absolutely no one around–awaited us at the bottom of the hill. Second, the hill was probably way to steep to drive back up. But the allure the wave eclipsed any need for control as I ploughed through the sand down the steep incline.

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T Minus 6 Months

5:15 am. The sound of the alarm made me want to cry. In the space of fifteen minutes, I managed to pull my hair into a messy bun, squeeze my butt into my too-small yoga pants and stumble out the door. I was at my first client’s home by 5:45 am, ready to workout with her in her home gym. I had just enough time for gas station coffee and a protein bar before teaching my 7:30 am yoga class. Between my 7:30 am and 10:30 am yoga classes, I spent an hour sending emails. After the 10:30 am class, I headed back to the gas station for another coffee and another protein bar. I locked the door to the studio so I wouldn’t be interrupted, doing payroll, emailing clients with late accounts, sending personalized texts to every new client from the last four days, posting to my business social media accounts, updating the substitute teachers on the online schedule and writing the newsletter. I made another trip to the gas station for a third coffee (and a giant cookie!) around 4pm. At 5pm, I grabbed my longboard and rushed to The Cliffs for a quick sunset surf. I made it home with just enough time to eat a hunk of cold chicken from the fridge and some baby carrots before returning to the yoga studio to cover the front desk. I checked students into the computer system by memory, greeting each one by name as they walked through the door. I remembered to ask about their injury, how their kid’s performance went last week, what was up with their loser ex-boyfriend. As the teacher began class, I locked the door behind me and rushed across the neighborhood to make it to the town council board meeting.  By 8:30 pm, I had finished making my reports to the board for the three committees I chaired or co-chaired, and I had a new list of homework to complete before the next meeting. My phone rang during the seven-block walk home. It was Paul. He wanted to hang out.

“Look, you can come over but I still have to finish some work stuff on my computer.”

“That’s fine, I can just be mellow and read or something.”

At 9pm I heated up more leftover chicken and threw together a salad. We ate and laughed for a few minutes, but I was antsy to get back to work.

We sat in the living room, Paul quietly reading and me quietly editing a blog until 10:30 pm.

“I’m sorry Paul, I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.”

“It’s okay, it was nice to spend time with you anyway. See you at The Cliffs tomorrow around sunset?”

“Yeah, and maybe this weekend I’ll actually have some time for fun. Maybe we can go skateboard the alleyways or something?” Even as I said it, I already knew it wasn’t going to happen. There simply wouldn’t be time for fun, or for people. I had too much to do.

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Back in Oaxaca

The wave was perfect. Too perfect. We were exhausted after only an hour from having ridden so many waves. We were also starving and parched. The mid-day sun beat down, and no man-made made structure was visible in any direction. I always kept extra water in my car, but I knew three liters would hardly get us through the day. And there were also the problems of food and shade. When I mentioned these to Diego, he scowled and asked why I never trusted him. He told me to put my board under the car, grab my water and a hat, and follow him. I obeyed.

We hiked for fifteen minutes into the jungle down a narrow, machete-cut path. The path took a turn, heading straight up a mountain. After another ten minutes, the jungle canopy parted to reveal a small hut with bamboo sides and a palm frond roof. A little trickle of smoke snaked from a hole in the roof. Diego whistled loudly. A man ducked to exit the hut and emerged, hunched, shirtless and skinny. He appeared to be about two hundred years old, and waved at us vigorously.

Facundo was a dive fisherman. He lived for his entire adult life in the hut he had built on a cliff. He owned the land on which he’d built the hut. In addition, he owned a few sets of clothing which hung from a line inside the hut, reeking of campfire smoke. He had a hammock and a few improvised fishing tools for harpooning fish and hooking octopus. Other than those few essential items, Facundo owned nothing at all.

His smile lacked several teeth, but he didn’t need them as he sat on a rock, slurping oysters right out of the shell. He hacked one open and handed it to me. It was the size of my hand.  I had tried oysters a couple of times at a fancy restaurant, but only with lots of lime, hot sauce and horseradish. But Facundo’s oysters were huge and impossible to swallow whole, so you had to chew their mushy flesh. I gagged and nearly threw up as I tried to slurp it down. He saw I was struggling to eat it, so he hacked me open a second shell, scooped out the flesh and rinsed it in some murky water stored from a hacked-off two liter bottle. He handed me the brown and white oyster, presenting it on a dirty hand alongside an already squeezed slice of lime.

The second oyster, anointed with a single drop of lime juice, was no better than the first. I politely refused a third, saying I was already full. Facundo dug into another hacked-off plastic bottle, extracting three small octopuses from its turbid waters. Proudly, he mounted one on each finger, holding them aloft with a huge, toothless grin and crying “Foto, foto!” as he handed me his flip phone. The octopus was then sliced, doused in lime juice and handed to me in chunks. This second course was a significant improvement of the first, and I ate until I was truly satisfied.  

After we had eaten the equivalent of about 100 American dollars’ worth of seafood, Facundo led us on a tour of his land. He guided us to a mound of oyster shells; there must have been at least ten thousand. Then, Diego and Facundo disappeared into the palopa without inviting me in.  I eavesdropped from outside. Surprisingly, I understood quite a bit of their conversation. They were conducting a business negotiation. Apparently, Facundo had asked on a previous visit for Diego to find a buyer for his property. Diego had indeed found a buyer. The asking price was 1.5 million American dollars. But I could hear the older man growing heated. He demanded, “Where can I live where people will not bother me? I like being alone, I like it here on the mountain with no one else. Where will I dive? I don’t want to eat and get fat like people from the city. ”

It was amazing. This man had absolutely no idea what $1.5 million would do for him for the rest of his life. But he didn’t care. Money had absolutely no value to him. He preferred to eat octopus and sleep in a hammock, in filthy clothes, all to preserve his lifestyle. I was amazed. This man had found a second way…a way that was starting to resonate with me.

Diego and I stayed a couple of days, surfing until the swell dropped off. We cooked over a campfire and slept on the beach under a million, trillion stars. We ate fresh fish, caught by hand line, and drew fresh water from Facundo’s well.

Finally, it was time for an actual bed and a shower, so we said goodbye and packed the truck. I had been dreading this moment from the time we drove down the dune.

As I had anticipated on the ride down the steep dune, we did indeed get stuck on the drive back up its severe slope. I hit the gas, and the wheels dug deeper. Diego screamed for me to stop. I obeyed. I had some 2×4’s, cut at a hardware store in San Diego, just in case this situation ever materialized. We dug the boards into the sand under the tires. Diego pushed while I drove. We made it out of the hole and returned to the base of the hill. We let more air out of the tires and tried again. Once again, the truck sunk into the soft sand, and once again we dug it out. Diego’s face whitened. I started to get pissed, more at myself for trusting him than at him for getting me into this mess.

After a third, exhausting attempt I was livid. As Diego pushed the truck out of the hole for the third time and the tires caught, I drove away from him at full speed back down the hill. I whipped the truck around on the flat sand and got a three hundred yard running start. I was driving way faster than I felt comfortable with, and the back end of the truck fishtailed violently. I hit the dune at a gentle angle and floored the gas pedal. I whizzed by Diego, who stood dumbstruck at the crazy lady behind the wheel.

It worked. I nearly caught air as I crested the dune. Diego was still down on the beach, holding two 2×4’s, but I wasn’t stopping until I hit hard-packed dirt. I reached a dirt road a few kilometers away. I parked the car in the shade, let my dog out to play, rolled down the windows, reclined my seat and closed my eyes. An hour later, Diego appeared, sweating and huffing. He woke me from my nap and we both had a good laugh.

Diego and I spent the next two weeks adventure surfing through the region, living off of pennies, sleeping anywhere the surf was good and having the time of our lives. It was like something out of a romance novel. But the plot would take a dangerous twist.

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*some names have been changed to protect privacy

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