"My soul is full of longing
For the secret of the sea,
And the heart of the great ocean
Sends a thrilling pulse through me."
-Henry Wadsworth Longellow
If I could spend every day in the ocean it would never be enough.
I didn't grow up around the water. I didn't touch the ocean until my late teens. But once I saw it, once I felt it, I knew I would never be the same. It has changed me so completely.
There are ups and downs, good days and bad days. But my love for the sea is reciprocated. I feel it in my soul. The time I get to spend near the water is the thing I am absolutely the most grateful for this summer.
Most of our time is spent on the sand here in our village of Chacala. It's beautiful, warm, and quite safe. The other beach that competes for our time is Playa de Tortugas.
It's about an hour drive north from Chacala. Actually it's only about 20 miles north but the road cuts inland and then winds a lot as it heads back out towards the coast.
Our first time out there was the morning after a storm and the several parts of the road and nearby roads were actually completely flooded. But we made it through and have been returning to this amazing place several times a week.
It's quite a journey but it all adds to the magic of this place.
It starts with a 15 minute drive inland to Las Varas, the closest town. From there the road heads back out north west.
It's 15 minutes to the next town of Zacualpan and the roads are pretty terrible. This is where there was flooding that first morning. It's a skinny road and it sometimes seems like an obstacle course dodging the slow buses and cattle, being careful not to hit the old men on bicycles.
We take one left turn in Zacualpan and head toward the next town of Ixtapa. There is a turn right before we hit the town and that's when the roads surprisingly get really nice.
It's 10 more minutes to the little shore of Platanitos. It's a beautiful little beach that seems pretty protected from the elements in its cove. There are a couple hotels and restaurants but we have never stopped to spend much time there. Mostly because we're too excited to get to surfing, or too tired from surfing to stop on our way out.
The little shore of Platanitos is nestled just to the right of a little mountain. Leading up it is a dirt --(I don't know if I can call it a road. It's big enough for 4 wheels but that's it and it's extremely bumpy!) but I think I'll call it a road anyway.
The road circles up and down the hill in a way that many cars couldn't handle. It takes about 10 minutes from the main road. At the top, we drive along the rocky dirt road and then, through the grass, all of the sudden we have this amazing view of Playa de Tortugas, our destination beach.
We park the car and sit and watch the waves for a minute, enjoying the vantage point.
It's time to don our rash guards and one small backpack with water and sunscreen. We grab our surfboards.
My arms aren't long enough to carry a board under my arm like you always see in those picture-perfect surfing pictures. I have to put mine on my head! I have to remember not to wear bobby pins in my hair cause it hurts like crazy.
There is this amazing concrete staircase from there down to the river. At the bottom of the staircase is a pretty massive river. The concrete continues all the way down into a walkway that enters the water. Once or twice there were fishermen catching bait fish from there.
At this point you better be ready to get wet!
We put our boards in the water and paddle across the river. It's always kind of a challenge for me to do it gracefully, being careful not to hit my fins on the concrete but not wanting the board to get out too far ahead of me that I can't jump on it easily. But the fisherman don't laugh... too long.
The playa is long and skinny. It's a thin strip of sand that goes on as far as the eye can see. On one side is water. On the other are rows and rows of coconut trees without an end in sight. It's a pretty incredible view.
There is one development of houses that almost blends in unnoticed. And there is a turtle sanctuary there. Not surprising since the name Playa de Tortugas means "Beach of Turtles."
Apparently this is a choice beach for mother turtles to lay eggs.
The beautiful beach is often completely empty. Once in a while we will be joined by other surfers or we'll see a couple fishermen on the shore. Once when I was sitting on the sand taking a water break two men passed me on horses. But seeing more than one or two people is pretty rare.
We walk down the beach and choose a spot to call home, most often, the wildlife is our only company.
There are always many types of birds, but my favorite are the pelicans that dip down to glide only inches above the waves.
We always see fish jumping (which, naturally, scared the begeezes out of me the first time), and there are usually a couple different types of crabs around.
The most incredible things are the manta rays. It's not unusual to see a hundred or so in a day. They swim around in schools from 6 up to 20 or 30. It seems like double the size though because you see two wings sticking out of the water for each ray.
They surf the waves with us while zipping up and down along the beach. They're hard to see until they are right underneath us. It's such a magical feeling when they swim right up beneath me and alongside me whether I'm paddling or waiting for waves.
Our first day at Tortugas beach we were unaware of their presence.
I caught a couple small waves and was getting trashed by the big ones. I was recovering from one such wave in shallow enough water that I could reach bottom. There was a wave building right in front of me so I prepared to duck under the wave, holding onto the velcro where my leash met my board so it didn't get caught up in the wave either.
As the wave steepened and towered above me, it was only then that I saw twenty or so rays surfing through the wave that I was about to attempt to swim under. I was excruciatingly terrified but I had no other choice. The wave was not going to wait for me to figure out what else to do. For the 5 whole seconds I was underwater I prayed they wouldn't touch me or WORSE, injure me. I didn't know exactly what they were or what they were capable of. And they were headed straight towards me.
I vaguely remembered something I learned on a boat tour I took when I lived in Hawaii. Our boat was surrounded by a pod of spinner dolphins and I wanted desperately to reach out and pet one. The captain explained over the loud speaker that though they were close enough to touch, dolphins' sensors and reflexes are so quick and acute that a person could never reach out a touch a dolphin that didn't want to be touched.
In that moment, I found a blind confidence inside myself that rays were probably the same. This was their home and they knew I was there. They would avoid me.
And they did.
Of course now that I know they are not dangerous, all I want is to touch them.
Google assured me that they don't have stingers, or even teeth. They are filter feeders. The ones we always see are about the size of a dinner plate, are sort of a diamond shape, and have long skinny tails. And if you can't trust Google, who can you trust?
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| This is not my photo. I found it online. But this is exactly what it looks like! These guys love surfing as much as me. |
But it's a great place to play with photo settings. The landscape is incredible and the colors are so vibrant. It's easy to take a few minutes to get in some great (or goofy) shots.
But mostly we just surf. Sometimes I'm terrible and sometimes I rock. It's such an amazing place to practice.
A great man taught me that learning to wakeboard leading with either foot will make you much better at it. I applied that lesson to snowboarding as well and it helped immensely. So why not give it a shot with surfing as well? These shots, above and below, I am actually surfing switch, with my right leg in front. It's still pretty uncomfortable and I am much more comfortable and stable with my left left in front. But here's to progress!
The waves at Playa Tortugas are funny. There's one spot that's really a great surfing wave... which is usually either completely flat or too big for me. But along the entire beach there are always waves coming in.
There is no where to go around the wave, as there is at many great surf spots. We just have to power through to get out far enough past them.
They are generally more steep and have less of a shoulder. They often just dump over instead of curling. But it doesn't stop us. We just ride a lot more whitewater than is usually the goal.
The awesome thing is that the wave kind of crashes 3 times. It builds up pretty big and crashes out pretty far. On big days, those waves are still too big for me. But the whitewater churns and builds up again and crashes another time halfway to shore. It does it, once again, creating a shallow beach break. It's an awesome opportunity for a long ride, taking the whitewater all the way to the beach, which I like because it really gives me time to feel my balance on the board. I can practice turning or moving up or back on the board to feel how it affects my position.
The bonus for me is that I don't have to worry about being in anyone's way. If any other surfers are ever out there we are usually not even close enough to say hi.
The major downside of this beach is the cross current. It's not strong enough to whisk me away but it's often extremely tiring to get in and out of the water, just because it's so hard to move in the shallow water.
Sometimes we drift quite a bit when we are out catching waves but we want to save our paddle strength for actual surfing. So we think we can just catch a wave into shore, get out, walk back up the beach, and get back in the water and paddle out. But once we get back in the water, we battle cross currents and those waves that are breaking in 3 different places, we end up fighting 12 waves before we can make it back out to a good spot.
I am often too tired to get all the way back out so I just catch whitewater waves for a while, until I get another rush of adrenaline and courage to get out past the big ones again.
But it's all SO fun.
I feel like I should take a second to assure my family who I know worry about us who are probably biting their fingernails short reading this right now... I promise we are not getting in over our heads here. We watch for warnings and take breaks. If it ever seems like something we can't handle we won't take the risk! It's tiring but it's a sport. The hard work pays off.
We usually leave our house around 7 in the morning for these surfing days and arrive at the playa around 8. We usually surf for 2-3 hours. When we get tired, we trek back across the beach toward the river. This is usually when we pull out the cameras.
Water, apples, and pb&js are always waiting for us in the car. We get home around noon and almost always take a nice afternoon nap, dreaming of waves.
"The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever."
- Jacques Cousteau
