Time for the beach

Day 153

South of Todos Santos, BCS, Mexico

It was time to say ‘Auf Wiedersehen’ to Mike and find some surf. Sheena was gone and she had left me with a German! But Roland was turning out to be more fun than Sheena and certainly less stressful. Stress is one thing I don’t need The plan was to head down to Todo Santos on the Pacific coast and find somewhere for me to surf and Roland to recuperate from his near fatal fall the day before. We read something about a surf camp where you could camp and they also had a BYOB-swim up bar! Sounds good.

Well it would be if it wasn’t nearly impossible to find. We went through Todo Santos and the beach we wanted was only 10km to the south but the surf camp was hidden somewhere. We saw nothing that looked likely as we drove and eventually stopped by a small shop but the guy sitting in the shrine next to it was either so wasted or crazy that we couldn’t get any sense out of him. Roland speaks Spanish fluently and had no idea what the guy was going on about. Luckily we picked up nearby gringo and in exchange for a lift he showed us where the surf camp was, on the main road and a few miles from the beach. It seemed pretty good but we wanted somewhere by the water and they didn’t have any palapa’s* left so camping under the sun would be hot!

* Thatched shelters

At least we got directions to the beach and turned off at the 64km marker to follow the sandy road down to the surf. There was quite a break and plenty of people surfing, boogie boarding and chilling out at the local bar. There were plenty of tents set up too and after a few enquiries discovered we could camp there for free! We set up near where we had parked the minivan next to a bunch of hippies. They were sitting around playing their guitar and I made a friend by loaning Chile the use of my guitar tuner. Nothing worse than an out of tune guitar….

After a paddle in the water I made the decision to try out the $25 Walmart boogie board I had carried all the way from Florida and never used. The water was, um fresh, and although there were lots of people in the water with wetsuits on there were also quite a few without so it couldn’t be that bad. The surf was strong and I was soon wet enough not to care. It only took 2 goes on my boogie board to run back to get my surf board and I was soon wiping out as though my week surfing in Cornwall was just a dream. I didn’t last long. Tomorrow though…

Roland wasn’t going surfing, he was still hobbling around from his fall on Monday but not too bad. There were no facilities on the beach, although I guess you’d have to buy a beer to use the bar’s toilet, I sneaked over to use the shower on the outside, trying to avoid the staff as I washed off the salt. Its not a bad life, we cracked open a couple of beers and waited for the sunset. Roland had chatted to the nearby hippies and they were planning a fire later on, we agreed to bring wood and beer!

Another Shitty Day in Paradise

Monica isn’t really two-faced…

* Thatched shelters

drive south/surf camp/weirdo/yank lift/camping/free/hippies/tacos/fire

Tags: sandy road, walmart, Travel, stress, tents, trousers, board, local bar, toilets, surf board, nearby, camping, crack, auf wiedersehen, bcs mexico, gringo