Crocs and Cartel in Southern Mexico
Directly after graduating from university at the end of June 2021, five of my closest friends and myself set off for Southern Mexico in search of surf. We had spent the last 3 years of school living together, crammed into a three bedroom, one bathroom home in Santa Cruz, California and were more than ready for some adventure. After meeting one another randomly in our freshman year and dreaming of where we’d go after graduation, this final surf trip together only grew in excitement and importance as it came closer to becoming reality.
Altogether we had quite the collection of personalities. First up is Miles Miller, the physics major who in his spare time is solely focused on surfing some of the biggest waves in the world. Next is Takumi Nishikawa, a talented chef and surfer from La Jolla, CA. Then we have Jesse Cole, the soon-to-be doctor of veterinary medicine headed to Colorado for a DVM/PhD program directly following this trip. Dylan Elliot, the true “frother” of the group who is one of the most stylish surfers I have ever seen, and is bound for a career in surf forecasting. Then there’s Charles Hendrickson, the marine biologist who also does some of the best power surfing of anyone I know. And finally, there’s me, the photographer and surfer who is always eager to get off grid in search of waves.
When we arrived at Zihuatanejo Airport, in the state of Guerrero, we decided to stay in a nearby town for two days before driving 3 hours north to a mythical sand bottom point. Together we had 18 surfboards in total packed in and around our white, Mr. Clean rental minivan.
Like any good adventure, things didn’t exactly go as planned. We heard the wave we were hunting was a perfect left-handed point break that peeled for over 100 yards with barrels and turn sections galore. Needless to say our expectations were high, in our minds scoring was borderline a guarantee. Once we finally made the journey north, we found that mother nature had other plans for us and the morning after we had arrived, the first big hurricane of the monsoon season made landfall, and our mystical left hander became ground zero.
The river adjacent to the break that is responsible for its perfection was also responsible for its temporary demise. The hurricane that passed through dumped so much rain into the mountains behind us that the river broke open to the ocean about 4 times wider than it usually runs. There was so much debris and mud in the water that the wave became virtually unrideable overnight. We sat and watched for about 5 days in hopes that it would clean up enough to become surfable again, filling our new found free time playing plenty of billiards at the only bar in the tiny village we were in and we’re taught a hard lesson in patience.
Eventually we decided that our famed wave was not going to start working again for at least another week and it was time to pack up shop and resume the hunt. After fighting the strong current and purposely forgetting the very real threat of crocs in the lineup that got washed down the river, we finally managed to catch at least one wave each, and set off. We had heard of a wave 4 hours farther North that broke over a cobblestone bottom and thus was far less sand dependent. The only catch was that the break sat in a very small town deep in the cartel-run state of Michoacán, and we had gotten a somewhat concerning amount of “be careful” remarks from locals before making the journey. After a quick trip back south to drop Jesse off at the airport and a few days unwinding at a fun longboarding wave halfway to the airport, it was time to head back north in search of something bigger and hollower.
The drive itself was a beautiful road that hugged the steep, tropical coastline reminiscent of Highway 1 along the Big Sur coast in California. We had lost all cell service since starting the drive and were shrouded in coastal forest for nearly the entire journey, save for the few tiny villages and openings in the bush to catch the view. Along that drive, besides the handful of bullet hole ridden cars, we saw more potentially perfect waves along a stretch of unsurfed coastline than I’ve ever seen in my life. The majority of them simply had no way to access them via land. Something to return for perhaps.
After our 4 hour journey through a heavily cartel laden country, we were relieved that as soon as we arrived the welcoming was warm, both from locals and the few other surfers on the same hunt as us. And it all paid off over the next 3 days when we finally found what we’d spent the past two weeks searching for; a peeling, warm water, left hand point break. We spent every hour we could in the water and only came in to eat or sleep, I hardly even took out my camera that entire time. In fact, to my partial dismay, I don’t even have a photo of the wave. While a part of me is sad I never captured it, a larger part of me is satisfied with that. This trip taught me that the success of an adventure is not quantified by the photos you have to show for it, and sometimes it's a good thing to leave the camera in the bag.
After just 4 days at that wave, we were all more surfed out than we had been in our entire lives. Every day each of us were in the water for close to 8 hours and our bodies felt it. It was a sad but partially relieving day when we finally said goodbye to one of our new favorite waves, and after hearing that we never even saw it on it’s best day, it’s a wave we’ll be returning to soon enough.