“lleno con verde...”

This phrase translates loosely to full with green. You may think that represents some kind of eco-friendly motto, but really it’s just how I ask to get the car filled up with gas. Pemex is the Mexican gas station. There is no competition, only the government run gas stations. Green is the regular, and red is the premium. At first I was just using hand signals, gestures and grunts to indicate that I wanted a full tank. But thankfully, I picked up “lleno con verde” from one or two confused attendants. We have spent a lot of time on the road up to this point, so I thought sharing a little intricacy of our road habits would be appropriate. The odometer clocked in at just over 5,000 km today, or 5 megameters.
We are now past the halfway point of 8,200 km to Panama City. Right now we are in Sayulita, in the state of Nayarit. This is our third Mexican state now. First Sonora in the desert, then Sinaloa, and now Nayarit. Next on the docket is Jalisco, through Puerto Vallarta. The last couple of days have seen some great off road adventures and hideaway surf breaks. Yesterday we were in Mazatlan, having arrived the night before. We took a trip up to Playa Bruja, on the north end of the beach. I tried surfing, but all the waves were closing out. Having only caught a couple brief waves, we decided to try our luck with a mysterious wave in Marmol.
Now, when you can’t find a town on a map, it usually means that you probably have no business being there. However, after a brief reconnaissance on the internet, we discerned that kilometre 31 on highway 15 was the place to turn to find a nice secluded left point break with no crowds. However, at kilometre 28 we ran into the toll booth, and not wanting to pay the 8 dollar toll, we made a u-turn in the middle of the highway and took the next available overpass towards Mazatlan to try our luck. Overpasses off of the toll highway, or auto maxi-pista, in Mexico are a little different than what most of you would encounter. There is no lane, no off-ramp, no indication at all, except that you can see the overpass crossing the highway. You have to come to a complete stop within the width of the overpass, and climb up a gravel road around to the other side. It’s hard to explain, but once you get the hang of it, you’re set.
Using the contours of the coast on the gps, we followed a paved road for a while until we came across a large pile of gravel in the middle of the road. An insurmountable pile if you will. Thankfully the matrix has the heart of an off-road machine, and we navigated a path along the side of the road to enter into Marmol. Several turns, speed bumps and cobble stones later, we followed a narrow road separating two large marshland areas, slowly creeping towards the ocean. We ended up on the beach, and then turned around knowing that the tide was coming up eventually. We walked around to find a totally empty beach, well, except for the abundance of shore birds and vultures, and a nice small peeling left point wave. We had a nice lunch of peanut butter and avocado sandwiches (with honey right in the peanut butter), and then returned to the car to prepare the surfboards.
With vultures circling overhead, and a mysterious wave breaking over unknown ground, you could say the mood was ominous, and that peril may be eminent. I walked out towards the break instead of taking the short cut by diving in from the rocks on the side to get a feel for the ocean floor. Some rocks, but mainly sand, and a pretty mellow crumbing wave gave me all the confidence I needed to exhibit some mediocrity on those waves. I had a few really nice long rides, and all in all, it turned out to be a fun wave. Denielle went out into the white water for a while and caught some waves, and then we returned to the car to go back to Mazatlan.
We wanted to avoid the toll again, as the way that we had come into town was now completely blocked by the machinery that had left the first pile of gravel, so we took another road that was on the wrong side of the toll. So we kept going east, in hopes of running into the free highway. The pothole-filled gravel road was not encouraging us in our route choice, and after a while, Denielle commented that maybe we should turn back and pay the toll. But as always, I wanted to go just a little further to see if we ran into something. We almost did. A herd of stampeding cows came running towards us around the bend, but we managed to steer clear of cow on car contact. A few more minutes found us in a small village with a sign pointing towards Mazatlan, so we had succeeded.
The next mission was finding a place to stay. The night before was nice, but a little expensive for what we got, so we kept looking. All the advertised prices on the outside of hotels were nowhere near what they said once you asked, so we kept on going until we were heading towards Tepic, near the airport, in the dark. Never drive at night they say.... Just as we were almost completely out of Mazatlan, Denielle spotted a hotel on the wrong side of the road, so we made a quick u-turn on the highway and rolled on in. For 270 pesos, almost half of what we paid the night before, we had ourselves a nice Jacuzzi suite with king-size bed, a personal garage, and two free beers. This place was strange, but cheap, couldn’t quite put a finger on what was wrong, but we may be on the internet somewhere. Out of the 8 channels on the television, 2 were porn. That was fine, as the place was really nice. However, at 6:30 in the morning the phone rang, with a lady ripping off Spanish on the other end. Denielle handed me the phone, to which I stated, “no entiendo, no hablo espaniol” (I don’t understand, I don’t speak Spanish). Half an hour later there was a knock on the door, and the security guard said we were supposed to be out by 7. What kind of hotel has a 7 am checkout time? We quickly packed up our stuff and were on the road by 7:10.
This early start to the day got us into San Blas at 10 am. The first time I came to Mexico we took a bus from Mazatlan to San Blas took around 8 hours. Today it was 3. We picked up some groceries and ate breakfast at a restaurant, and then were back on the road towards Platanitos. I can’t believe some of the places our little car has gotten us into, who needs four wheel drive? We parked at the end of the road, literally, and walked down the steps along the cliff to the river. With backpack on, Denielle and I paddled across the river to the empty beach and set up for the afternoon. When we first pulled up, the waves were peeling nicely to the right off the river mouth, and twice the size of that in Mazatlan. However, the tide was coming up, and the waves started to close out once I got past the breakers. I ended up paddling around for a couple of hours with catching little in the way of fun rides. So we decided to make for Sayulita before the sun set.
That brings us to now, having just returned from 2 for 1 fish tacos and beer. We picked up some avocados and cereal for the next day. This town has changed so much in the last few years, and is totally packed right now. The waves are supposed to be 5 ft at 17 seconds tomorrow, which is really nice. Now only if I could compete with the 150 kids that are going to be in the water. Two days here, and then we’re heading south towards Manzanillo for a little town called Barra de Navidad. I’m not sure if we’ll make it out of Mexico before Christmas. 5,000km in a week is starting to catch up with us.

Tyler.