If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
– Rudyard Kipling, If
Click here to read the full poem.
How I wish I could take my own advice, and not set myself up for disappointment. It’s those damn expectations. They get me every time.
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
– Marcel Proust
When I returned to Puerto Escondido, I splurged and rented a private room just across the street from Zicatela. After being sick on the beach without even a proper bathroom for comfort, I thought I deserved a treat; furthermore, it was an incentive to surf the intimidating beach break. Every morning, I walked down to the cafe on the strip and had a cup of coffee and a bowl of fruit, watching the waves and gathering the courage to paddle out. The first few days, I was tentative, sometimes going an hour or more without catching anything.
High expectations make for poor travel companions. –Alex Oliver, aka Lex
One day, I was lounging around the hostel at La Punta when Lex walked by. His timing was serendipitous; feeling bored in Puerto Escondido, I was ready to move. I had been planning on returning to Salina Cruz, but the approaching swell had just been downgraded, and another, cleaner and more powerful swell forecast for two weeks out. Given this development, I figured I would head north for a bit and then backtrack for a strike mission on Salina Cruz just before the big swell arrived. All morning, I had been soliciting information about breaks to the north, deciding what my next move should be. Lex was heading to one of my target areas in approximately one hour. I wanted in. Hurriedly, I began to pack.
Once I leave the US, I am not bound by the rules of my culture. And when I am a foreigner in another country, I am exempt from the local rules. This extraordinary situation means that there are no rules in my life. I am free to live by the standards and ideals and rules I create for myself.
–Rita Gelman, Tales of a Female Nomad
Puerto Escondido is the center of surfing in Mexico. Every year, people flock to its world class beach break, Zicatela, which is known for its mind blowing barrels and board breaking beatings. The ding repair shops are some of the best in the world – they get plenty of practice, putting snapped boards back together.
It took 24 hours of nonstop traveling to get from the mountains of Guatemala to the coast of Mexico. Twelve hours on a shuttle from Antigua to San Cristóbal, one of which was spent looking for an English girl who couldn’t speak Spanish and thus couldn’t describe to the driver where to find her hotel. I hated her white powdered face and the smack of her lips on a sickeningly sweet-smelling strawberry breakfast bar. As I hated the driver who broke the zipper on my board bag as I told him not to touch it. And the Good Samaritan with the sad practiced smile of a martyr who was working with communities to reduce infant mortality, and thus thought she deserved the front seat. Twelve hours on a shuttle, I hated them all.