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Outside Magazine, May 2005

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Riding with the Ghost Dolphin
If you decide to drop out and start surfing full-time, there's no place like Mexico's Pacific coast. When Peter Heller heads south and signs on with a tough-as-nails board guru, he discovers a wave-riding scene of world-class barrels, hard-grooving kids, and guardian angels.

By Peter Heller


	Leon Perez, surfing mentor extraordinaire and Mexico's National Masters Surf champion (Photograph by Kurt Markus)

"ALMOST READY?" asks Leonel Perez, the National Masters Surf champion of Mexico. He asks me that every morning. Since I'm standing beside his two-door Chevy completely transfixed by the waves, and haven't taken off my shirt or waxed my board—and since it's still dark, and we haven't had breakfast or coffee—I take it as a metaphysical question, like, Are you ready to believe in a force much bigger than you?

As I watch the tiers of surf near the Pacific resort town of Ixtapa, I realize that there are three things I appreciate about surfing as a near beginner: the raw beauty of waves; the anticipation of getting repeatedly thrashed; the possibility of one good ride, a kind of fleeting touch of grace. Also, my coach. I can't believe he's even standing up after last night's party.

Leon rubs wax briskly over the deck of a board propped against his thigh. He is in training for the nationals in Baja's Ensenada in two months, and he can't bear to miss a wave. He is honing himself like a weapon. He doesn't wear a rash guard or sunscreen. His baggy shorts come below his knees. He is 46 years old, short (about five foot six), broad-shouldered, and wiry. His ears are small. His nose, broken years ago, is slightly flattened. Even his buzzed hair is thinning, as if obliging a lifelong imperative toward sleekness. It occurs to me, watching him, that he is a man completely shaped by the sea.



	Perez's trophy shrine, in Ixtapa (Photograph by Kurt Markus)

Only four hours ago, Leon was working on his second bottle of tequila blanco. Café tables had been shoved together outside his surf shop, Catcha L'Ola ("Catch the Wave"), behind the row of tall hotels lining Ixtapa's shore. A bunch of local surfers, four Texas longboarders, a pair of tourist police with shotguns, brothers and sisters of Leon, and two young women on holiday from Brooklyn were annihilating cases of Corona. The mother of Leon's two-year-old daughter was warily grilling redfish. Leon worships his daughter, whom he named Auramar—"Aura of the Sea"—but only tolerates the mother, who, he says, tricked him into having a child and once threw stones at his girlfriend. The fiesta was in honor of his 46th birthday. Today would be another party. Three days ago was yet another bash, but nobody can remember what for.

"The waves look bigger today," I suggest.

"There is a swell coming. You are ready."

"I guess I am."

Today I'm going to try a six-foot-six-inch shortboard for the first time, a personal threshold. I'm Leon's age, and most guys who start surfing late stick with the more stable, less responsive longboards. To hell with that: I'm having a midlife crisis. This is my party and I can cry if I want to.

"You don't even look hungover," I say to Leon.

Now he looks up. He smiles—I can tell because the left side of his mouth lifts just a little.

"Practice," he says. He tosses the wax to me over the hood of the car and nods at the local kids carrying boards who are beginning to trickle in from the road. They have walked the last mile from the end of the bus route from Zihuatanejo, eight miles down the coast. They regard Leon with specific awe: He will catch many more waves than any of them today, and have better rides, which is unnatural, since some of the younger boys have grandfathers Leon's age. Leon is nonchalant about his status as the old master. "I just surf every day," he says simply.

I look behind us. Out of the mountains, unbending slowly from dense groves of coconut palms, pushes the sweet water of the Rio La Laja. The sun has not yet risen over the Sierra Madre del Sur, so the dark water reflects only a rose wash of dawn and the light of a single fisherman's fire burning on the sand. The river cuts the beach and empties into the sea where the surf breaks over the sandbar. Even in the half-light I can see that the sets are easily head-high.

Leon straightens and turns toward the beach. And then, since he teaches with the minimalism of a Zen master, he gives me the lesson of the morning.

"Paddle toward the peaks. On that board, you have to be at the peak."

"OK."

"Lock the car door."

"OK."

Then he jogs toward the water.

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Contributing editor PETER HELLER's book about the first descent of Tibet's Tsangpo Gorge, Hell or High Water, was published last October by Rodale Books.

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