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Outside Magazine, May 2005

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Riding with the Ghost Dolphin (cont.)


	LA VIDA PLAYA: The teacher walks to school.(Photograph by Kurt Markus)

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Leon won his final heat handily. He was now a Guerrero State champion, heading to the nationals. He also won the open longboard class. He shrugged it off. That night, after four days in Acapulco, we drove back up the coast to Ixtapa in the dark. We arrived too late to find a room for me, so I slept on

The highway north snaked over high bluffs, around rock coves cradling blue water. Mainland Mexico has 2,500 miles of Pacific coastline—enough surf for a millennium.

the floor of his apartment, in a concrete block at the edge of the tourist zone, crowded by jungle. I slept under a shelf of trophies, a rack of six bagged boards, and a photo collage of Leon's younger brother Alejandro, who died in a motorcycle wreck 14 years ago. The young man held a surfboard in half the pictures, was as handsome as Leon, and looked very happy. "His nickname was Karma," Leon said before he turned in. "Everybody loved him. He was a very good surfer. That is why we name the annual tournament in Ixtapa ‘the Karma.' " I saw a flicker of emotion cross Leon's usually inscrutable face. Then he said, "You have been working hard. You can do it, the big wave. Practice more. Tomorrow I will take you north." Then he flicked off the light. I went to sleep listening to the calls of a loud night bird and thinking how everything is connected: Evencio and La Pulga; Leon and his brother Alejandro; Antonio Ochoa and Oscar and me. And the waves out of the Pacific, which were now pounding the long, empty coast in the dark.

The next morning, Leon jostled me awake in pitch blackness.

"Almost ready?"

"Are you crazy?" I could see his white teeth floating like a canted moon. First we surfed Rio La Laja, and then we started driving north. We passed through the industrial town of Lázaro Cárdenas, where the legendary tube of Petacalco used to break, before they built a dam on the Rio Balsas. We drove into the desolate, lovely country of Michoacán. Tall saguaro cactuses came down to the beaches. The road snaked over high bluffs and around rock coves that cradled blue water. We drove in third gear. The foothills were covered with white-flowering bogote trees, and rioting bougainvillea edged the dooryards of the sparse villages. It was like a more tortured Highway 1, but empty, with the Pacific crashing on the rocky points and fringing the long beaches with peeling waves. Mainland Mexico has 2,500 miles of Pacific coastline—enough surf for a millennium.

Leon and I spent three days at Rio Nexpa, where there is no phone or running freshwater, just a point break and a beach break going off all at once and a long, cupped strand with a few dozen thatch-roofed cabins built for surfers, each with a balcony and a hammock. On the second evening, Leon sat on the porch rail, drinking a beer, looking out at the ocean. I swung in the hammock, replaying in my head a long ride I'd had that afternoon. A surprising set had loomed, and I found myself in position, suddenly taking off on a fast overhead left and looking down at the pod of other surfers, who seemed far below. Some cheered. I popped up and crouched, and when I'd gotten ahead of the crashing white, I roller-coastered to the top of the lip and shot back down. I did it again and again. The sensation was one of the finest I'd ever had. In my life.

"Look at the moon," Leon said. It was nearly full, rising out of the palms past the point. The sun was still a few degrees off the water, burnishing the tiers of breaking waves. A faint onshore breeze brought in the sound, a rhythmic thresh almost like breath. I didn't think he was waxing poetic—I knew what he was thinking: After the sun went down, there would always be the moon. He was already taking off his shirt.

"Aren't you tired?" I said. I think we'd surfed five hours already.

"A little. Almost ready?"

I stared at him. I burst out laughing. "What's my lesson for the day? You forgot to give it to me."

The left side of his mouth lifted just a little. "Surf whenever you can."

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