Cruising the coast in search of tubes and tacos

By Mike Harrelson

Aaron Chang

It was in that spirit that I had made my first bona fide surf safari to mainland Mexico in the summer of '80. In the two months I spent there I got stung by a scorpion, was chased by federales, and lost 20 pounds on my beans-and-rice budget. In keeping with the then-popular Carlos Castañeda way, I got bent on honguitos in some cornfield in the mountains of Oaxaca. Stroking for a set wave at the point in Puerto (Escondido), an 18-foot hammerhead gave me visible stink-eye—there I lay like Spam on a cracker. Despite all these complications, I managed to catch five years' worth of waves in eight weeks.

Which is why I'm back, two decades later, fiddling soft racks onto our miniature Chevy rental at the Puerto Vallarta airport. Before long we're cruising upcoast, winding over a jungly stretch of Highway 200 with all the mojo we can muster, wishing for A-frame peaks spiraling down the beach in both directions.

We acclimatize for the first few days in the town of San Francisco (known to intimates as San Pancho), 25 miles north of PV, settling into an open-air palapa on stilts. Bobbing around in the bath-warm Pacific that first evening, we're rewarded with a mellow break-in session of chest-high peelers as we trade waves with the local kids, practicing our Spanish between sets. I catch maybe 50 waves before my arms go noodly and the amber light sends me searching for an amber cerveza.

That evening, mutant banana leaves, bird-of-paradise flowers, and other Jurassic flora poke through the open-air walls of our palapa while a rusty fan circulates dank salt air around my hammock-strung body. I wake early the next morning to find that lefts are still spinning up onto the beach, grinding up black cobbles from the rock-bottom reef. But the tide is off, and the swell has dropped a bit, so I go back to roust Rick and seek out some java. (Java in Mexico usually turns out to be Nescafé, but we're resilient gringos.) The locals' tip is to check out Punta Mita at the northwest edge of the Bay of Banderas; any decent waves to be had will be wrapping around the point near El Faro, the lighthouse marking the most exposed reefs. Before making the hourlong hike to the point, we scarf some machaca and huevos at a café and do our best to keep our cool when three machine gun–toting federales pull up chairs and join us for breakfast—I wonder whether the latent paranoia of my 1980 saga will ever go away. The hike to the point turns out to be worth it: We see turquoise bumps rolling in just past El Faro, a cove full of promise and black spiny sea urchins, and no one else in sight.

The following dawn we continue south through Barra de Navidad and Manzanillo, still searching for that elusive perfect wave. October appears to be a shoulder season along this coast; the towns we poke through have an air of perpetual siesta. Late in the day we pull into Boca de Pascuales, a funky little town that is the site of the infamous break. It's in the process of being washed out to sea: The few remaining oceanfront structures list precariously toward the narrow black-sand beach, their concrete porches shored up with sawed-off palm trunks. The surf out front is, well, A-frame peaks spiraling down the beach in both directions. Local resident Edgar Álvarez runs a seismically challenged but accommodating little hotel that's home to the 15 or so surf rats from Uruguay, Israel, Australia, Texas, and California who are hanging around town. For five bucks apiece per night we get an ocean-facing concrete cell with a naked lightbulb in the ceiling and a rattly fan. We're in heaven.

The next morning, Rich, a restaurateur from Del Mar, and I paddle out first. The surf is small by Pascuales's standards: six- to eight-foot faces, maybe a ten- footer on the better sets. It's a ledgy, unforgiving takeoff—if your timing isn't Rolex, you'll become one with the lip, and that can smart. Yes, I take a few trips over the falls, extracting core samples off the firm, sandy bottom with my head.

Sitting there, waiting for my wave, I can smell the distant jungle nectars and the huachinango brine of fishermen's nets. As the offshore winds pick up, the ocean's surface turns to molten glass, flowing upward into corduroy lines just large enough to make me nervous, then unfolding in elliptical swirls so powerful they turn the ocean inside out. In a moment I will see the view I've come for through a window of spinning salt.