Mex 05'- 2: Update 2/07/05: <-
Wave surfing:
The next day after buying the surfboard I can’t wait to get out. I windsurfed the Caribbean in huge breaking waves and I like to think I know what to expect and do around them. As a windsurfer it’s ultimate to be riding down a large breaking wave, as a windsurfer it sucks to be hit by a large breaking wave, equipment breaks and you’re not attached. Often you swim a long time chasing your rig and sometimes finding it disabled. What wave surfers do, bob around near breakers waiting for a big one to come, is counter to all my instincts.
I’m off to the so called ‘beginners beach’ where the entire shore is sand, the big dog surfers also come here when the waves are huge. The swells are big today but I have to get wet. I just go with it, strap on the tether line and march out into the breakers. After getting hammered by at least four big ones I get the hang of grabbing onto the surfboard and ducking down just as the breaker is going to nail you. I’m out to sea now bobbing around near where other surfers are bobbing. I practice paddling and catching waves. A wave lands just right, I catch it and go flying. I’m cruising along so I had to try to stand, the board goes flying out from underneath me and I crash backwards in the foam, cool! I’m farther in shore now and farther down the beach. This is where every wave builds and breaks no matter what. I’m getting the shit kicked out of me trying to get back out. Finely I come to my senses and see other surfers walking down the beach toward where I first launched. Lessons learned; paddle out where other surfers paddle out, after riding a wave get on to shore ASAP and start over, that is unless you’re still out far enough and feel lucky and think you can paddle back out without getting creamed. The next thing I do is head back out and paddle near surfers further out. Some guy from California saw I was struggling and gave me several pointers. Great, my paddling speed has increased and I’m a little more confident of what to do just before getting creamed. I’m out for a good hour and manage to not get hammered by any more big waves. I’m feeling good but what a workout.
The next day we’re off to the beach again, same place. I think I know the ropes, paddle out as fast as possible past where most waves start to break. Once there I catch my breath and position myself for a wave. Well, half way out I see a huge one start to build. I don’t know what I’m doing and think I have no choice but to ride it. I turned around too soon and didn’t see what I was in for. The next thing I know I find myself on the lip of a huge curling wave, I’m up 8 feet in the air falling straight down with the curl, and I’m lying on a surfboard! The next sensation is hard to describe, if there was such a thing as a industrial size washing machine with a super hyper agitate mode, imagine being thrown inside that, now multiply by ten. After my body stopped being contorted I started to swim up. I swam and swam and swam. It seemed like a bad dream where you struggle and struggle and don’t go anywhere. I was swimming under water in foam and not sure I was even swimming in the right direction. I straightened up (mentally that is), got my bearings and slowly swam up. OK, I survived. I don’t like where I am, everything is breaking everywhere. I hop on the board and paddle like hell straight to shore. The rip is keeping me out and I’m getting killed by wave after wave after wave. At one point I had the tether line wrapped around both legs while under water, wow! I was glad to get back in. This was all taking place right in front of Heidi sitting on a lawn chair. Being a strong swimmer she said she was seconds from diving out there to save me, I’m glad I didn’t need it. ..... Pic below is another day, small waves.
Heidi is a smart girl and decides to practice the basics in the pool first. The guy giving me pointers said surfing is 90 some percent upper body. You need to balance on the surfboard on the bottom of your rib cage and do a crawl motion paddle while keeping your feet on top the surfboard.
Heidi practices the move you do when a monster wave is about nail you.
Cabo:
Heidi & I needed to go back to Cabo to return a wetsuit. What a bummer, we gotta go back to Cabo. This time we thought we would park near downtown and hang out for awhile. We found tons of shops selling tons of stuff, same tons of stuff! One restaurant had a mime out front harassing people, a Seinfeld episode comes to mind, we don’t want to go past him twice. We sat at an open air restaurant, Las Quesadilasss on a busy corner. There’s loud Mexican tourist music playing and we’re attacked by four waiters before we finished looking at the menu; we looked at each other and boogied. On the way back to the jeep we check out a few more shops. In a one block stretch I was hit on to buy “dope”, “white stuff” and “cocaine”, three different people. Then in a shop a guy tried to sell me a crack pipe. OK, this is all fun, not really. Not the kind of place where I would order a drink and leave it unguarded. See Ya Cabo!
Secret Beach:
We head out again to look for the secret beach that nobody seems to know about, it’s said to be between Todos Santos and the main surf beach to the south. We think we found it this time, driving down the road we see why not many go here.
The last part of the road is driving across a small creek with big bumps after which you can park. The beach is a 500 meter walk through an oasis type jungle.
Secret beach.
Wild Mexican Dogs:
We dedicate a day for a long hike. I studied the guide book and looked at maps. There’s an old trail starting a few miles out of town leading from Punta Lobos at the abandoned canning factory to a hidden bay somewhere south. In the 30’s this bay was used for exporting tomatoes and fish and some say hiding Japanese subs. We’re headed to the other side of the far hills along the coast.
Loose dogs are everywhere in Todos Santos. We just reach the outskirts of town and could see a pack of them just waiting and eyeing us up. This is why we got rabies shots before the trip. Well,… the first dog to Heidi’s left was looking at me like he knew me so I pretended like I new him, I did my “All right dogs, lets all go on a walk together” thing and bingo, our expedition team was formed.
Punta Lobos to the left, abandoned canning factory below. We’ve had 4 dogs with us for 4 miles now and Heidi is getting concerned for their welfare. She says “They’re away from their home, they’re chasing rabbits all over hurting their paws on the cactus and they look thirsty”. I won’t share any of our water and Heidi is getting mad!
I say ”But they’re so cute and they’re having so much fun and they love us!”. OK, that worked, they’re in, we’re all on this mission together.
Heidi spots two whales just a couple hundred yards off shore near the point. We see them surface several times.
The trail is tough and you need to stay focused.
Hidden bay. We hike all the way down to the volcanic gray beach below to find nothing but bowling ball size gray rocks. It was a two hour hike from home base to the bottom. We chill on the rocks for a while then climb back out.
On the way down we heard what sounded like sea lions, on the way back out we heard it again. Heidi gets out the binoculars and finds the rocky point jetting out on the right filled with sea lions flopping around. Some were huge. Unreal.
Heading back. This is the end of Todos Santos beach, it stretches over twenty miles long with no development.
Sunset Watching:
I think I know a shortcut out to the beach without going to Punta Lobos, a place we can be more alone. It’s an ultimate Baja road, one where someone would have to back up a long way if two vehicles meet and high clearance is a must. I’m sure we walked this way once before. Finely the trail leads to the beach, yes. We walk out as far as we dare toward the rising tide, lay out a towel and wait to see what happens. I think I caught for the first time the florescent green flash that sometimes happens just at sunset while looking out to sea. I’m not making any of this up! Heidi says she sees what looked like heads of divers, I question her sanity. For the next fifteen minutes we’re watching two sea lions surfacing, flipping and popping straight up out of the water right in front us. Heidi says “They see us and are waving at us” We wave the next time they come up. No kidding, next we see a whale blowing and surfacing in front us.
Update 2/21/05:
WHAT DO WE DO? People I know have always asked me what I would do with all my time if I quit my regular job. Heidi and I have been here in Todos Santos now for a month and have another month before we hit the road again. It’s not a lot of time but we’ve had to try to work out a routine for our day to day. Hey, who said the good things in life are easy? And then there’s the technical stuff like when to be at the beach for the best waves, this all takes a lot of planning and constant tweaking. We pursue this like a fictitious job that has workdays weekends vacations and if we feel like playing hooky, days I call in sick for one or both of us.
A normal work day:
- Coffee, computer time and a run before Heidi wakes up in the morning. 2 – 3 hrs.
- Big breakfast or blended health shake. 1+ hrs
- Get to the Gym to lift weights and/or aerobics. 2 hrs
- Light lunch and time around the pool. 1+ hrs
- Beach walk and/or desert mountain hike. 2 – 4 hrs.
- Surfing and hanging out at the beach. 1 – 5 hrs.
- Fishing and hanging out at the beach. .5 – 1 hr
- Reading, practicing Spanish, computer and digital camera play. 1 – 3 hrs.
- Shopping. Not always easy, sometimes having to drive 6 miles to get papaya. .5 – 1 hr
Obviously we overloaded our days, no way can we possibly fit everything in every day. After all this we like to end the day spending a little time around the pool for unwinding and socializing with people at the hotel. Ahhhh… we went from 40 hr. weeks to 90 hrs., the stress is unreal at times! To the beach, but what beach? We have the choice of several, all a short distance away. One beach has a good break in a NW swell but has rocks and is not great at low tide. Another has hot showers, nice bathrooms but we have to pay $1.80 to park on the beach. Sometimes we need to tweak our day mid stream because maybe there’s no wind and it’s already late morning and that means the waves should be good so we should go to the beach now instead of later. People think this is easy, it’s not! At a normal job most of your day is laid out ‘for you’. Here we’re on our own and it’s up to us to design our day to be productive or not, not as easy as it sounds. The beauty of adventure travel is that you have control of all your time which gives you the opportunity to do something great with it!
Lots of pic’s of our days in and around Todos Santos, Baja Mexico:
Morning run: Some days I run with company. This day I had the same 4 dogs that went on our hidden bay hike. This one on the right is always so fired up every time I see her.
These dogs are so well behaved and always get off the road when a vehicle comes.
Punta Lobos in the distance. That’s where all the fishing action takes place.
When I get to the beach I see Rubia (We like to name the dogs we meet) a dog I’ve met before and another dog I haven’t met. These are beach dogs and I’m running with city dogs? Then it hits me, this could be bad.
All 6 dogs got along great, not one aggressive display, I could not believe it. The two beach dogs ran almost all the way back with us. I love running with dogs.
Fisherman launching boats in the surf: The boat on the right just threw a rope to the one on the beach.
They’re timing the swell and yell to the boat out in the water. The boat out does the same ‘sling shot move’ you do while trying to pull a water skier out of the water with a small outboard. You gun the motor pointing the boat sideways, just keeping the rope taunt. Then when your RPM’s and boat speed is up you turn the boat straight out, this yanks the other boat out into the surf and out to sea. Waaaay Cool! 7:00AM This was the last boat to go out. It has to be dark when they start launching. Today the swell is small, I can’t imagine them doing this in the dark in a big swell. 
Fixing a health shake:
Setting up early at the reggae fest: The reggae fest is happening 4 miles up the coast from us at San Pedrito beach. We had to pay for an overnight camping spot to be able to park on the beach, $6, bargain.
What a spot, stage on one side surfers on the other.
Lots of fun people hanging on the beach.
Beach is filling up. The bands started playing around 3:00PM
Reggae sunset, Ya Mon…….
Beach walks:
That’s a light house in the background.
Big pelicans.
Whale watching: Unreal, we’re walking along and see three or four whales just a short distance off shore. I guess they scrape their barnacles off in the sand shallows while passing buy.
For sure if you were crazy enough you could run and dive into the water and grab onto one of these whales. That close! But they were at least 30 plus feet long. Not me. We were in awe of witnessing this right in front of us.
More desert mountain hiking:
Fishing: OK, I’m fishing out on some rocks at Los Lobos and not having much luck.
I see a fishing boat come in and stop a little way out. They were cleaning out the boat or bailing it out, I wasn’t sure which. They then fired up the motor and circled around by shore for a bit, I think to time the swell. Then they gunned the motor and ran straight up on shore. A truck would come and pull it farther up, there the fisherman clean and crate the fish. After that the boat is towed further up past the high tide mark for the night. This all happens around 3:00PM.
Punta Lobos fisherman:
This guy on the left I think owned the truck and was having the crates filled up with selected filleted fish. I imagined him running a kitchen of a restaurant.
This guy on the right was having one or two selected fish filleted for him.
This guy says to us “You want to buy some fish? Ha, ha, just kidding. I’m from Cabo” he said he just bought three kilos of fish here for what he would pay for one kilo in Cabo, $5 US. A big sea bass, red snapper and some other fish he forgot the name of.
I hope you enjoyed Todos Santos.
Continued: -> Mex 05'-3 <-