Refining our Tetris skills acquired in the early days of high school, we loaded everyone’s bags into the back our cars and filled them to the brim. Unsure whether we had too much weight, we crawled out of the carpark of our accommodation in Mexico City and prayed that the cars would make it out of the city.
There tends to be a defining moment in any road trip that makes you so stoked to be alive. For me, this moment usually occurs when you turn off onto the highway, start fangin’ it at 100+km’s and blast your most epic roadie song so people three cars behind you can hear it. As I spastically sung the lyrics to ‘September’ and had the feeling that the road trip had begun. This was it.
What was meant to be a quick stop over Walmart to buy food and cooking gear turned out to be a few hours of messing around and getting used to a 9 person group dynamic. Lets just say things are really fkn slow with 9 people, especially when most of them are don’t have an IQ over 70. (photo of Pat in wheelchair thang).
Now well and truly behind the extremely loose schedule, we sent it down the highway en-route to Acapulco, a city on the West Coast of Mexico. We hoped to make it there by sundown and made it by a few minutes. We found a small carpark adjacent to the beach on the Northern end of the city, hopped out of the cars and immediately ran towards the water. The glassy orange water was the warmest we’d ever swum in, and the gnarly beach breaks made for some epic smacks against the sandy bottom.
A fun fact about Acapulco. It is one of the most dangerous cities in the world and currently stands tall for having the second highest murder rate in the world. It has very high cartel activity and there are people all over the city scouting out Gringos that may be a part of the DEA. Unbeknown to this, we had a cozy sleep as we listened to the sound of crashing waves in our sketchy little park. Brilliant.
Having not being murdered, we left the city the next day towards Puerto Escondido, hoping to find a remote beach to camp out at along the way. After 6-7 hours of driving we scouted out a spot on the map that had all the critical things we were looking for; A beach and a small shitty road in the middle of nowhere. As we arrived, we found an old abandoned resort and slept adjacent to a surf beach with no one else around. We spent hours body surfing and caught a surreal sunrise and even gave the Jeep a run for it’s money on the puddle-filled dirt roads.
The next day followed in nearly the exact same suite. 6 hours driving, scouting a map for a beach to sleep at and of course, eating tacos for every possible meal. Right after the sun fled behind the horizon we found another insanely beautiful beach to sleep at for the night. Along the beach were scattered fishing shelters made from bamboo, and we drove the cars along the sandy carpark to begin setting up our lux beach side apartments. Although the wheel of the Chevy had better ideas and decided to sink deep into the wet sand and refused to move an inch. What was meant to be a relaxing night swimming on the quiet beach and eat tacos turned out to be a relaxing night swimming in the beach and eating tacos…+ three hours towing, pushing, grunting, sweating and cursing at the piece of shit grip on the wheels of the Chevy.
A local Mexican man saved the day and towed us out with his 4x4, he spent hours with us and did not stop until we were out. We were so damn grateful that a stranger would spend so much time and energy on someone elses problem. This is one of so many accounts of the kindness of local Mexicans.
One sunrise later and a few hours spent with some local fishermen hauling up their fishing boats on the beach, and we we’re off. We made to Puerto Escondido, hoping to score some surfboards, waves and chixx brah!
Tell ya bout’ it later,
Scotty
