Méxican Pacífico

Now to really get stuck into Mexico proper! A great night on the beach and a slower morning making friends with the Cali couple, Franky started like a dream and we had one very special destination in mind for the day, Barra De La Cruz. The place that birthed this dream of a trip, the place I first set eyes on Franky, parked up at the beach with his previous owners Remi and Corrina, the place I made a deal with the universe that this should happen. I had given Remi my email address after a quick chat and told him to contact me when the van was for sale, a year later that email came and here we are, living the dream! The road to Barra was only a couple of hours along the 200 coast road, swinging around corners with the sea over the drop, round headlands with views for days and the mountains trying to get to the beach from our right. It was a fun drive and full of excitement, we turned in, knowing where we were and keen to see how much had changed. We followed the dirt road through the village, past our old guesthouse, refused to pay the entrance fee to the playa (100 pesos per person!) and pulled on to Barra beach. What a place! It felt great to be back and one of life’s circles completed, anything after that was a bonus.

We spent 4 days hanging out at Barra, staying at a beautiful garden campsite with lovely host and other travellers about. The beach here was a protected area and the village was set 1km back on the hill, the bay itself almost endless with a great lagoon and coconut palms lining the sand. The point had a big rocky outcrop the wave broke off, the surf was average but even on a bad day the wave was better than most so we beached daily, surfed as much as possible and enjoyed sneaking Jelly through the entrance gate in the back of the van. The vibe in town was quiet and the serious surfers were acting way too cool for us two feral van bums but we did make some buds in the water and made the most of being stationary for a second. We left in the knowledge Barra was going to be there doing it’s thing and not changing too fast, hoping one day in the future we’ll be graced in its presence but the road ahead was long, so on we went.

A night spent on an empty beach up the road from Barra then an early start to town the next day, now able to get parts for Franky we took the choice to stop in the next large town of Puerto Escondido, a famous surf town, and ran some errands. An appointment for some new suspension, our bed fan fixed (now it was 100 degrees day and night!), all laundry done, the driver’s door welded and at last a good veggie feed! A productive overnighter and two cracking beach nights either side of town, this was turning into a full beach trip now, following the 200 up the Pacific coast as far as we could (not should!) after debating the route and deciding to take the silly option to Mexico City by turning a 960km journey

into 1500kms and continuing up as far as Michoacan state and finding as much beach side paradise as possible! We didn’t fail. From the beautiful Roca Blanca beach where a couple happily put us up behind their beach restaurant we drove just shy of Acapulco, after a long day we parked up on a side street on the beach, surprisingly didn’t get robbed and drove on through the chaos of the city. A sprawling place recently smashed by a hurricane it was not a place for us to stop and we swiftly moved on up the coast. By afternoon and a beautiful cruise up the 200, more and more beach views, headland passes and topes later we found a perfect campsite on a peaceful beach. We happily got stuck there for a couple of nights!

More chilling and good company from other camping travellers we hung out and enjoyed the place, an old resort that had been repurposed into a small RV park, we were in fact parked on top of the old swimming pool, 10ft from the beach. Still not much in the way of waves but the classic ‘you should have seen it yesterday’, we enjoyed the novelty of having facilities before skipping on up the coast, another day, another beach. On and on along the Pacific, there were amazing bays and empty beaches everywhere and every day we drove and drove, Mexico proving a very big place! We had

picked a few areas we really fancied seeing and surfing, between them were huge expanse of nothing but the roads were mostly good and Franky was thriving, he always does looks good on the beach under the palms, waves lapping behind. Next stop was north in the state of Guerrero and some more world famous surf breaks, deep in Mexico now and wild country, an area where you don’t drive at night and avoid the smaller roads where possible, this was Cartel country. We took a couple of days outside the holiday town of Zihuatanejo at the quiet beach break of Playa Linda and surfed empty waves with the backdrop of a wide and wild bay that seemed to head North forever. The company that did join us on the beach there was all so nice (after the local workmen left that is, pissing up the side of the van and poking through the windows while we were in the sea). A cracking old American called Parker brought the good vibes and high spirits, hooting his way out into the surf, mostly just to offer encouragement and a local couple collecting driftwood into the back of on old party bus were our favourite friends there. The beach was a lovely spot by day but advice again said not to camp there so we spent the two nights in the small local village that gave us a good reception.

The last morning we were there, we woke with a start to a banging on the van at 6.30am. Confused and concerned it was the police, until I heard my name shouted. It was our friend from the beach with the bus, he recognised the van and wanted to invite us to his house for coffee and bread and insisting we should stay at his if we were in the area again. We shook ourselves awake and followed him to his house that served as a lovely morning start sat on his veranda, talking nonsense Spanish and glad to have made some Mexican friends. They were lovely simple folk, ran a small music/DJ rental business out of the bus along with a charity for the sick and made gallons of homebrew to flog on the beach. We surfed once more

that morning and after 3 days were told that it was a spot renowned for crocs AND sharks, a pretty deadly combo so no wonder it was quiet, there had even been an attack 2 months before! But the surf was lush and we saw no beasts in the water and left unscathed to the next perfect break. An hour up the coast we pulled into La Saladita, a famously long left absolutely heaving with North America tourists. We hadn’t intended to stay for more than a drink on the beach to watch the perfect break until we saw the campsite, tucked around the corner from town, directly on the beach, opposite the point break and paddle out for the surf, it was absolute camping perfection! We stocked up before pulling in under a palm tree and a palapa and watched the day go by. The camp was full of long term campers, surfers that couldn’t leave and the place had a community feel to it, some of them coming to share their stories and hang out. We left the waves to do their thing, luckily for us it wasn’t a surf trip, as again with a ‘you should have seen it last week’, they were pretty small and windy but it hadn’t stopped the 100 odd longboarders waiting on the point. It was a beautiful place though to watch the world go by and work out our last few days on the coast, the time in Mexico flying by, it was under a week before we had to be in the city but we had one more semi-secret-spot with a big reputation to finish on. We sipped cold beers from hammocks and the sun set over the sea in front, how lucky we were to be on this journey!