[Non-fiction] Puerto Escondido by Joshua Forehand

Puerto Escondido

by Joshua Forehand

As we ascended the Sierra Madre del Sur mountain range in southwest Mexico, it appeared that our bus driver had a death wish. Breaking ever so slightly for the blind 180-degree turns of the narrow alpine road, the driver laughed it up with his first mate as he accelerated to the absolute maximum on the short straightaways. My Lonely Planet guidebook warned of the potential for motion sickness with this particular route, so my childhood friend and travel companion, Brandon, and I popped some Dramamine as we boarded the bus.

We were twenty-two years old, recently graduated from college, and for this short transition period in our lives, we were without a care in the world. I can’t speak for Brandon, but I was searching for something that was either misplaced or nonexistent in my life up to that point. Some elusive secret to happiness or enlightenment. I thought I would find it in the fictitious lifestyle of the budget traveler exploring the developing world, so I sold any earthly possession that couldn’t justify its weight in my backpack. I was drawn to asceticism, not hedonism, but any innocent notion of self-imposed austerity was soon to be debunked.

The bus, though absent of livestock, was far from luxury class. The bench seats were vinyl covered and hard, which forced the passengers to hold on for dear life as we slid from one side to the other as the bus made its treacherous turns. We were en route to Puerto Escondido, the epicenter of surfer culture in Mexico. To be clear, owing to a bucolic, inland upbringing, neither of us knew the first thing about surfing. But we shared a tongue-in-cheek calling to the surfer-slacker lifestyle born of repeated, if not obsessive, viewings of Point Break reaching back to our high school days.

As the rogue bus driver approached each new curve, commuters and vacationers could be seen cowering in their vehicles on ridiculously tight pull-offs, nearly forced down the steep slopes to their demise. Looking out the window, I felt as if I were dangling off the precipice and the bus would most assuredly plummet down the side of the mountain. I sat up tall and looked around me to see various shades of gray and green showing on the faces of the other passengers.

And right about then, amid the dizzying switchbacks and rapid accelerations, the vomiting started. It began with one unkempt, Eurotrash-looking tourist who buckled over and puked between his legs onto the floor of the bus. His vomit was then compelled by the constantly shifting g-force into the center aisle for all of us to see. And smell. The foul odor exacerbated the quick-spreading nausea causing several other passengers to lose it in succession. At one point, there must have been at least a dozen poor souls retching in unison.

The center aisle was a couple of inches lower than the bus floor, which served to contain the bile and partially digested breakfast into a canal that sloshed up and down the length of the bus as it made its sharp turns. Few were immune to this collective moment of international solidarity—Mexicans, Canadians, Europeans, Australians—a true melting pot of puke. Dramamine’s effectiveness had never been so thoroughly tested, and it may have passed with flying colors if it weren’t for the hangover. The night before, Brandon and I had consumed an inordinate amount of mescal on the streets of Oaxaca. Alas, in communion with our fellow wayfaring strangers, my traveling companion and I joined in the action, and I was abruptly reacquainted with my huevos a la mexicana.

The driver and his first mate showed no signs of shock or concern about what was happening behind them. I’m sure we weren’t the first busload of backpackers to produce this river of chum. They exchanged a few words, decided that everyone had sufficiently emptied their stomachs, and stopped at a makeshift rest area carved into the side of the mountain. All the passengers filed out, still squeamish, trying our best to avoid stepping into the center aisle. The first mate and the driver set about hosing down the floor of the bus with a practiced hand.

While we were stopped, I took in the surroundings. The lush pine and oak forests we’d been cutting through opened up to intermittent swaths of slash-and-burn agriculture. There was a ramshackle structure under a gigantic Mexican weeping pine, selling chips and candy and lukewarm soda. There was a family tending to a nearby crop. Due to circumstances far beyond their control, they were among many who had been driven into the mountains, forced to plant corn on the steep slopes for mere subsistence. Children and adults, male and female, all dressed in loose-fitting, mud-stained clothing, shoeless, toiling with machetes and rudimentary hoes, stuck for generations on this mountainside—a century after the last of the people’s revolutions that are glorified on street signs and government buildings across the country. The idealism of my youth began its disintegration as I locked eyes with a child who couldn’t have been more than eight years old. A woman I assumed to be his mother addressed him in a severe tone. He started toward me with a hand extended, palm toward the sky, hoping that something might fall into it. I was relieved when the driver called for us to reboard the bus. The boy and I maintained eye contact as we pulled away. Eventually, he grabbed his machete and walked back toward the rows of anemic corn.

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A few hours later, Brandon and I found ourselves in Puerto Escondido. Arriving at the main beach, which was crammed with surfers and sunbathers and kids playing in the sand, we noticed the Peligro and High Surf warnings that were posted up and down the oceanfront. The guidebook shared a collection of tragic stories in its attempts to convey a very real sense of danger to young travelers who, like us, shooed our own mortality away like a fly.

As walking case studies in American hubris, we categorically disregarded the warnings, which grew in number and intensity the farther we walked from the main beach. We decided to climb out to a rocky point that jutted out a couple hundred yards into the water. We would jump into the ocean and swim back to the main beach, a maiden voyage for Brandon’s snorkel and fins, which he had proudly hauled all the way through Mexico for this precise moment.

We clambered out to the rocky outcropping to find massive waves crashing in and sweeping out across another stone shelf about six feet below us. We stood side by side in silence atop the highest point, mesmerized by the immensity and violence of the sea. I was overcome with the sense that all of human discovery, the breadth of our collective knowledge could be contained in a thimbleful of this swirling water. The limitless freedom and potential of youth were embodied right there on that jagged rock overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

In a few days, Brandon would board a coach heading north, and I’d hop on a chicken bus headed in the opposite direction. Brandon was going back to the States to start a promising career in finance, while my plan was to keep traveling south into Guatemala to avoid ever having to do something like that. I was sure the elusive secret I was looking for was not to be found in a traditional career path. Puerto Escondido would be the vertex of an obtuse angle we’d draw across the vast Mexican countryside as our distinctive paths drove us further and further apart.

“You don’t have to go back, you know,” I shouted over the surf. I didn’t want him to leave, or maybe I just didn’t want to be alone. Maybe I knew that the moment of his departure marked the end of something.

Brandon stared into the water for a few moments before responding. The ocean spray dotted his swim trunks as he shifted his weight nervously from one foot to the other. His face was troubled, as if he were working through some internal contradiction.

“Just waitin’ for my set,” he replied, borrowing Bodhi’s words from the poignant conclusion of the movie, and, just as a wave crashed in, jumped down onto the boulder below. The force of the wave knocked him over like a bowling pin and dragged him across the coarse craggy surface of the rock, leaving a trail of blood.

“Oh shit,” I shouted, “Brandon!” I was certain my childhood friend was going to drown in the violent swirling waters. To my relief, I saw a tiny snorkel pop up in the expanse of the Pacific Ocean. The current had carried him a surprising distance in only a few seconds. His ridiculous little flippers began moving up and down, slowly propelling him along.

“Well,” I said out loud to myself, “if he can do it…I can do it.”

Learning from Brandon’s mistake, though, I cannonballed in as a wave was retreating to avoid being scraped across the rocks. I managed to enter the water safely, but almost immediately, I was overcome with a sense of grave and immediate danger. The water churned around me, shoving me and pulling me in all directions. It was difficult to keep my bearings and to know if I was swimming toward land or farther out to sea. I was at the mercy of the mighty Poseidon. At times, I wasn’t sure which way was up. I was a fairly strong swimmer in those days but found myself utterly exhausted after only a few minutes fighting the tide.

I sensed my own mortal fragility. I wasn’t ready for this. I was all alone, surrounded by confusion and danger. I had made a choice despite the warning signs, and no one was going to rescue me. My chest constricted from fear, and I struggled to breach the surface of the water to take a breath. I had another choice to make. I could either freeze up and join the statistics of those who drown in these waters each year, or fight. I realized that there was no way I could swim all the way back to the main beach, so I decided to make for a tiny patch of sand tucked back into the rocks. Even so, it seemed so far away. Fighting exhaustion, self-doubt, and a hangover, I moved my feet up and down and front crawled as best I could, sometimes swelling forward and the next moment fighting a riptide.

Eventually, I could see I was making progress. Each time I raised my head for a breath, salt water stinging my eyes, I saw the tiny beach grow closer and closer. My arm strokes were becoming fatigued, my kicks less vigorous, the burning sensation in my shoulders increasing from the exertion. A searing pain and a rush of exhilaration came over me as deep cuts were etched into my shins by saw-toothed rocks beneath the surface. Exhilaration, because I knew I was reaching shallow water. And then, my fingertips finally brushed the gritty Pacific sand. I stood and stumbled to the little beach and collapsed onto my back on dry land, utterly exhausted, though I couldn’t have been in the water for more than ten or fifteen minutes. I lay there for a while, regaining my breath and resting my body. Then I remembered Brandon.

I forced myself to stand and ran as fast as my legs would carry me back to the main beach to search for my oldest friend. I couldn’t see him in the water, but surely he hadn’t made it to the beach so quickly. He was nowhere in sight. Again, I scanned the horizon from the rocky outcropping across the bay, and against all odds, a snorkel the size of a toothpick came into view. He was still out there, kicking away. I could feel his fatigue and terror. I watched for what seemed like an eternity as he sluggishly approached the point where the waves started breaking, two steps forward, one step back. Finally, Brandon stood up, the undertow rushing seaward around him, with a shit-eating grin on his face. At that moment, a massive wave came up and smacked him forcefully from behind, causing him to reel forward. He was rolled up into the crashing wave like a pair of jeans in a spin cycle. The wave knocked his precious mask and snorkel right off his head—a tribute taken by Poseidon for his short passage. By the time he made it to the beach, he had lost one of his flippers as well. We sat on the sand, laughing uncontrollably for a few minutes, overcome with rapture that we emerged relatively unscathed from what could easily have been our own tragic demise.

Then, we sat in silence. The sun was just a thumb’s width above the water on the horizon, its light illuminated the clouds suspended like giant plush pillows above the sea. The sound of the waves and the salty air drifting in from the west added to a sense that time wasn’t linear, nor was it condemned to march ceaselessly on, one foot trudging in front of the other. The young children around us laughing and building sandcastles for hours on end knew exactly what we felt. One would bring water in a blue plastic bucket, while another with a shard of green coconut shell carved a trench around the castle. One poured the water, and chased after the retreating waves to get more. Others built up various structures surrounding the central castle or toppled pieces that weren’t to their liking. They had been there since Brandon and I arrived at the beach, probably long before, digging and squealing and arguing with no awareness that time was passing. There were no expectations for what was to come; no past and no future. For them, there was only sand and water and the worlds they created.

Then, a young couple nearby began rolling up their beach towels and gathering their things and a man called out in Spanish, “Mijo, we’re leaving.”

And the boy who was going back and forth bringing buckets of water called back, with tears welling in his eyes, “But Papi, we just got here.”