It is June 15th, 2003 at 5 PM and I am walking through round about security checks at the Mexico City Airport. Everything is just a notch below Big Brother to the north, the scanning equipment, the personnel, the baggage X Ray machines, all the way down to how the passengers are herded into strange antechambers and larger rooms. I am tempted to use nouns in this article to show off my Spanish vocabulary. That is one of many treats about traveling in Mexico . . . all the nouns sound better in Spanish than in our boring English. Even simple nouns like: car. El carrrrrro. The r's get rolled so long it makes it fun to say! Beer. Cerveza . . . phonetically: sair vay suh. So much better.

Well, here I am, glitch-free, with all my stomach Flora currently in tact. I wonder how long it will take for that to be a thing of the past. Mexican food is very tasty but not very kind on the estomago, if you know what I mean?! I am looking for my connection flight to Bahia de Huatulco, a quiet little resort town on the coast of southern Oaxaca. The place just never blew up like it was supposed to . . . the government and cohorts built huge hotels and extensive tourist accommodations, but as of this day, not even 15% of the places are full, even in the high season. It makes for an eerie tourist wasteland, a modern age ghost city, with high rise buildings staring down on very little action below on the paved courtyards and 18 hole championship golf course. We won't be staying there.


During the first leg of my aerial trek to the magical state of Oaxaca I meet a surfer who was flying to Mexico City on business. He saw my ritual Surfer magazine - which I always bring when embarking upon a surf trip and is a must in order to get the good vibes flowing and feel all psyched up for warm water - and he casually asked if he could check it out.commented on it. "Sure," I said, and handed it over. Immediately his mind started to wander and he began to tell me about his former surf career. He tells me that he is an ex-Maui local who had sold his soul to the devil of capitalism and the propaganda of a ball and chain lifestyle. Once his backdoor was Belzyland, now it was some architect's version of suburbia. He admits to being caught up in the lure of the upper middle class; turned into a big businessman, living in San Jose, the wife, the kids, the mortgage, the whole nine yards. He flipped through a few pages of my magazine, looked at my Kauai T-Shirt (also a pre-requisite to going on a surf trip), sighed and told me stories of waves since ridden and characters since moved on. I could tell he was not only reminiscing about the glory days - as snap shots in his mind formed with him blasting white ocean spray off a crystal blue face of a wave - but also feeling a bit jealous of my position. As a teacher, summer iss the time to explore and adventure, and I was on my way to a mind blowing one month odyssey, whereas he was on his way to a weekend business trip to Mexico City. Yummy! Smog-filled, high altitude air and horrible water doling out migraine headaches. Sickening traffic and constant horns blaring. Poverty surrounded by excessive wealth. Not the images I was about to be imbuing on the sub-tropical coastal region of this multi-faceted country that once extended all the way to present-day Oregon. We compare notes on our respected lifestyles, each letting the other know in their own way that there were advantages and disadvantages to each of our paths. He lists off the six figure salary, the very comfortable house, a wonderful family that waits for him with anticipation each night. Me? Well, quite frankly, living check to check. For me, the Inbox and the Outbox are at some odd equilibrium. Somehow, I am able to manage some wonderful trips to exotic places, continue to advance my love of travel and outdoor sports, and meet some wonderful people along the way. He hands me back the magazine, sighs and leans back in his seat. We are on different orbits, but still circling around the sun.

ER Harris