It is July 24th at 5:47 PM. Mexico time. Sweltering hot, waiting at the Huatulco bus station, I am agitated and not looking forward to the all-night bus trip looming in just moments. The first part of my Mexican journey has come to an end. Some of the highlights must include: epic rights, some of the best of my life; Oaxaca city -- ancient ruins and modern ciuadad, home of the cloud people; surviving Puerto's grinding surf; and of course the friendly surfers from Australia, Brazil, Ecuador and England. Somehow, someway I am homesick for foggy, miserably cold in Summer San Francisco. How is this possible? Well, considering the fact that I am sweating from every pore in my body, it must be the mellow climate. The jungles here are a humid, thick, dark green mass of twisted canopies. And they create an atmosphere so oppressive that if you so much as stand up and walk, if you put pen to paper while sitting comfortably, motionless, you begin the pore cleansing technique of heat reduction via viaducts within the skin. To sweat, sweat, sweat is Oaxaquena afternoons!

Ten days into my trip . . . already scoring great waves, meeting cool people, seeing the unfamiliar biome up close and personal. This will be my last bus ride. This XHSFKJSD little kid with an obnoxious bowl cut decides to go: "AAAAYYYY!" seemingly at each moment that I am closest to deep sleep. The man's watch in the double seats behind Billy and me goes BEEP BEEP every hour, and each one seems endless with discomfort and restlessness. "AAAAAYYY!" Yes, that is the vowel 'a' in English, but you are supposed to be learning Spanish, locito! Any stop that the bus makes throughout this 24 hour red eye journey north, and the sound system would emit the strangest, awful, ghost in the machine sounds. Looking out the window is an odd monotony. Each time the scenery hasn't changed. Coastal highway, tiny fishing villages and coastal towns with topes and stray dogs, village kids riding double and triple on recycled bicycles, horrible black emissions drifting out of the exhaust manifolds of 70's cars and trucks, corrugated slanted tin roofs over door-less dwellings, a grandma on the porch staring with the look of a woman who knows a different story than we do.

Several hours and two estados later and we still have the same trees, brush, stick fences, dusty potholed filled roads, weathered thick cement block structures with signs out front reading: 'Restaruante"' and Pemex! Oh my god, Pemex! They must be raking; they must hold the biggest monopoly of all time, because every single gas station along that drive had the big green and yellow Pemex sign posted above it. The topes! Topes . . . topes . . . oh, and don't forget about 'Vibradores' tambien, the more basic cousin of the tope. Finally some palm tree groves, some shaded landscape comes into view. I'm going to need to surf to wash away the gnarly motion dreams that I faded in and out of during this brutal bus ride. I am ready for part two in this three-part act. Mexico Parte Dos, a play in three parts. Part One: Incredible right hand point break, best waves of my life, Oaxaca and its mysteries, and some wake up call survival sessions at Puerto. Not bad. What you got Nexpa, what you got?

ER Harris