Walking the airport hallways I notice the people - so many people! I scour their faces for a mili-second of recognition. Tiny slices of their conversation drift into my audible range like a brief cloud of communication, then dissipate, and they are gone. Mexican people that I will probably never come in contact with again in my entire life. What factors contribute to two people making eye contact, I wonder, after each person's respected journey allows them to be in this common ground in this common moment. So many middle class, Mexicanos, all thoroughly integrated into the matrix, their "whitemanizing" and westernizing complete. Women that look like what you would see in a New York nightclub, gussied up to the max, holding under their arms or in their purses the same brainwashing periodicals of propaganda that the LA-LA California girls read, only translated into Spanish. And the mothers, so many mothers, trudging through the airport hallways, curtailing and placating their crying hijos, always having to call ahead to their little pioneers who want to venture forth into the crowds to explore.

I look out the window at puerta 17 and see the luggage trucks stopped underneath the tail of the same Mexicana airplane that I flew over on. The timing of my gaze is such, that I actually get to see the baggage handlers tossing my blue and black surfboard bag under a pile of potentially destructive suitcases and bags. I make a prayer for the condition of my custom Vernor fun shape, but inwardly I recognize the good news: at least it's going to be a the airport when I fly to Huatulco! Behind me I see the face of a father who has been chasing his twin daughters all over the place as they make breaks for unknown locations. His face is so recognizable, he reminds me of a man that I met in the airport at Guayaquil, Ecuador when I was on another adventure. Faces, races, ethnicities. Despite living in San Francisco, a very international city with lots of culture buzzing all about on any given day, it is refreshing to be in Mexico, a city with people from all over the world mingling for a just a blink of the eye.

There goes the deafening roar of another jet taking off. Tomorrow I will be in the warm Pacific, surfing waves that I have longed for since that epic March swell that blasted the beaches in Northern California for a few days. It is an ecstatic surreal feeling to be free of the daily grind, with my only decision to make, how long to surf, and when to pick up my backpack and surf bag to head to another exotic location.




Touching down before sunset in the quiet resort town of Bahia de Huatulco I am greeted by fellow surf travel fanatic Billy Z, who has our first few days already mapped out. The excitement is oozing out of his pores, along with the sweat induced by a sweltering tropical air that hangs thick around the jungles of the Oaxaquena airport. We hook up with a couple of Santa Cruz chargers, one of which claims to have trained for Maverick's by hauling boulders across the bottom of a swimming pool. Without needing to ask, I am brought up to speed with stories of barrels made and missed, waves that pounded, stories of the Mexican Pipeline locals who charge with bravado and machismo. They tell me about a swell that was so big, it flooded the main street across from the beach, and about Australians who surf so fearlessly and with such a rampaging style that I know this first week of June that I missed was not lacking swell. This update is a signifier that the Pacific Ocean is wide awake and I was about to be thrown into the mix with reckless abandon.

We split a hotel in the part of Huatulco that is actually authentic, where most of the workers of the resorts live and do their own thing. Sitting a confusing twenty minute route away from the resort area, it is a typical small Mexican town with very few buildings higher than a couple of stories. Lots of little food stores and a few tourist trinket shops surround the quintessential center square. The square is always the focus of a town of like this. With very little to stress in their lives, no need to be freaking out and jumping in a car to do some sort of masochistic commute to a boring drive, the people actually like to walk around town slowly, grabbing an ice cream to sit in the muggy heat after downpour to gossip in the center of town. The feeling is that this is an ancient place with a pace that would drive the jet-setters of American cities feel stifled and uneasy. I am at peace. I can sit and read and write quietly on a park bench, every once in awhile glancing around to take in the smells, sounds and sights of a foreign culture.

The buzz of the local tropical birds sing a very familiar song that washes waves of nostalgia over my entire existence. It is this noxious, tropical air that floods my memory banks with moments from past Summer excursions, the faces, the sounds, the smells. Now it's time to surf.

ER Harris