Dave’s Blog

Yet another amaz­ing beach this week­end, so amaz­ing that we decided to skive off work en-masse and stay for Sunday night and Monday too. We were sleep­ing in a hut on the beach, about 20 metres from the sea, and des­pite it being freez­ing on the first night, sand get­ting every­where, and as always hav­ing to top-and-tail it, it was one of the best week­ends I’ve ever had. We stayed on a camp­site, which turned out to be the place that trav­el­lers and hip­pies hang out in the town of Say­ul­ita. The res­ult of this was that every­one was really friendly.

We decided that since it’s seven hours from where we live, it would be more sens­ible to get an overnight coach, and set 2.30 as the time (hav­ing been told about a coach that leaves then). It turned out that the 2.30 coach was a) not at 2.30, but 3.30, and b) far too expens­ive. We ended up kick­ing around that the new bus sta­tion (where all the cool kids hang out) and get­ting a much cheaper bus at 4. Whilst this meant that we didn’t get into Say­ul­ita until lunch­time, it did mean that we had far more money left for beer, which is always a bonus.

Tucker and I man­aged to walk along the beach straight past our camp­site and to idi­ot­ic­ally keep walk­ing for about an hour (it must just be a bit fur­ther) until we actu­ally left Say­ul­ita and ended up in the next cove. Once we real­ised that this really was too far, we plucked up the cour­age to ask the woman who was obvi­ously stay­ing in the one tent on this very secluded beach where we were. She replied that it was basic­ally a private beach (beaches can’t be private in Mex­ico, the gov­ern­ment owns all coastal land, but people just close off the only access routes), but that since she was allowed to be here, and she liked us, she would let us use the road to get back. This turned out to be far harder than climb­ing through the forest that we had used the first time, and we ended up mak­ing a dash for it through someone’s back garden. Not the smoothest of entrances, but it at least gave us a story to tell.

After set­tling in to the camp­site and grabbing some food, we all got vaguely unpacked and hit the beach for some ser­i­ous Fris­bee, vol­ley­ball, swim­ming, and all man­ner of other beachy things, before finally going out to some­where slightly more fancy for Martine’s birth­day, and return­ing to our hut for the oblig­at­ory drink­ing games. We also made a camp fire, evok­ing the usual Neander­thal atti­tude towards fire from most of the lads, and the usual tut­ting and eye-rolling from the lasses. Never mind. By about 10.30 every­one was determ­ined to stay for Monday as well. Mov­ing from the fire to the sofas in our hut was a nat­ural pro­gres­sion, as was the pro­gres­sion from ring around the fire to ring of fire — what a game!

After wak­ing up rel­at­ively early the next morn­ing, Danny and I pissed of to the town half an hour away that is, in fact, the nearest cash point. We arrived back at about mid­day, and every­one except Tucker, who was res­ol­utely and com­pletely battered the night before, had woken up and were find­ing food or lying on the beach. Yet another day of beachi­ness ensued, the only dif­fer­ence being that we were much more care­ful not to lose our second and only remain­ing Fris­bee to the rip-tide. By about two there was a ser­i­ous flak­ing off home and work­ing on Monday con­tin­gent form­ing, and after last night’s fer­vour, only six of us ended up staying.

I for one am very glad I stayed! It was another stand­ard night of drink­ing games and gig­gling, but it was well worth stay­ing for. After more Ring of Fire, and then some truth or dare, Tucker was the first to pass out, fol­lowed by Danni, leav­ing the last four of us to go and get some tacos, and then grace­fully fall asleep, three in a bed top and tail­ing down­stairs, and me upstairs as the only one who was sober enough to climb a ladder.

Once again we woke rel­at­ively early, pissed about on the beach, this time acquir­ing some friendly hip­pies with whom we played some bizarre pre-colombian ver­sion of Hackey Sack, and we left early­ish at about 3 so that we could get buses home rather than pay for taxis. Finally, after some more tacos, we got home to sleep and pre­pare for the next hard 4 hour long day at work. Life is hard.

Related posts:

1. Turtles and Exhibitions
2. Maru­ata II
3. La Playa
4. The Big Night
5. Colima – Maru­ata : 358 km