by Peter Heller
At Pichilingue Beach we climbed into a panga. It’s the twenty-six-foot open boat used by Mexican fishermen everywhere. Classic paint scheme is white hull outside, Boston Whaler blue inside. This was no different. Faded lettering identified her as the Tecolote, or The Owl. Our captain was a young fisherman named Christian. On the tour today we would be joined by a cheerful gay couple from Montreal, a lone middle-aged traveler from Santa Barbara who never looked at us when he spoke, and a book salesman from Paris. A sufficient wedding party.
Christian may have sensed something was up. He ran the boat across the strait, a few miles out to Espiritu Santo Island. The straits are dangerous, cut with wicked currents that can get rubbed the wrong way by afternoon winds and raise hackles of helacious chop. But this morning the sea was dark glass. The wingtips of a vast ray sliced the surface like twin fins. A family of dolphins swam fast to the east, gleaming like polished metal. The long mountainous island of Cerralvo lay beyond them in haze. And ahead of us, the island of the Holy Ghost rose steeply out of the sea, cut with cliffs on all sides, banded and striped with the colors of fire and coal. Christian ran us up along the sea cliffs. He did all the things a good ecotour guide should do.
“Mira, the cave,” he said.
“What do they call it?”
He seemed uncomfortable. “They call that the La Vagina.” We could see why, it was a geologic puss twenty feet high, perfectly rendered down to the color of the labia. He ran us through a tight rock arch, gunning the outboard in time with a sloshing surge of swell. We coasted the strips of sand, drifted into the coves, passed under steep slopes prickered with cardón and saltbush, craned our necks up at burned rock towers splashed with guano and crowned with the stick nests of osprey. We could see the fluffy heads of chicks and hear the sharp, single keen of their mother. The island herself was immune to our attentions. She had been conducting herself in the same manner for millions of years, presiding over an ancient argument between land and sea, bird and fish, wind and tide and stars, and the buzzing of our boat left her indifferent. I was not used to being a tourist. Sitting on my duff being shown the sights. It made me tired, like walking through an art museum. I wanted to jump out and swim into it, climb the hills, take Kim’s hand.
I got really excited when we rounded the north end of the island and saw the black rock islets of Los Islotes and heard the sea lions barking. Kim got to snorkel close to giant bulls and jetting youngsters. Some lay sleeping on the surface, arched, their smooth, whiskered heads and rubbery black rear flippers sticking out of the water. Then we motored down the west side of the island and entered a big deep turquoise cove with a sand beach at its head. Ensenada Grande. We snorkeled along shallow coral banks while Christian cut mangoes for lunch. We followed a small octopus who flowed over the rocks and changed color until he squeezed his amorphous body into a crack the width of a Popsicle stick. Anemones bloomed and retracted. Needlefish, almost transparent, right at the surface, seemed a distillation of both water and air.
We waded out onto the warm sand and asked Christian, as captain of his boat, if he would marry us.
He put down the knife and blinked. He wiped his hands. Straightened up. “Of course,” he said.
We made one of the gay guys the ring bearer and the other the photographer. The two older men were the wedding party. We all waded thigh-deep into the water. Kim and I stood in the sun facing each other, holding hands, and exchanged the vows that came to us. Mostly they were songs of appreciation. She began to cry as she talked. “I am so happy with you,” she said. It shot into me like an arrow. Mostly I had made my girlfriends miserable. Nobody had ever said that to me after the first month.
“Me, too!” I answered. “You have soothed me. You are a light. I love being with you.”
This couldn’t hold a candle to the eloquent vows my friends had spoken to each other at big weddings, vows they’d written themselves and wrestled with for months and pronounced in front of scores of family and friends. But, hell, we were standing in the water. Tiny fish were nibbling at the hairs on my legs.
And then Christian did something very beautiful. He stepped between us and held each of our hands. He joined our hands together. He cupped his own and poured seawater over our clasped palms. He was a fisherman. The sea was his life, the arbiter of his own survival. That simple gesture. As the water poured from his hands and covered our fingers, our new rings, I felt the depth of what we were enacting. The sea had borne us all. She was as close to God as I would know in my own life. Christian reached up and poured water over each of our heads. I guess he thought we might as well get baptized while we were at it.
He stepped back. He looked at each of us. He looked at the ocean. He seemed overwhelmed. I wondered what he was going to say. He said, “By the lights of this island, Espiritu Santo, and by the power invested in me by these two people, and by their love, I pronounce you man and wife.”
That simple. We kissed, the wedding party cheered, and then we ate ceviche and mangoes. For a wedding present Christian gave us the bottle of chili powder he’d sprinkled over the fruit. We went back into the water to snorkel and everywhere we looked it seemed as if the fish and anemones were congratulating us.
PROGRESS
It was time to surf again. Back to work. We loaded up the dented Beast in front of the fancy Los Arcos. Put on our shades and drove. Back across the bottom of the peninsula to Todos Santos. A church on a hill overlooking the sea. Streets crowded with art galleries, crafts. Gringos with the smug look of Californians everywhere. We parked the Beast and went into a surf shop. The kid had heavily moussed hair and dress pants, didn’t know anything about surfing. Handed us a surf map. Here, just a few miles south of town, beside a hamlet called Pescadero, was Cerritos. Okay, we’d heard of that, we’d go. They taught lessons there, so it couldn’t be too rough. Kim needed a spot where she could surf. We headed back to the Beast. About to climb in. Looked up at the sign over the gallery-covered sidewalk.
HOTEL CALIFORNIA. Hmm. Walked into a lobby that felt more like an art gallery. Each wall was a different bold color. On them were paintings. A giant ceramic vase in the corner. Slow-turning, wood-bladed ceiling fans.
“Is this the Hotel California?” I asked the man at the front desk.
“Original,” said the man.
“The song? Pink champagne on ice?”
“Claro.”
“Can we check in and leave?”
“I’m sorry. No entiendo.”
I turn to Kim. “Is this our honeymoon? I mean, technically.”
“Definitely.”
Back to the man. “We’ll take a room.”
There were no mirrors on the ceiling, but the halls were cool and covered with paintings. Sculptures looked down on the courtyard from the surrounding rooftops. Huge vases bloomed with feathers and rushes. At night, standing candelabra lit the passages with scores of candles that melted with grotesque abandon and threw intricate patterns of grillwork on the ceilings. It was like sleeping inside an art collector’s dream. The art collector, it turned out, was named John Stewart. His wife, Debbie, the hotel’s proprietor, met us for a drink that evening. A brisk, slender Canadian, about fifty, with long uncompliant brown hair. She said people were fascinated with the place, came from around the world.
She said, “This was John’s vision. He picked all the colors, the art, decorated every room. He was very bold, had a real sense.” She took a deep breath. “When he passed, I just decided to carry on.”
How long ago was that?
A year ago, last August.
Her lips pressed together. She had pronounced cheekbones, shadows under her eyes. She didn’t look like she slept much. “Well. We’re doing an overhaul now. The first rooms I’m decorating myself. I’ve picked all the material, the colors. It’s rather exciting.”
Her eyes were moist. She didn’t look that excited. I got the sense of someone very frail. Every day she would have to summon her strength and run this place. It was prospering
, she was doing it.
Kim and I had been married a day. I looked across the table at my bride and it struck me that we, the two of us and Debbie, were bookends. This was what it meant, this thing we had signed up for. Planning a life together. Most likely one of us would outlive the other and go through this same grief and the struggle to survive it.
Debbie motioned to the young waiter for another round, and I saw in the way he bowed his head with tenderness that her staff were devoted to her and protective.
We were excited to surf again. We drove away early, down the cactus highway to Pescadero. Only took twenty minutes. Asked someone where was Cerritos. Through the village, took the dirt road on the right. Down a two-mile sand road. A high rock point on the right, the north. Crawling with workers, trucks, heavy construction equipment. Hazy beach curving for miles to the south. A restaurant, umbrella tables on the sand. In front: surf. Peaky beach break and some sort of heaving at the point, but not clean. I was beside myself. Finally we were far enough south to ditch the short wetsuits. In a flurry I unsheathed the two 9–0 longboards from their bags, waxed them, changed into board shorts and rash guard. Rash guards are skin-tight nylon or lycra shirts that protect your chest from rubbing raw on the board.
“Sunscreen,” Kim said.
Couldn’t be bothered. She was braiding her hair slowly, taking her time.
“C’mon, c’mon. Don’t you wanna get out there before anyone else?”
“Ting. I’ve gotta do my hair, lather up.”
Heavy sigh. Impatience like a physical pressure. “Go!” she said. “I’ll be out.”
Dog off a leash, I grabbed my board. Relief. Over my shoulder, trotting onto the sand: “I waxed your board. Don’t forget to lock up.” I jogged past a picturesque little shack with a shaded veranda on the sand, a palm thatch roof called a palapa. A stack of patio tables and chairs.
One thing every surf teacher has ever told me is: watch.
Do not just run out at a new break. Look. Look for half an hour. Study the peaks, the rips, the wind, etc.
Are you kidding me? I am going to show up at a popular wave before every other surfer, with the day’s virgins uncurling and stretching in front of me, and wait for the crowd to show up? Never happen.
I jumped on the board and paddled straight into the surf and was carried south by the current, hammered by every incoming wave, pushed back in a tide of froth, carried farther south, then I flailed, paddled, tumbled, bellied on again, sprinted, got buried, and got shoved down the beach as the sun rose over the dry Sierra. I paddled back into the surf, nearly crying with frustration, and the next set wave rose straight up in front of me. There was a crumbling shoulder on my left; maybe I could make it over in time before the whole thing collapsed. I angled, sprinted, and the thing fell. In the aerated foam, tumbling back all those yards I had just painfully gained, I yelled into the bubbles. I hadn’t been out half an hour and I was already exhausted, whipped. Surfing could be like trench warfare. Gain a foot, lose three.
Finally raised the white flag. I turned my board around and bellied on the foam back to the shore. Crawled up onto the sand. Kim was just crossing the beach, board on head. I could always identify her from a mile off—the girl in the starch-white rash guard who carried the longboard on her head.
“Hi, Ting,” she said brightly. “How are the waves?”
“Grrmps hurf in frmp,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
By now a handful of surfers had shown up and we watched them walk straight to the northern corner of the beach, right where the rock point met the sand. They launched and a riptide right along the rocks took them out with zero effort like a moving sidewalk.
“I guess that’s where we go out,” Kim said cheerfully. “Look, Ting, they’re not even paddling! How cool.”
“Fringshpumf.”
She caught a wave right away, rode it right, down the line, all the way to the beach. Another girl was out there, a shortboarder from Canada, and they sat together and talked. Okay, I thought, we’ll stay here for a while. One thing I was discovering about surfing, my surfing, was that at this stage I could expect one good ride all morning. And to be honest, I should be grateful for that one. So much has to go right that even this ride is a great boon.
A flock of royal terns wheeled just past the point, feeding on a bait ball. The sun was up, whitened, warming the morning and spangling the crests. Squads of pelicans flew in single-file, wingtips just off the swell. I sat on my board and wondered: So is surfing a giddy escape, skipping over the surface of a great suffering, or is it a triumph of courage? To find joy in an always-painful world? I wanted to say: The wave howls. It is cathartic release. When I surf I accept the full brunt, the chaos, the devastation and death and transform it into a kind of flight.
Was that our job here? To take flight? To create joy? In ourselves and others? To love?
Hell if I knew. A set wave unreeled off the point and I turned and caught it left toward the rocks.
As we were loading up in the sandlot beside the restaurant, a Jeep pulled in full of surfboards and kids, gringos and Mexicans. One, a curly-headed white boy, about twenty, said, “Hey, you guys got any wax I can use?”
I tossed him half a brick. “Keep it.”
“Hey, thanks.” He walked toward the Jeep, then turned back. “Where are you from?”
“Colorado.”
He grinned. “Not too much surf there, huh?”
“Not much.”
We chatted for a minute. I told him what we were up to. Kook to big and hollow. He thought it was cool. He said, “You ought to run up and see my dad. Just a mile up the road. He runs the Pescadero Surf Camp. I’m sure he’d put you up. Ask for Jaime.” He said Hymay, the Spanish pronunciation.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s going on up there?” I pointed to all the construction up on the rock point.
“It’s part of all this,” he said. “A rich guy from Mexico City. He’s building like a twenty-thousand-square-foot mansion up there. This restaurant. Gonna be a resort. Maybe a marina. Cerritos.” He looked around. “Everything changing.”
“What’s that?” I pointed to the palapa shack on the sand.
“That’s Rosa’s. She makes great tacos and stuff. Been there for years.”
I nodded, waved.
The Pescadero Surf Camp was just up the hill from the beach, on the way into the village. It’s an elegant little compound with a limpid swimming pool surrounded by small tables, a palapa bar at one end, an open-air common kitchen area, and a bunch of sweet thatch huts nicely appointed with queen beds, fans, sinks. A larger one for tents. A few common hot showers. The place was designed for the dedicated surfer. He could roll out of bed, make coffee, drive five minutes to the wave—or ten minutes to another, faster wave just north—surf all morning, and come back to a comfortable scene somewhere between camping and the Ritz. But the best feature of all was its proprietor. Jaime unfolded himself from a chair in the little store at the front of the camp. He stood up and just kept going, higher, like a wave jacking on a reef. Must have been six-foot-five. He wore a goofy white golf visor that seems to be the stylistic signature of all guys from San Diego. Plaid shorts. Swaybacked with a bit of a belly, but the strong, set-back shoulders of a lifelong surfer.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, holding out a hand. “Take the palapa over there. Nice van. Colorado, huh? Did you get blown off course?” His bluish eyes were full of mischief. A little sausage of a dachshund wagged his curly rat tail and bumped in and out of our legs.
“That’s security,” Jaime said. “Cholo.”
I shook his hand. The man’s, not the dog’s. It was the beginning of a strange and beautiful friendship.
Our second morning at Cerritos, the swell formed a breaking wave more from impacting the shallower water of the beach than from meeting the rocks of the point. So I got in position fifty yards from the point and the takeoff surprised me with its speed, and the ride
was bumpy and fast, and I took it left into the white froth at the bottom of the escalator. Just fell into the water at the end, climbed back on the board, and was tugged out again on the rip. Dang. There is this great internal grin when you catch a good wave. This Old Faithful of glee that for me gushes forth with a rebel yell. I have been told that this is the ultimate badge of kookdom. This morning it was compounded by being carried back outside on a riptide like a ski lift. How much better can it get?
Jaime came out, as he did every morning, and coached me, which I appreciated. He told me to place my palms on the nose and straighten out my arms and shove the front of the board down just before the pop-up, and explained that the extra slug of weight up front would help accelerate the board to make the drop over onto the face of the wave. Like most beginners I was having the hardest time just catching the wave. Time after time I’d paddle like a maniac, think I had it, and then the hump of the peak would roll under me and on into shore. Jaime’s tip seemed to work. Kim caught a couple of waves and after surfing we had coffee with Jaime back at the surf camp and then he drove us around town in his pickup, showing us the big skateboard park he helped build for the local kids, and the fields of organic vegetables, and the site of the new “tequila ranch,” a fancy resort where they would grow their own agave and distill their own tequila. Jaime explained that progress was coming to Pescadero in an inexorable wave. It was one of only a handful of natural oases in all of Baja—thus the groves of palms down by the water—and the organic farming center of the peninsula. And several world-class surf breaks (too fast for us) were within minutes. Americans were discovering it and beginning to buy lots and build houses all over the hills that rose just back of the beaches. Jaime got excited talking about it. He said the local people were trying to adapt. If he had his way, he would help them: though not native-born, he would one day like to be elected as mayor of Pescadero. He seemed to be halfway there. As we jounced up and down the dirt roads of the town, he yelled greetings and encouragement out his window and everybody waved. His enthusiasm was infectious. Kim and I loved this guy.