Playa Zipolite December 20-26, 1978

Jonathan and I stuffed ourselves into Ken’s VW bug and we all headed to Puerto Angel.  Lucky me, I got to sit in the front seat!  The first part of the journey – across a rolling landscape of dry red soil studded with cacti and cornfields – was like driving through a Mexican cliché.  Peasants tilling fields with old ploughs, mostly with one or two oxen or burros, but sometimes by hand; or carrying large colourful sacks of corn on their backs; the burros carried the stalks – their supper – on their backs.  It’s too easy, for those of us who have never worked at subsistence farming (or any farming), for those of us who eschew the highly mechanized approach to agri-business now prevalent in North America and Europe, not to see or appreciate just how hard and back-breaking this ‘real’ farm work is.  We see the bucolic photo-op, the ‘indigenous people in traditional clothes working on, and in harmony with, the land’.  I am no less guilty for acknowledging the reality.  But still...

And then we climbed up, the bug labouring a little under the weight of us three and our belongings, into the cooler, greener mountains.  A lovely mix of pines and deciduous trees; the air more fresh, pine-scented.  Lots of wildflowers, and bees - hives everywhere.

Climbing higher still, into a jungle of deciduous trees and unknown trees and bushes – more lush,  moist, verdant, fecund.  Reminiscent of the West Coast, in terms of sheer density of the forest, but tropical, so somewhat lighter; a lovely filtered golden light through layer upon layer of leaves. 

We reached the coast, where the beaches, long stretches of tawny, golden sand with scattered outcroppings of rock, are fringed with coconut palms.  The beach at Puerto Angel was pretty busy with both gringos and tourists, all there for Christmas holidays.  We headed to 'Playa Zipolite', just down the road, where we managed to rent a thatch hut with a palm frond roof right on the beach.  There were three or four others that a family rented; they lived in one that was only slightly bigger than the rest - two rooms instead of one.  There was a central ‘bathroom’ of sorts - a pit toilet, cold water tap and a shower head that dripped more than sprayed.  The family offered very simple food - breakfasts and dinners only - at a couple of tables in their 'yard', where the sand was just a little firmer than on the beach.  And they sold pop, fruit and tortilla chips, and would bring you a coffee or a cerveza almost any time.  Pretty rustic, but comfortable and very tranquillo.  

The ocean is reasonably warm and good for swimming, however the waves and the undercurrent are …. well, just a bit treacherous.  (Which may explain why the locals don’t swim here, but just hang out on the beach, or make do-das out of shells to sell to gringos, or come round with drinks and snacks... .)

On our first day, Ken and I were having fun, swimming not far from shore, just beyond the breakers.  I considered myself a reasonably good swimmer, having grown up on the West Coast and swum in ocean and lake (summers only) all my life.  But I was not prepared for, and certainly no match for, a giant wave that engulfed me, lifting me first up, then back and then down – way down.  I was completely overwhelmed and powerless.  I felt like a little piece of flotsam, captive in the force of the wave.  And my captivity seemed to last for a very long time.  It’s funny how time seems so long when you can’t breathe, when all you want to do is breathe.

 

But the wave tossed me back on the beach, and I landed on my feet, gasping and coughing, trying to clear my lungs and catch my breath.  And then I was hit by another wave.  This time was much worse.  I struggled in vain against the force of the wave – again it had its way with me, pushing me under and down, scraping my body against the ocean floor.  I opened my eyes, but all I could see was a swirl of sea, sand, shell and millions of tiny particles, all of us captives in the wave’s great surge.  I held my breath for as long as I could, but in the end could not control the natural instinct to breathe, and in the split second of time – or really timelessness – when I had to decide whether to breathe or just succumb, and pass out, I experienced a complete abandonment to destiny – and death – which seemed a certainty.  The warm waters swirled around me like a womb, pulling me deeper and deeper into its murky maw – why not just relax and let the waters take me where they will?  

 

But the will to live, that indominable force within us all, won out.  “No, damn it, I want to live.  I’m not ready to die!”  And so, I ‘breathed’, sucking the salt water, and all the little particles within it, into my lungs.  Within a few seconds – a time at once too long and too short for the telling – I was once again thrust up, vomited up, by the great wave.  My body was tossed, a limp rag, onto the sandy beach where, as yet, there was no water.  But I knew another wave would come, and that I had to move.  I could neither stand nor walk, but only cough and gasp.  I heard the dreadful roar of another oncoming wave, and my whole being shrank in terror.  And just then, when I felt so truly and utterly helpless and defeated, I felt strong hands gripping my arms, pulling me up and then half-carrying, half-dragging me to shore, where they lay me down and pushed hard on my back, yelling: ‘respire, respire!’  

 

Their ministrations worked.  I coughed out a great gush of water, then started coughing and gasping, trying to suck in as much air as I could.  My whole body was shaking – I felt overwhelmed, weak and sickened by the experience.  But also so relieved and thankful, alternately crying and laughing.  Once I recovered a bit I realized Ken was close by, clearly in resting mode.  Although he has plenty of experience with big waves, having grown up on California beaches, he had also had a hard time with these big waves.  But he’d made it back to shore without help, dragged himself up to where he saw the crowd and, having seen I was safe, laying down to recover himself.  

 

We subsequently learned that the riptide here at Zipolite Beach was well known, and for some reason was worse this season than it had been in a long time.  None of the locals were swimming (we ought to have noticed that…), and we were told that the rogue waves that had caught us were 25-35 feet high.  Yikes.

 

Later, as we were sitting under a cabana eating slices of pineapple, melon and cucumber, we watched as a young German girl was rescued by a group of locals who, holding hands and forming a line, went into the surf to pull her out.  She had never gone under, but was being pulled out to sea by the riptide, and was yelling for help.  Even later we heard, but didn’t see, that two gringo women had been swept out by the riptide and not seen since.

 

Over the next days at Zipolite I contented myself with wading up to my knees in the water, going for long walks on the beach, collecting shells, and watching the sun set.  Such a beautiful place; it’s hard to think of it as dangerous, or deadly; to think of being swept away forever by a monstrous wave, or carried out so far out to sea, by overpowering tides and currents, that you can’t get back again.  I shudder just thinking about it, remembering how it felt, remembering the awesome force.  Everyone – locals and gringos alike – is feeling shaken up by the near-drownings, and the two missing women, now presumed drowned.  I think of them and wonder if and when their families will be contacted.  Did anyone know they were even here?  And then of me – no one, apart from Ken, knows that I am here.  I could be anywhere in Mexico, or even somewhere else entirely.   But I am here, on this beach.  And I am alive, and life goes on, as it always has. The sun rises and sets, the tide comes in and goes out.  Somehow knowing this is so, has ever been so, will always be so, somehow this is comforting.  

 

Note: to this day I am afraid of swimming over my head in the ocean.  

Even re-reading this account has been unsettling. 

It was a close call...my closest 'brush' with death.

 

Now a little Indian girl, maybe six or seven years old, barefoot and dressed in rags, is walking with great purpose towards us.  She has a large pan balanced on her head.  It looks like it might be heavy.  She keeps it on her head as she asks us if we want what she’s selling.  Whatever it is has a lot of ‘r’s in the word, but we don’t understand what she’s saying, so we ask her to repeat, more slowly.  So slowly, with much deliberation, she puckers up her lips and rrrrrrolls out the words, with a big smile of accomplishment at the end.  Unfortunately we still don’t understand, but we all have good laugh, and she makes a sale, because we have to see what it is.  We still don’t know the name, but it’s a very sweet cake with coconut on top.  Verrrrry tasty! 

Our meals at Zipolite consisted of whatever our family was making - there was no 'menu'.  Mostly eggs and beans for breakfast, rice and beans for dinner.  Sometimes fish, but they tended to be small and bony, hardly worth the effort.  Always tortillas, and usually salsa, or a plate of sliced tomato and cucumber, maybe avocado.  On Christmas we asked our host if he had anything special on the menu.  He asked ‘Que quieren?’ (What do you want?)  “How about chicken?” we responded.  There were always several hens and a few roosters or pecking about in the yard, although they were decidedly on the scrawny side.  “Pollo es bueno” he replied, “muy rico”, and off he went.  A few minutes later we heard an awful squawking, and then a decisive thwack - and silence.  We wondered which chicken had met its maker - the black one with the scrawny neck, or the brown one with only one tail-feather?  Less than an hour later he set two plates of chicken, rice and beans before us with a flourish – ‘ta da’, your chicken, fresh as it gets.  Although there wasn’t a lot of meat on the poor bird’s bones, and what there was was on the tough side, it was tasty.  We washed it down with a cerveza for Ken and a limonada for me, and then moved on to shots of tequila.  Our host joined us, and soon half the gringos and locals on the beach had joined us too, sitting around a fire making merry.  And so that was Christmas.

 

Ken tells me he’s leaving in the next few days, heading to Acapulco, and then up through Taxco, Mexico City, and San Miguel de Allende.  He’s invited me to go with him.  I might just do that… .  Although I’ve enjoyed my time here, in the main my impression of Mexico is not altogether positive.  It’s not just the poverty.  Indeed for me it’s not the poverty at all: I’ve traveled in many countries where many – the majority – of the people are poor.  It’s the garbage everywhere, the dirt, the mangy dogs and the too many children who seem too little cared for – dirty, dressed in rags, or not at all, and always begging, for good reason – they’re hungry.  Although the beaches are beautiful they’re crammed with gringos – Norteamericanos and Europeans – loud and flashy, drinking, smoking dope, partying hard.  The Mexican workers who ‘wait’ on us, who serve us in cafes, bars, hotels, and stores, are slow and usually surly, clearly begrudging every thing they do, every step they take, on our behalf.  But who can blame them?  After years of exploitation, centuries of political upheaval, living under the shadow of its gargantuan neighbor, the USA, out of a stock of simple Indian folk, harassed first by the Spaniards and Europeans, then by the Norteamericanos, just on the edge of viability, eking out a subsistence from an arid landscape, having thrust upon them the values, attitudes and aspirations of a foreign culture, and having assimilated the worst (coke, cars and plastic), having lost touch with rituals and religion (old and new) – who can blame these people for their confusion, inhospitality and hostility?