Melaque: Parting thoughts

After a four-month intermission back in the States, I am finally back in the rhythm of life on the road. I am back to collecting passport stamps and SIM cards, back to living out of a backpack, back to hugging my surfboard for dear life on city buses, back to the daily bombardment of a foreign language entering my ears and, in turn, gliding off my tongue.

It’s been six weeks since I restarted my journey in Mexico and called Melaque my new, temporary home. I haven’t been updating my internet presence much because life here has been pretty routine. I’m working quite a bit more than the previous two-year journey I undertook. Perhaps I finally solved the formula for a life of full-time travel. It’s not that things are not exciting here in Melaque — I love the sensory stimulus of experiencing a foreign country (maybe too much) — but there haven’t been many flashy moments to write home about. I’ve mainly been waking up early, stretching on my yoga mat, surfing the gutless reef in Barra de Navidad, heading to cafes and writing, and cooking large batches of beans, rice, and veggies. I watched the Super Bowl in Spanish. I stood on top of a volcano. I planned out the next few months of my life. And I disappeared for a weekend of surfing down south on the remote coast of Michoacán.

So, instead of an uninspiring post that rambles about what I’ve done, I decided to focus this post on what I’ve been thinking. Solo travel gives you abundant time with your thoughts and few distractions. I find that the change of scenery provokes new ideas and resurfaces familiar themes. Thus, I’ll continue with three things that are on my mind.

Firstly, the last few weeks have underlined how completely relative and arbitrary the fun of surfing can be. Pipeline great Gerry Lopez wrote a book titled Surf Is Where You Find It. It was an ok read, but not mind-blowing writing, however, the title rings true for me. Mainland Mexico is a surfer’s paradise, but the Melaque area is a somewhat black hole where the surf is mediocre, inconsistent, or hard to access, especially during the winter months. After not surfing for a few weeks, I became desperate enough to give Barra de Navidad’s mellow longboard wave a shot on my shortboard. I surprised myself with how much fun I had surfing a wave that I usually wouldn’t bat an eye at. It brought back memories of surfing similarly feeble, yet entertaining, waves in the Mediterranean of Lebanon and the Caribbean of Colombia. But after a weekend of surfing powerful waves down in Michoacán, I returned to Barra with little appetite to ride its ankle biters. Surf is what you make it, completely depending on the lens you are looking through.

And on a similar thread, I’ve been thinking a lot about what surfing means to me. Several months back I published a story about how, as surfers, we start to form our identity around the sport and as we continually go through the motions, it’s easy to lose the fun in it, or, at least, it’s more difficult to achieve the euphoria that drew you to the sport in the first place. For that reason, sometimes I enjoy little breaks from the ocean to reset my love for the sport. I unshackle myself from my brain’s relentless churning gears that ponder where and when I should be surfing.

Becoming a regular at the aforementioned dinker wave in Barra has been fun because I’ve got to know many of the characters who live in Barra and surf the spot. There are gringos, Barra natives, YouTube sailing influencers who live on their boats in the harbor, and a DJ from Guadalajara who left behind a life of drugs and raving for a booze-less pursuit of surfing on the coast. I have been blown away by their friendliness and positivity. It’s revitalizing to know that there are such affable surfing lineups that still exist. One of the fellow gringos whose family owns a beachfront house invited me out to breakfast and let me ride his longboard after knowing me for about 30 minutes. And the aforementioned ex-raver also put an odd amount of trust in me and after one surf session together invited me to join him on a surf trip down south (which ended up falling through, unfortunately). It’s worth highlighting that without a surfboard, these people would all be strangers to me.

Moving on. Secondly, I often ponder the correct amount of online self-promotion. I also touched on this topic on my blog a couple months ago as I explained why I kept a relatively low profile on social media while I traveled the globe. Then I came across this article titled ‘Everyone’s a sellout now.’ It essentially explained that in the social media era we live in, no matter what you do in life, you can’t avoid the necessity to promote yourself and create a brand. The example it leads off with is a writer who has a great book proposal that the editors loved, but not a big enough social media presence to sell the book. As a writer myself, it rekindled this internal debate that I’ve been alluding to.

I, admittedly, put a half-assed effort into my self-promotion. I warily understand that it is a necessary evil if I want to have any chance of progressing my work/career as a writer. I also understand that building a social media following is a consuming, onerous task that, for most, does not end in stardom and is a sure-fire path to burnout and depression. It’s not that I am afraid of trying to create a social media following and failing, it’s that I am hesitant to go through the process of becoming absorbed in social media promotion and the all-too-obvious negative side effects that come with it. I prefer to tread with caution and find a middle ground where I have an online presence, which tells editors that I am relevant and exist, but doesn’t consume my life. (If anyone successfully finds this balance, please let me know.)

On the other hand, sometimes I think that a ‘lucky’ break is as important as the countless hours it takes to build a brand. I look at my favorite author, Jon Krakauer, who was an established writer, but didn’t become an award-winning author of best-selling books until he happened to be involved in one of the deadliest days ever on Mount Everest. His book of the event, Into Thin Air, launched a string of successful books (I’ve read them all and highly recommend them). There is a writing quote I came across out there somewhere, by whom I don’t remember, that says something like, “to be an interesting writer, live an interesting life.” I’ll stick to that line of thought for now until the looming and dreaded day arrives when I have to start making TikToks.

Now, my last thought: life out of a backpack truly does slow down. I can imagine exact moments in my past when I was working at an office and thinking how fast my twenties were going by, which, of course, is really just perspective. As far as life goes, I had it pretty good with a job in the surf industry and enough financial stability to live near the beach in San Diego. But I still remember feeling like life was going by too fast and I wasn’t truly making the most out of it.

Thus, I first had this realization when I started this journey back in 2021: life really does slow down on the road. I don’t really feel like the last two years have “flown by” like the cliché says. When you are traveling alone there is a lot of downtime. I find that I have way more time to write, more time to observe my surroundings, more time to sit on a random park bench and open a book, and, on the other hand, more time to waste scrolling NBA drama on Twitter (sorry, ‘X’), too. I feel somewhat more in control of the accelerating spiral I was previously in under the traditional office job/car payment/student loans/rent paying life. I also realize that this is not a perpetually sustainable lifestyle and, someday, I’ll have to learn to control the relative speed of life if/when I return to the world of salaried office jobs. C’est la vie.

I love Mexico. It’s like I’ve had some predestined connection to the country ever since my Mexican classmate Felipe taught me how to say ‘pinche pendejo’ in fourth grade, ever since I was ‘forced’ to take Spanish classes in high school, ever since the first step I took beyond the point of no return in Tijuana, and ever since I first dated a Mexican girl in college. I’ve traveled the world quite a bit now, and Mexico and its great diversity of people, traditions, and nature have a special charm that keeps pulling me back. But even with all the dozens of times I’ve visited Mexico (I’ve been to 12 states), now I am actually stepping into new territory this week in Melaque. I’ve never been in Mexico for this long — six weeks and counting. I previously spent five weeks in the country in 2020, but never more than that. So, what’s next? After this wonderful stint in Melaque, I’ll be hopping on a bus up to the western highlands to spend a few weeks in the metropolis of Guadalajara. Then after a dose of city life, I’ll be back to the coast for some surfing down south. No complaints on my end yet. Mexico has so much to offer and I am still just happy to be here.