My first trip to Mainland Mexico was in 1980. We traveled to La Ticla in Michoacán, Mexico; this is where my story begins...
The trip to Mainland Mexico began in Del Mar, California a suburb of San Diego. Del Mar, back in those days it was a relatively small surfing community. I was sharing an apartment with six friends; I got to sleep in the hallway.
At that time, my whole life was based on surfing the best possible waves for the least amount of money. Work and everything else took a back seat to seeking out the perfect wave in and around San Diego and northern Baja but that was all soon to change.
My roommate, Joel Fenno, had a brother who traveled to a place in Michoacán, Mexico called La Ticla. His brother, Jim, changed my life’s destination. Jim would tell us stories about this mysterious place called Mainland Mexico with its tropical warm water, picture perfect waves and a combination of both undiscovered paradise and the Wild, Wild West all in one.
That first trip opened my mind to many different things, a new lifestyle. Back then, I did not have a clue about life or what I wanted from it, I always went with the flow, no matter how loco it was. After hearing about Mainland, Mexico, I had to get there. Before this trip, I had only been to Mexico a few times no further than an hour or so across the border from Tijuana. To me, at that time, you might as well have sent me to Mars because I knew nothing about Mexico. I only knew that the people looked different, spoke really fast in a language that I could not understand (QUE, WHAT?), I shouldn't drink the water and it was dangerous down there.
After hearing about Jim’s trips and getting totally stoked we worked on a plan. At that time, I was broke as usual so definitely making money had to be included in my plan for my first Mexico trip. My only source of income was going onto golf courses suited up in a black wet suit in the middle of the night getting into the freezing cold ponds on private golf courses and looking for golf balls that golfers had lost. We would get 200 to 300 a night and the next day we would take the balls to a local laundry mat to be washed before taking them to be sold to a local golf course pro shop. When we would walk into the laundry mat people would think they were on Candid Camera. They would ask us what we were doing and we would respond we are washing our balls and then they would ask us why and we would say "because they are dirty, can’t you see?" A lot of times we could not stop laughing it was so funny and crazy. Many times we would sell them back to the same golf course that we got them from. By the way, we did this without permission so we were at the mercy of getting busted at any time and we did have our close calls. I remember one night security was waiting for us at our car so I had to walk / run home from La Costa Golf course to Encinitas (approx. 5 miles) in the middle of the night, soaking wet, freezing in my wet suit, no shoes with wetsuit booties and trying to not let the cops see me (what a challenge in North San Diego County, it seems like there is a cop on every corner); I did finally make it home. I could do a book on just the whole golf ball thing; it was insane.
Well, after coming up with about $500.00, I purchased an old junk heap car for $200.00 from one of my roommates. We would soon use that old junk heap to take our Mainland Mexico journey. Buying the car left me with $300.00 in spending money for a one month’s stay in Mexico. The plan was for the four of us to drive to Mainland Mexico and surf La Ticla. We loaded up the car with our surfboards, massive jars of peanut butter and from what I can remember a large box of Top Ramen. After about a 3 day or so drive we arrived at our destination La Ticla and all I can vividly remember is surfing from sunrise to sunset with a hammock siesta in between. That was my first Mainland experience, we stayed for our planned month and arrived back in San Diego Mexed out; we had the fever. I'm just guessing but if you have read this far you have it too. Bienvenidos a Nexpa.
