Life is a Beach

Have you ever been told to relax and picture a place in your mind that is serene and tranquil, like at a psychologist or something? Well, if that ever happens to me I’ll know what to picture. We came across the best little beach I’ve ever known or even dared to imagine. It was a small beach, surrounded on two sides by large rock outcroppings. The one on the right (Western) side was full of caves and tunnels that were full of ocean. You could explore these scary caves with massive waves crashing around in them or you could wait for the one time a day when the tide hits just right and a spray shoots out of a little hole and reaches 20 meters into the air. Or you could snorkel in the “alberca,” the pool like piece of ocean that laps at the little beach and is full of neat looking fish. Or you could spend 80 percent of your week sitting in a hammock. That’s what I did last week. Sure we pushed up some massive sea-side cliffs with our weighted bikes, against the wind, for days, just to get there. That just makes it that much sweeter. Leaving was hard, but actually riding away was even harder. These cliffs in Michoacan make Northern California on HW 1 look tame.

Still, living life slowly is something that I never really experienced before. I still needed to cook food, but we did this in groups (of course). Otherwise, I would try not to make more than one thing to do each day, to fill my “docket”. One day I did laundry in the river, like the women in the village. Another day I tried (unsuccessfully) to patch my therma-rest knockoff from REI. I think I did that one thing four days, maybe. It’s okay though, I sleep in my hammock most of the time anyway. Meanwhile, it was great to pass so many hours chatting with other travellers, Mexican hippies, villagers, and, of course, pxl. Otherwise I would read, swim, or just chill out. Many days I didn’t leave that little beach at all.
Leisure seems to be something that is viewed as wasted time in the north, few people actually sit down and relax for any significant portion of their days. They say here that in the north, people live to work, while here in Mexico, they work to live. International travellers always express surprise or shock when they realize how little vacation people get in the USA. Also, from what I hear, we work the most hours per week. Get a life, I say. Or even better, get a hammock.