A Little Vortex Called Chacahua
My adventures on a hidden little surf island amongst the mangroves, crocodiles and the warmest waters of the Pacific Ocean
This week last year, I was in Chacahua for the second time in one month. It’s a small, rural island off the coast of Oaxaca, separated from mainland by lagoons filled with mangroves. When someone asked me about my favorite beaches and surf trips I had been on, this place definitely made top of my list. In this hidden surf oasis, my time was wild, beautiful and full of so much serendipity. I’ll just never forget my time here and the people I met, many who I assume I’ll never see again. My whole trip there I had no service except for this chunk of sand under a palapa in front of the hotel near my hammock campground I was staying at. Once every day or two I’d meander to this spot in the sand to see if I could get service and talk to my friends and family for a moment. When I wasn’t sitting on the beach staring at the ocean (as one does when you’re living on the shore of a hidden surf paradise), I tried my best to write when inspiration hit. Here are some stories from my notepad archives from one year ago in memory of one of my favorite places I ever got stuck in for much longer than I anticipated.
One day, I’m sitting on the water out in the line up in front of my camp. I’m floating on my board next to my two new Argentinian buddies I met in town after bumping into them daily somewhere on the beach or in town. I appreciated being out on the water with them. They’re always smiling, being playful and holding a kind and calm energy in a place where it’s not uncommon for other surfers to have a passive aggressive (or directly aggressive) attitude. Being a woman who often surfs alone, I’m grateful to be around individuals with this energy on the water. Ever since I started surfing as a kid, in crowds like these, no matter where I am, there’s always that *one guy* who just has to say something to make that one woman (or newbie or foreigner or insert-another-demographic-here) uncomfortable on the water. Over the decades I’ve definitely noticed surf culture become more friendly and inclusive, but even so, there is still a lot of room for improvement and I’m grateful for these unspoken allies.
In this moment, it had just started raining, and after a day full of strong sun and inescapable heat, the clouds and the cooler temperatures brought by the rain were more than welcome. We heard thunder in the distance, just over the mountains on the island behind us. Lightning was striking down to the ground far off in the distance as we watched to see how close it might get to where we were in the water. Despite the storm, the waves are my kind of perfect and the longest I have ever gotten to ride.
Glancing between the rain, the storm clouds, and the lightning, I look over at the two Argentinians and we all start laughing at the magic of the moment. The relief from the heat, the beauty of the rain, and the mesmerizing storm that is not yet too close for comfort while on the water. I tell them the only thing we need to make this moment even more perfect is a rainbow. Not more than 30 seconds later we turn around to see a complete rainbow arching from the mountains behind us all the way to where we sat on the ocean, seeming to land only 10 meters in front of us. So close, it felt like we could touch it. We started screaming and laughing at this pure Oaxacan magic. Moments like this were so frequent from my entire experience on the Oaxacan coast. There’s always a beautiful sea creature appearing right as you mention them or a natural event that might have heard your call for a moment of mysticism.
After several moments taking in the rainbow, I caught my next wave that was the longest one of my life. I rode the water all the way down the entire length of the beach before getting dropped off at the shore of the palapa I was camping at. I screamed to myself the whole time in disbelief: “I can’t believe I’m still going!”, before I jumped out of the water, dropped off my hat and shirt I no longer needed, invited one of the other surfers to come join us in the water and then paddled back out myself. We surfed until after sunset until darkness came and I slowly let myself drift back to shore. I went up to my hammock on top of the palapa, my home for the week for 70 pesos per night, to take the view in. Rosy pinks and a spiral of purples and blues filled the sky. A cool breeze blowing through the air, kicking the heat of the day. I sat in my hammock taking this moment in and feeling so alive and grateful for this experience. I had just officially quit my job that week, after procrastinating emailing my boss during my leave of absence I knew I would never return from. I may not have had any plans for what I’m doing for the rest of this year. But I reveled in what a beautiful freakin life I get to live.
That same night, I lived through what was one of those travel stories that everyone is waiting to hear when they ask about my adventures. The ridiculous and dramatic ones that involve a kind of chaos which everyone survived. My fellow hammock friends and I had gone to bed early that night. 9:00pm, in the hammocks, lights out and quiet. Two of the girls were planning to wake up at 3:30am to go see the bioluminescence in the laguna. I was in my hammock, tired and calm from a day in the heat and an evening surf session. I listened to a short podcast followed by a meditation and was deep asleep by 9:30. Just before 11:00pm, I was woken up to my hammock violently rocking to strong winds blowing. Stronger than the night before, this time it blew my blankets out of the hammock and flung my belongings from the deck. Still partly asleep, I tried to ignore the heavy winds and go back to sleep after bundling up a little bit more. It had been a little stormy the night before and I assumed it would once again quickly pass. But instead, the wind got even stronger as the rain moved in on us, blowing rain sideways under the palapa roof, soaking us and all our things instantly.
Eventually I decided to give up on my sleep attempts and started laughing/screaming to the others “what the fuck is happening?!”. How odd it is to wake up outside and in the middle of a strong tropical storm. I put my glasses on to get sight of what was actually happening, but as they were pelted with rain drops, I couldn’t see anything anyway. With blurred vision I reached in the dark for a light to find my things to see if I could put them in a somewhat dryer place. As I screamed through the wind, my palapa mates were also getting up out of the hammocks, having decided to give up their sleepy state as well. We all agreed we would have preferred to sleep through this storm, but being outside, just a mere few meters from the ocean, this was not possible. After collecting our things and throwing them in the center of the palapa, the only place not entirely drenched in rain, we looked at each other in amazement. How did we get to this moment? We chose this life and life definitely chose us back and wanted to make an adventure out of it.
We laughed in disbelief that this was actually happening. AGAIN. The night before we were woken up by very strong wings, minus the entire storm and rain. That night we all just bundled up more and tried to sleep in our violently rocking hammocks, not wanting to give up the warmth and comfort we had created for ourself. This second night was different. There was no escaping the storm and truly no where to go. The thunder slowly made its way right over our palapa, deeply rattling the buildings and bringing with it the biggest and closest lightening strikes I had seen all summer. Tropical storms were common this time of year on the Oaxacan coast, but this was my first time having to endure one entirely outside.
The 3 of us girls stood together in the center of the palapa laughing in disbelief and screaming as the lightening struck all around us, lighting up the whole sky. It was pitch black in the middle of the night, but with every strike, we could see everything from all the cabañas on the beach to the mountains that stretched from both sides of us. I had just met these girls a few days ago. One a 19-year-old from Germany and the other a 23-year-old from England, both in the beginning weeks of traveling through Latin America for 8-10 months . And now, here we were, huddled together, bonded by our desire for a buddy in survival through the night. There was nowhere to go, at least it wasn’t safe to escape the palapa with the lightning striking so close. Plus, who is going to wake up and give a few soaked strangers shelter in the middle of the night?
After nearly an hour of standing wet and in the dark watching the storm, we decided to try our best to lay down and get comfortable enough to maybe sleep. All hammocks were soaked, many of our belongings wet, but we gathered what we could to get warm enough to maybe fall asleep. Our German friend had brought with her a 70L bag and insisted on loaning us her stuff she brought for all climates on her journey. The other two of us only came with small backpacks having left our bags in Puerto for this quick island trip. The German dug through her bag and pulled out wool socks, pants, jackets, and beanies insisting that we wear them. We cozied up in borrowed, damp clothes and tried to drift off to sleep.
In the morning, the hammock camp owner heard our tales of survival on the deck of the palapa and felt bad he slept through it, cozy and warm in his tent on another deck. Normally a bit of a curmudgeon, he made us warm cinnamon tea and offered to help us organize our windswept belongings.
Despite the chaos, potential danger and lack of sleep, I love this memory. This hidden little coast is quite the trek from town: a bus to another bus to a taxi to a water taxi to a truck that finally delivers you to this rural surf oasis. I decided to go back to Chacahua a couple of weeks later for the weekend and ended up staying for nearly two weeks EVEN WITH having to survive another (worse) tropical storm while sleeping outside in the hammock.
I told everyone this is such an easy place to get trapped. Not literally because there are always boats crossing the mangroves back to mainland (with the exception of the pause for tropical storm passing), but because there is this kind of hypnotic magic in the air that makes it impossible to not indulge the slow-paced and simple life. Over the course of that month, I stayed there just a few weeks but looking back it truly felt like I lived there for months. During my time in Chacahua I survived multiple tropical storms, made so many new groups of friends, surfed the longest waves of my life, convinced my Australian friend to save a baby crocodile with me, got the news that my friend back home had died in a freak accident, got news that multiple other friends were newly pregnant, healed a broken heart & so much more. It’s one of those places that coming and going feels like a time warp. One that it’s hard to take the step over the threshold. And both times I left, it was on a whim, when I heard the last colectivo of the day was about to pass by. With a moment’s notice, I grabbed my backpack and board and jumped into the back of the truck that would start my journey back home to my cozy beach studio. All while screaming goodbyes to people I might never see again, but knowing how Oaxacan magic works, there’s a part of me that is certain we’ll cross paths again.
