Surfing and sitting
10/08/2009 at 23:18 from (21.527881, -105.282218)
The following day was slated for more recovery. My stomach had settled down, but I was still tired and cranky from the past several days. The sky was overcast and a storm threatened to roll in during the day, so I opted to sit and watch as Marijana surfed. As she played in the waves, I chatted with the occupants of the beachfront palapa, a Swedish couple named Christian and Malin and an Italian named Massimiliano (Max, for short). We had briefly introduced ourselves the previous day (Malin was the young lady who had passed by just after the spider assault and Christian recognized Marijana as "the screaming girl") but I wanted to get to know them a little better.
As it turned out, Marijana and I were not the only ones supporting the local mosquito population. In fact, Christian was quick to point out that we could consider ourselves lucky. They had to deal with the additional annoyance of sand fleas, which, for their small size, carried a nasty and painful bite. We commisserated for awhile, swapping bug bite stories, trading hydrocortisone, and theorizing as to the effectiveness of the mosquito coils that purport to keep the critters at bay.
When Christian went off to join Marijana in the surf, I crawled up onto the porch of the beachfront cabaña and huddled with Malin and Max, snapping photos, admiring Pompi's surfing prowess, and discussing Marijana's tenacity (she was a surfing machine).
Soon, the darkening sky and three hours of solid surfing proved to be enough to drive Marijana and Christian back to shore. We sat and caught up on each other's stories. Christian is a nurse back in Sweden, and this trip was his adventurous vacation. Malin was a student of human rights who wanted to stay behind for a few weeks after Christian flew home in order to study Spanish and explore the country more. Max's real world persona was a quality assurance engineer. Despite being an almost perfect Italian stereotype, he spent most of his adult life working in Ireland, his adopted home.
As we chatted, we watched the locals pour out onto the beach in search of the blue crabs that skitter around at low tide, while Pompi kept a watchful eye on his nephew (we surmised), who made several playful attempts at boogie boarding. After a few hours of conversation, our new friends gathered up their things and prepared to meet an acquaintance in town.
We all got showered and dressed and headed into town, five white people on beach cruisers, meandering through the streets of San Blas. We resolved to meet up again the next day to head to La Tobara (the jungle boat tour that Dr. Ibarra had gushed about in Mazatlán) together. Marijana and I said our goodbyes and caught a quick bite at Beba's, then headed back for an early start on the night's sleep.
