I originally wrote this story about two years ago as a posting to the alt.surfing newsgroup on Usenet, then revised it for my surf club newsletter, In Trim, which I edited and produced for 2-1/2 years while serving on the Club's Board of Directors.
THE MEXICAN MALIBU.
by Tom Tweed
It was 1967, the `Summer of Love', and I'd just finished my sophomore year at UCSD in a downward spiral of academic burnout caused by excessive surfing, partying, chasing women and protesting. My modus operandi for school was to show up for the first class, the midterm and the final, spending the rest of the time at the beach. Needless to say, it wasn't a formula for good grades, and I was sinking into academic probation. The Vietnam war was raging, I had turned 18 the previous summer and dutifully registered with my local draft board, so losing my student deferment meant certain induction.
Was I worried? Nah! Six or eight of us were living commune-style in a big, old beachfront house on Neptune Place with a perfect view of Big Rock and WindanSea out of the bay window in the front room, surfing all the time, partying every night- who had time to worry? Life was good. Then some surf hipster drifted through one day and filled our ears with tales of the "Mexican Malibu"- stories about a perfect, right point break peeling for half a mile, never sectioning. "It's better than Malibu, man!" he claimed. "It's a few clicks outside a little town called San Blas, just south of Mazatlan. Ya can't miss it!" The next day we put our heads together and decided we weren't going to Haight-Ashbury after all, we were going on safari.
Two of my bro's, Harry Blackwell and Bob Trolese, had just purchased war-surplus 4X Powerwagons- a '47 Dodge troop carrier and a '52 ambulance, so in between sessions, we prepped them for the journey south. We got some new single-fin, down-railed, round-pin, 8' fun-guns shaped by Hoy Runnels at G&S (state-of-the-art at the time), got our long hair cut short (since we had heard that "hippies" were not well understood or accepted by our neighbors to the south, and we might be refused visas), and set out for Matanchen Bay in a 3-car convoy, with the last-minute addition of another friend's 2WD Chevy van.
The first wakeup call came in the Sonoran desert when we blew 3 of the 8 new retreads we put on the 4X's from the heat. We should have bought better tires, but we were on a budget. After replacements put quite a dent in the cash reserves, we were on our way again, traveling at night when it was cooler. Unfortunately, the old Powerwagons were geared so low that they'd only do about 45-50 mph at top end, so the trip took forever. That probably saved our lives, though, considering road conditions at night on the Mexican highways, with trucks and buses driving at 80 mph down the centerline and cattle wandering across the road.
We finally pulled into Mazatlan after many nights of "white-knuckle" driving, and surfed some fun waves at Cannon's with nobody else out. We found a nice little trailerpark/campground north of town at a spot called Lupe's, and settled into a comfortable routine of surf/sleep/eat/drink/explore for a couple of weeks. It was paradise- warm water, cheap food and beer (the drinking age was only eighteen!), with a fun little left point/beachbreak setup right out front. The only hazards were the afternoon thunderstorms that would roll off the inland mountains and march across the beach and out to sea, sending searing lightning bolts cracking down, often too close for comfort, and the purple spiny urchins that covered the seafloor. You had to hope you didn't get bounced off the bottom, and always remember not to put your feet down if you lost your board. I spent a few evenings picking little purple spines out of my body, as did everybody else. Other than that, we were in surfdog heaven.
After one particularly fine sunset session, we headed over to the little beachfront bar/palapa next door and pigged out on the fresh shrimp cocktails and ceviche they served, downing more than a few Cuervos and lime/salt shooters as well, and stumbled back to our camp after dark, taking the shortest route. There was a waist-high rock wall separating the bar from the campground that we had to traverse, and I set my right hand down on it and vaulted over it to the other side. As I pulled my hand away, I felt a sharp, stinging, pinching pain on my palm, at the base of my fingers. "OW! I think I cut myself!" I said to the others, as we continued on in the darkness. I figured I was a victim of some "Mexican barbed wire" (broken shards of glass and bottles imbedded in mortar on the top of brick or rock walls as an economical anti-intrusion device), but I didn't remember seeing any of it on that wall before, and I could not feel any open gash or any wetness from bleeding on my hand.
The stinging became more intense, though, as we walked up to our campsite and fired up a Coleman lantern to take a better look at it. When we got some light on it, I could see that there was no open wound, just a small, red welt at the base of my ring finger. "Aw, it's nothing," said the others, "just a bee or wasp sting or something." But the pain continued, all out of proportion to the wound, and it was spreading. My hand was starting to feel numb and I could feel an aching in my elbow joint when I moved my arm. Describing these symptoms as they developed to my friends, I finally started getting some sympathy and concern. We walked up to the campground manager's shack and told him what had happened, in our broken `Spanglish'. It took awhile to figure out what he was saying, but eventually, through a little pantomime routine, we deduced that I had been stung by a scorpion, a fairly common event in that part of the world, and that I should get my butt over to the Red Cross aid station in town.
We all piled into the `52 ambulance (what else?) and took a 45-minute Keystone Cops adventure through the streets of Mazatlan trying to find the clinic. On arrival, I was beginning to feel some pain in my shoulder joint, as the toxin worked its way up my arm. I was starting to get a little worried. The waiting room was jammed up with patients in various conditions, all waiting for treatment. When we finally saw a doctor, he spoke very good English, and we learned that several of the others waiting were also victims of scorpion stings, that there was a fairly effective anti-venom treatment, but that I would have to stay there for a couple hours afterwards because of the risk of allergic reaction.
My bro's were happy to hear I would be OK, but they weren't too keen on hanging in the clinic for several hours. "All right, Tweed, you're going to be fine. Why don't ya just meet us over at the Pacifico Brewery when ya get out, OK? It's just a coupla blocks from here, we'll be waiting for ya..." they casually informed me and were gone.
At nineteen, you're pretty much immortal, or at least you think you are. As I lay on a metal gurney in the sweaty, overcrowded Cruz Roja clinic in downtown Mazatlan, with some kind of toxic scorpion venom creeping up my arm towards my heart, I had a couple of doubts. The pain wasn't that bad, in fact my hand had become numb, and I only felt a twinge or two in my elbow and shoulder joints when I moved them, so I was fairly comfortable, physically. Once I had been diagnosed, the doctor and nurses moved quickly to treat me. I had never had a lot of faith in modern medicine, tending to believe in the old adage that "God heals the patient and the doctor takes the fee." In my short life to that point, I had only scant experience with serious disease or medical emergencies, consisting of some chipped teeth, a few broken fingers, a broken wrist, some lacerations that needed to be stitched up, and a tonsilectomy. My confidence in the capability of this "third-world" clinic to properly care for me was a little sketchy, at best, but my discomfort was mostly mental.
When the doctor came up to me carrying a hypodermic that looked like a kit some veterinarian would use to put down a horse, I was really stressing, but it was too late to turn back. The syringe was one of those old-fashioned, glass, re-usable units, about 2" in diameter and 8" long- a wicked piece, filled with some nasty looking amber fluid which he claimed was the anti-venom, and a needle the size of a small faucet. I was freaking but managed to remain outwardly calm as he tied off my left arm with some surgical tubing and mainlined the whole gob slowly into a vein at my elbow. He followed this up with a big intramuscular shot of antihistamine, explaining that this was a precaution against allergic reaction to the antidote. "Now you must just rest, and we will observe you," he said.
Easier said than done. Within minutes of the IV injection, World War III began to break out in my body. The scorpion toxin climbing up my right arm met the anti-venom solution geezed into my left arm and all hell broke loose. I had already been perspiring a bit, as it was a typically hot and humid tropical evening, but now I began to sweat buckets, with an uncontrollable shivering caused by chills and then hot flashes. I became dizzy and woozy, then my vision began to play tricks- the lights seemed to dim a little, everything got fuzzy, with a yellowish tinge, sometimes with purple highlights around the edges, and I lost my peripheral vision. Unable to even sit up anymore, I stared upwards at a bare light fixture on the ceiling. It looked like it was far away in a dimly lit tunnel. These were not your friendly chemicals taking over my metabolism. I never quite passed out, but I came close to the total "black whirlos" during the next 30-40 minutes, and then it was over. The feverish shaking subsided, my vision came back, and the pain in my armpit went away, leaving only some residual numbness in my hand. I was going to live!
As soon as I felt better, I wanted to get out of there, but the doctor insisted on watching me for another hour to be sure there were no complications. Finally, he released me, I paid about $3 US for the emergency room visit, and took a cheap cab ride to the brewery, where I walked shakily into the bar to find my buds well into their fifth or sixth pitcher, partying with the locals at a big, round table. "All right, Tweed, you made it! Have a beer!" Their concern was underwhelming, but I must admit, the experience had seemed much more trivial through their eyes, and compassion is not a well-developed trait among the young and immortal. We were more used to ruthless criticism and practical jokes in our interactions, even as the closest of friends. That's just the way it was. It was how we were raised. You just act as merciless and cruel as you can to all your buddies, laugh as they squirm, and when it's your turn to be the butt of the joke, you hold your mud and never show any emotion.
I was feeling pretty drained and burnt out, but I sat quietly for a bit and sipped on a beer while they finished their pitchers, then we traded in the couple of cases of empty bottles that someone had had the presence of mind to throw into the ambulance before we left camp for a couple of fresh full cases, a routine provisioning maneuver, and we returned to our camp.
The next week we left for San Blas, looking to experience the fabled rights of Matanchen Bay. We quickly discovered, however, the one detail our hipster buddy had failed to mention- the town of San Blas is built next to a rivermouth, fronting a huge, stagnant estuary, or swamp, in plain English. The bugs were horrendous. The mosquitos were big and aggressive, but they could be controlled pretty well by long clothing and nets. The killer pests were the jejenes, or "no see-ems." They were so small they would just land on your mosquito net, walk right through the holes, then dive bomb and bite you all night. The worst thing was the swell had dropped and there were no waves bigger than 1' (on the face) for about a week, although we could tell the set-up was excellent, as they peeled perfectly in all their dinky glory around the point. This is not what we had envisioned. There had been consistent 2'-3' swell (4'-6' faces) every day up in Mazatlan, and we had become spoiled. After a week of hot, hellish boredom- sweating, itching and scratching our bug bites- we packed up and split, telling ourselves "it's the journey, not the destination." Sometimes you score, sometimes you don't. We hit the road again, back thru the mountains to Guadalajara, Lake Chapala, and down to Puerto Vallarta, then across the country thru the worst traffic in the world in Mexico City to Veracruz, stopping at the national museums and the ancient ruins at Teotihuacan to soak up some culture. But that's another story (or five).
I ran out of money and time at the end of September, and headed back from Veracruz to renew my student deferment, traveling back with the guy in the Chevy van, whose whiny, complaining personality had begun to get on everybody else's nerves. We pulled into San Diego with $1.85 between us. We had to trade the spare tire in Tecate for the gas to make the last leg.
The other four guys continued on in the Powerwagons through Yucatan, selling one there, then through Centro and down to Panama, where the Darien Gap prevented them from driving further south. They sold the last truck rather than ferry it around, and a couple more of the guys flew back to the States. Bob and Harry continued on, hitchhiking down the Pan-American Highway through South America. They split up in Bolivia (or was it Peru?) and finally ended up as crewmen on two different sailing yachts out of Brazil and Argentina, making their way back to the U.S. by sea. I didn't see either one of them again for 3-4 years.
A year after I returned, my ring finger still felt like it had gone to "sleep", that sort of tingling sensation you get when the circulation is cut off or you bang your "funny bone" on something. The nerves in the finger regenerated slowly, so that finally only the very tip was tingling, and even that went away about 16 months later. At the same time, one of the urchin spine tips that I had failed to dig out of the bottom of one foot finally surfaced on top of my big toe in a small blister. When my body expelled that little bit of bleached-out spine, the last of the physical effects of the trip were over. The memories lasted much longer....
