Oaxaca

A recent run of south swells brought me to Oaxaca in southern Mexico and it’s numerous right hand sand points. I met up with Santa Cruz wave riders Josh Mulcoy, his legendary dad “Harbor” Bill Mulcoy, Adam “Rodent” Repogle and photographer Patrick Trefz who’d already been down for a week when I arrived. The forecast predicted a swell coinciding with my arrival but I was nervous that I’d missed the boat as my friends had already enjoyed a couple nice swells. After a couple unlucky surf trips this year including Morocco in February where I’d only surfed three times in two weeks, I kept my fingers crossed hoping that the best was yet to come

After deplaning, I was picked up and taken straight to the beach. The surf wasn’t big, but it was a great time on a fish and a nice warm up. The next morning was when the new swell was expected to arrive, so after dinner it was early to bed for a good night’s rest.

Up before dawn, we drove on a barely navigable mud bogged and semi-flooded dirt track headed for one of the more spectacular breaks around, a spot we hoped would be working on this new swell. Arriving at first light we found ourselves at the foot of high, cactus-lined cliff with long, perfect walls peeling along its rocky base. Before I even had the chance to locate my trunks, Josh, who’s mellow but famously excitably at the sight of good surf, was screaming for joy and had already jumped in the water and raced into the lineup.

We traded overhead waves, getting one or two tubes on almost every ride. Long, ultra clean and green barreling rights were running across the hard packed sand bottom, reminiscent of the fickle break Super Tubes in L.A. County but with no one around. We surfed and surfed until the wind came up then around lunch then headed to another break that would be groomed by the afternoon trade winds. Here we rode waves until dark ending the day where we started, at the beach.