Sayulita

(Originally posted October 2015)

Three-day weekends are the greatest. In general, weekends are awesome and an extra day makes it really awesome. We chose to spend our three-day weekend in Sayulita, Nayarit. A four-hour drive and we’re in a small beach town on the Pacific Coast.

After school Friday we load up the car with Nicole, Vicki, Emily, Kort, Haddie (their dog) and myself. After minimal traffic, plus many curves, we arrive in Sayulita and are instantly hit with the heat and humidity. Our hotel, fortunately, has AC. We stay at Maconda, with two rooms and a common kitchen and patio area.

Just a few minutes walk past the baseball field (yes, a baseball field, in a country so focused on soccer), over a bridge and we’re in the main plaza. The town’s few main streets are packed with restaurants, surf and beach shops and small hotels. The central plaza has a gazebo and all the trees are wrapped in green, silver and red tinsel, either left over from September’s Independence Day celebrations or really early for Christmas.

Friday night we eat dinner at a restaurant on the plaza while listening to the live cumbia music from a local band in the gazebo. Most of the team orders seafood, a quality choice when you can practically hear the ocean waves from the dinner table. We head back early for wine and “Cards Against Humanity” since we’re wiped out from the workweek.

Saturday morning, I wake up early and walk around the quiet town streets. A few early surfers are out on the beach and some tourists are strolling out for their morning coffee fix. Once the rest of the team is up and moving, we eat breakfast at the recommended “Chocobanana” near the plaza. And, wow, do we eat! They serve a hardy “Big Boy Platter” with enough variety to rival Perkins Tremendous Twelve, and exponentially exceed it in quality. After breakfast, I convince the team to take a jungle hike over to another beach, inaccessible to cars. We duck under palm fronds and around tree trunks. Haddie runs up and down the cool stream.

Next stop, another beach! We hike our gear over to Playa de los muertos, which in English is “Beach of the Dead,” hopefully named for the beautiful, small cemetery we pass on the way, rather than for any infamous waves, shipwrecks or other dangers. This beach actually is much calmer for swimming and has fewer visitors than the main strip. This afternoon, Jen, another teacher and friend, joins up with the group. We read, eat tamales, swim and nap all afternoon. The only large group of visitors is a Christian group that holds a mass baptism in the swimming area.

After showering off the beach day and resting up, we head out for a rocking night out in Sayulita. We eat dinner and enjoy music in the plaza. Jen used to live in Sayulita and knew where to steer us. We hang out at this one bar, which was really the size of a closet but sets up tables in the street. The town plaza also has their own music, a DJ playing banda and cumbia until 1:00 in the morning. Everyone dances, drinks, laughs and enjoys well into the night hours.

Sunday morning brings us back to the breakfast food of “Chocobanana” and we settle ourselves on the main beach, with bigger waves and tons of surfers. I duck off to find a bar to watch the Packers win. In the evening we eat a delicious dinner at the restaurant owned by our hotel’s Canadian owner. Happy Thanksgiving Canada!

Monday morning we rush off to enjoy our last few hours at the beach. Jen suggested that I join her out surfing and although I’ve never tried it before, decide that, sure, why not. After getting the required picture with the surfboards, we walk down to the edge of the water. She talks me through getting out past the waves. Two steps into the water, and a wave completely takes me down and flips me around. This initial step earns me with a grapefruit sized bruise on my upper thigh today. Once we get out there, I really enjoy it! I was hoping my logrolling skills would pay off, but first I need to get standing on my feet for more than two seconds. I do make it to my knees a couple of times. I can’t wait to try again on the next beach trip.

All good things must come to an end. Monday afternoon we shower up, load up the car and crank the air conditioning for the drive back to Guadalajara. The drive is smooth until the last two hours where we run into major traffic returning to the city.

Side note: Our day off of school was not in celebration of Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of the Americas. Others in Guadalajara also had a long weekend because of the Virgin de Zapopan, which includes a procession across the city, disrupting traffic patterns, especially around the school.