The theme of my second month surfing in Puerto Escondido is progress and pain. Progress in that – while I’m still taking classes – I’m getting much better at reading the waves, paddling hard, and catching them on my own. I’m also getting a lot more comfortable on the board once I’m on the wave. The pain is for my right shoulder that I need to constantly stretch and do trigger point therapy on. Surfing for 5 days per week is putting a lot of strain on that shoulder. The good news is that it’s responding well to the therapy I’m doing, so it doesn’t appear chronic. And it actually felt a bit better towards the end of the second month.
Carrazalillo Beach
The beach where we’ve been surfing most of the time here is called Carrazalillo. It’s right behind Rinconada, the neighborhood in Puerto Escondido I’m staying in and where the surf shop is. Below are some pictures of the beach from a restaurant perched on the cliffs above.
The beach itself. You can see part of the stairs leading down to the beach in the middle right of the picture. There are 168 steps. We get to carry our boards down there every day and then back up again after we’ve surfed for a couple of hours…not the funnest thing in the world 🙂A set coming into the beach. One of the guys I surfed with for a couple of days had an Apple Watch on. It could record the distances he surfed. Some of the waves we were catching went on for over 240 feet, which is more than 70 meters. Nice!You can see partial view of where we catch the waves here on the far left and a broader view of the potential ride into the beach each time if the wave is right and we catch it correctly.
Below are the weekly surfing pictures from my second, and last, month in Puerto Escondido.
Week of May 9th
The guy next to me with the hair is a local they call Pina. He calls me “Kelly Slater”. Even when he sees me in town. It’s pretty funny. Here he’s slumming it with me on a smaller wave as he rides in for his last wave. Usually he’s way outside catching the larger waves.
Week of May 16
Week of May 23
On the day these pictures were taken the waves were too small at Carrazilillo so we drove to a nearby break called El Punto.
Nice catch on my own, but not the best ride!My instructor is outside of me. He wanted us to catch it both together. But when I saw the shape over my right shoulder I didn’t know it was him and I bailed thinking I cut someone off. Oh well, it would have been a nice ride together.Technically I cut off the girl in the red, but I didn’t see her catch the wave before I popped up. And technically the guy in the black cut me off. But we all seemed to get the most out of this party wave.I was a bit too far outside on this and needed to paddle harder, and pop up later.
Week of May 30
The class board on my last day. The orange star meant they’d be taking pictures. At this point I was catching waves on my own with some much needed guidance from the instructor confirming which waves to take and how to position myself. I’m not sure why the photo senquence ended here. I might have bailed to yield right of way to the girl on my right. If you look down, not straight ahead, when you take off……this happens 🙂Had to bail out since the girl on my right had right of way and I might have hit her if I kept going. In shallow water and bailed before I would have hit some rocks. I got up and the wave closed out from the left. I wasn’t good enough to power through it.
