This past weekend, as noted, at the urging of Sr. Pato Patiño we headed back down to La Ticla, Michoacan for another quick weekend surf jaunt. Thankfully, the trip down was uneventful and all surfboards made it to La Ticla unscathed (as opposed to last time). We met George and Gris and Amy and Marco, late on Friday afternoon and got there early enough for a Friday sunset session. sweet.
Unfortunately, the river was in full-flow mode from all the summer rain and debris of natural and man-made devices were everywhere. The water was a chocolate milk consistency, I couldn’t see my board a foot under the water and I don’t even wanna think about what the upstream run-off had brought with it. It was pretty gnarly, but never the ones to let things like bad water quality get in the way, we hopped in at the first chance and made the long swim out to the break. Since the river was flowing pretty heavily to both sides of the river mouth, getting out to the break was more then tough. Incoming waves hit the outgoing river, creating walls of frothy, white water, hard to penetrate. On my first attempt it took me at least 20 minutes of furious paddling and fruitless duck diving. On Saturday morning, I spent 20 minutes swimming out, only to catch a small wave in and then spend another 20 minutes paddling back out, that time I didn’t make it back to the line-up. I drifted into shore and redoubled my efforts after taking a sweet, long break.
Friday, we had steady shoulder to head high waves. Saturday, shoulder high. and Sunday, head high with occasional overhead sets. It was still a pain to catch any of them, the competition was horrible as over a hundred heads clogged the break on Saturday. You had to be at the crest of the wave with the 5 other dudes who got there before you. I don’t know why, maybe it’s the open ocean, shifting peak nature of La Ticla, but each time I’ve been there, I’ve psyched myself out. This time, I had several potentially really good waves that I just couldn’t commit to. I blamed it on this or that but truth be told I just couldn’t catch a groove. Ticla still remains elusive. I did manage to catch some sweet rides, but nothing mind-blowing. I’m just a green-eared sheltered-bay surfer, i love my beach and point breaks, spots that can’t hold more then twenty people. Ticla is a great challenge to overcome this slight complacency.
Overall, it was a great weekend, camping at La Ticla is always fun and we got ourselves a nice new hammock. I surfed some good waves and collected a bunch of really interesting rocks. the perfect weekend.
