Stoner's Surf Camp. Hammocks on the beach under a pelapa (palm leaf) roof for 50 pesos, surf lessons by Mexico's longboard champion. Wooden kitchen with a range of chilli sauces. A variety of friendly dogs.
Sleeping in a hammock is so good our body clocks actually morph to absorb another few hours of sleep. In the same way I used to persistently doze in my university room until I ached, I take up the soul nurturing habit of lying in my hammock long before I need to sleep and hours after I wake, listening to the rhythm of the sea and squinting against the low sun reaching in under the palm branches above.
In the mornings the mist hangs in white drifts over the sand, the sea a pale mirror under a vague, glowing sky.We pass days on the long yellow scoop of sand, swimming and hooping and idly cooking ourselves extended afternoon feasts of quesadillas and banana milk. We dish out hula hoop lessons to Germans who look like they are children imitating tornadoes. Our twirling figures silhouette on deep red sunsets until the evening mosquitoes send us in to prawn dinners. We eat on the sand, stars low overhead.
We feel the place drawing us in. But the pace is so slow it makes us stumble.
Tinny Christmas tunes blasted out dithyrambically from every corner soundtrack our moves. The glitter of fairy lights makes us dream the kind of comraderie that San Blas has yet to deliver. We leave hunched under the weight of our bags, picking our way through families who wait for a Nativity play in the town square. They crowd in small, loud patches under the leafy shade.
We are not quite sure where to go, only that we want a change of scene. Something a little more meaningful.
Five minutes before the out of town bus is due to leave, we are approached by a baseball capped, guitar-slung Oregon punk with a dirty blonde mohican and arms scribbled with tattoos. He is called Brian and he smiles with his eyes.
Our conversation flows instantly and he answers my questions with words that take a second or two longer than expected to emerge. He considers so visibly what he is about to say. It contrasts starkly with my manner of saying the first thing to come to mind.
I find this interesting.
I tell him to come with us on the mystery bus and he replies with an offer of a free house for the night. Our fragile plan is easily twisted. Eva, I and another Englishman named Miles, who has tagged gratefully on to our party, follow him down the cobbled street.
Brian and Cherise, of blonde dreadlocks and a warm welcome, have just paid the lease on a San Blas flat for one month. Their road trip down from the states has been halted by the loss of Cherise's dog, Chloe, who had been hers for ten years. She was last seen on the beach in Brian's care.
The sadness and underlying blame drives them both deeper into their own, unique worlds.
But they have to stay to find the dog.
In the meantime, they drink too much, cook great pasta and philosophise. Their soundtrack is 90s hip-hop and Rage Against the Machine. Except for the mornings when they are woken promptly at 10am by mariachi ballads, blasting through the hole in the concrete from the cantina next door.
Each has their own demons. As of course have we all. We connect in that way of new friends that makes your heart expand and your laughter free. The night digs deep into emotions and our individual perceptions of our worlds.
We can never truly be free, for at the very least we have the boundaries that we set for ourselves.
We all make our own worlds. Whether it be the falsely soft safety of a beer or a joint, to guard against the void inside that you're scared of facing, or the lifetime devotion of one to a best friend, who barks instead of speaks and has the ability to turn one's life upside down by running away.
Or the determined journey of a traveller who seeks to find more, but instead finds a world that is a constant reflection of what she has in her head.
It seems whatever I think most about, I receive. What is without, reflects what is within. Wherever I travel, I find people who show me the place I was dreaming of. The thing I was craving. The enlightened phrase or the exact words I needed to come across at that point.
"Breathe. Breathe deep. Breathe, because that's all you can do. You are only human. All you can do is connect with the world as deeply as you can, because you and it are the same." We drink to the freedom of the traveller and splash into the sea under a sky heavy with stars.
Brian points down at the waves. There are stars underneath the water.
Bluegreen sparks jump off our bodies, sliding down our chests as the waves crash into us and the plankton release phosphorescent cries of alarm. Everything below water glows.
We get deep enough to tread water and swim in circles with our arms spread out, so that trails of sparks spray from our hands.
It looks like we are sorcerers, waving our arms to magically create an image of the sea at night.
As above, so below.
As within, so without.
As I said, your world reflects your head. But not often does life reflect thought so blatently and so vividly, beautifully, as dreamlike as this night.
I am the magician.
Creating my own world.
In loops of circling stars.
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