Get out of the water, I wanted to shout at the guy, but he was way too far out of earshot.
Juan, Adriana and I stood on the shore of el Rancho, watching the sets, preparing for a morning session. Well, to be fair, only Juan was watching the waves with an actual intent to surf. I was silently freaking out, envisioning myself drowning and simultaneously being smashed into the rocks, when Adriana put her foot down to declare, “I’m not getting in that water.”
The waves were roughly 2.5 – 3+ meters (~8-9+ft) tall, heavy and rapid, with only maybe 15 second intervals. Every so often, a much larger set would sweep through. For five minutes, I watched this poor guy struggle to paddle out. He just couldn’t make it. Every wave set him back further than he had advanced and crashed down straight on his face with more force than a professional boxer’s fist. If he was even trying to duck dive them, he was failing miserably. The waves alone were enough to intimidate me, but watching this guy take his beating was the nail in the coffin. I watched him take 20 waves straight to the face. After each one, he just kept trying to paddle out. I can’t even realistically admire that sort of heart. Hard-won success might make a great story but sometimes it’s better to just retreat and survive.
Esta buena, said Juan, pointing towards the heart of the set. That’s a perfect left.
Stoic and poker-faced, I nodded while plotting a quick escape from the waves. I was doing that guy thing, where I outwardly show strength, yet inwardly grasp for a way out. If it came to it, I told myself, this will at least be a good day to practice paddling and duck diving. That lie was too thin to even pretend to believe. Adriana was my lifesaver. Juan, she said, “I’m not getting in that water”. Esta feo. Juan pursed his lips, mentioned the perfect left again and we changed course for la Saladita.
This was just one of our outings to the fabled Ranch. El Rancho is known as a pro surfer spot. A slow walk out over a long and shallow rocky beach puts surfers a short paddle away from a point that generates a continuous left break. Even getting to the beach is an adventure. There are no signs pointing to it, forcing would-be Ranch riders to rely on local knowledge to get there. Shortly after turning off from the main highway, the cement ends and you are left driving down a battered dirt road that is one good rainstorm away from being a complete 4×4 track. Deep ruts cut in every direction across the “road”, the results of nightly rains. After 5 -10 minutes of bumpy driving through the coastal jungle, the track breaks right and then curves left again, down a crumbling hillside directly onto the beach. Sufficiently high tides, as we have seen, wash over this section of the path. The path is littered with hundreds of moon crabs in the cool mornings. You can only hope that they get out of the way of your tires. In the heat of the afternoons, iguanas replace the moon crabs, the path providing them with a convenient spot to catch the heat of the sun directly overhead.
I got lucky with my first outing to el Rancho. Juan and his friends had brought me there once before and I had a great morning. The biggest wave that first morning might have been a mere 5ft and only just strong enough to push me up. I caught a few and went away congratulating myself on having “surfed the Ranch!”. Little did I know how atypical those conditions were.
Jordan & I made one more trip out to el Rancho. Our friends Dustan and Erica visited and a local friend invited us out for a morning session. While not quite as large as the last time out, the waves were still a far cry from being small and we paddled out into conditions that we frankly weren’t ready for. The sweet spot for the sets coming in was fully occupied by obviously expert surfers.
Our strategy, then, was to avoid them and aim for the smaller waves further away from the pros. The main flaw in this plan was that if no one is going for a set of waves, there might be a good reason. The waves we struggled for were mostly too soft to catch and for my part, I just couldn’t seem to put myself in the locations where the waves broke and gave me the best chance of catching a ride. Dustan managed to catch a few on his body board, but as these really weren’t very body board-friendly waves, he soon decided to head in.
Jordan took that as her cue as well and made for the shore. Because I am extremely thick-headed, I decided to stay out for one last desperate attempt to catch a wave. On her way towards the shore, fighting both tide and current, Jordan caught sight of a surfer waving her to come towards him. Interpreting this as friendly advice that she was in a bad area to catch waves and should come his way, she motioned back that no, she was done and going in. The man waved again, stronger this time, and Jordan caught wind of him shouting at her. “Ayuda!”, he was shouting. After a confused pause, he switched to English. “Help!!”
Hearing this, more details became clear. The surfer was not sitting on a board. Only his head and waving arms stuck out of the water. To emphasize his point, he held up the frayed end of his leash, which had been ripped apart during a fall. By the time Jordan had paddled to him and they started making their way to shore, it was unclear who was rescuing who. The current had pushed them into one of the rockier areas of the beach, where waves stacked up onto each other and crashed hard onto the shore, pummeling anyone in their path. In their struggle to make landfall, Jordan threw the board out of the way of an oncoming wave to avoid having it rammed against her. It was a messy procedure, but a successful rescue, which is all you can really ask for.
After my final unsuccessful attempt to put myself in the path of a wave I could ride, I too, made for shore. As with Jordan, the tide and current pushed me towards the rocks. From the beach, Jordan motioned for me to aim for a sandier area, just up-current.
I saw the logic of that plan, but was too exhausted to fight the current. I just wanted out and so I took the path of least resistance and made a pathetic and inglorious beach landing. After several beatings by the waves, pushing me forward over rocks only to then drag me back over, pulling my ankles out from underneath me as the water, and me, were sucked back out to sea, I finally fought myself free of the water’s grip. I picked up my board, but it slipped through my shaking hands resulting in a ding along one rail. My feet and shins were bleeding from a dozen scrapes. I’m done, I told Jordan as she approached me, with a hard-edged note of finality to the statement.
The four of us, Jordan and I, Dustan and Erica, made our way back to the parking lot and recovered from the morning’s exploits with plates of empanadas and cold beers. We relaxed and watched the other surfers ride the monsters that we briefly had the temerity to confront. One guy in particular seemed to be getting the rides of his life. We called him “Red Shirt” for obvious reasons and watched in exhausted awe as he shredded every wave he set foot on. He was still so excited about his rides when he came in, that I think everyone near him got a contact high from his level of energy. We couldn’t help but laugh and smile as he stammered through half spoken, half merely gesticulated descriptions of some of his waves.
If nothing else, we can now claim to have surfed the Ranch. At any rate, we got in the water and faced down the elements. El Rancho has certainly been an adventure. Maybe on the trip back up, we’ll pay it another visit. For now, though, I think I’ve learned enough lessons from this particular break. I’m going to focus on building my meager surfing skills a little more slowly and away from man-eating rocks and currents. Thanks for the experience, Rancho. Until we meet again…
