La Saladita

Each day, in a few distinct moments, silence envelops the small coastal town of La Saladita in Guerrero, México. The first one starts late morning, when the 11am wind crumbles the wave at the point so that surfers one by one take a wave in, and disperse. They retreat from the heat of the day and rest under shade, eat, have a smoke, some go to work—and then they return at sunset. 

The quiet of the high sun is broken by the 2pm ice cream truck, and not many are in a hurry to get to it. On the beach, a few small groups of people are nearly outnumbered by roaming dogs. The dogs are not homeless, they are fed and pet and they run their own lives: when it gets hot, they go swimming. I watched a chihuahua sit and think at the edge of the water for a minute, cooling his paws in wet sand. Then he swam 20 feet out, made a u-turn and came back, shook off, and headed for town.   

When sunset approaches, I hear people return to the point, talking in Spanish about the wave. It doesn’t look too good but I’m going out anyway, they say, and I go too. The evening air and water are almost the same temperature, I can’t exactly tell which is warmer, and everything grows softer and purple. Then there is a second quiet time, again after surfers walk home. 

One evening a friend and I hitchhiked into town to get groceries. The sun had just barely set, so the light was soft. He spoke fluent Spanish and I didn’t, and it was liberating. With him near me I felt less ignorant, and slightly less of a bumbling tourist to the locals, who would have otherwise had to watch me fumble over a translation app to communicate. 

Two old women sat chatting outside of a small restaurant we passed and said, “Dios les bendiga,” God bless you. The greeting was perhaps the first moment I took in a deep breath and untensed my shoulders since arriving a few days prior. All at once I was not afraid. The breeze and the sound of the dirt road, kids playing and the royal blue of dusk brought me back to my senses, back to earth. The world was not threatening.   

I think I enjoyed watching people more than I enjoyed surfing. The wave was perfect without fail, every morning. Even with 6 foot swell it was soft, dark blue, smooth and elegant. A sharp contrast from the waves I am used to: cold, fast, heavy, sometimes menacing. But it was crowded, and I was a stranger. People were generally very friendly, and I had some waves I will probably never forget, but I couldn’t shake the burdensome feeling of ego all around. Beautiful women outnumbered the men in the water 10 to 1 it seemed, and there must be a reason. 

Maybe my mindset going there was wrong, and that’s on me. Maybe I had expected to be welcome there when I shouldn’t have. The place is being built by hard working men all around, I saw numerous building sites of soon-to-be boujee beach homes probably owned by Americans, and it didn’t feel good.

I was not exempt from wanting to prove my abilities in some way in the lineup. Surfing, in certain silly/unfortunate moments, is just showing off. I liked to watch the locals, masters on each set wave, laughing and joking with one another through the lulls, gathered around the top of the point. Their town is changing all the time, but they will always have this, I thought. 

On the beach mid day I watched a family juggle a soccer ball. There were five adults of different ages and one little girl, maybe 3 or 4 years old. She got bored and wandered off to the water and her mother I presumed, left to follow behind. A young man ran after to relieve mom of kid duty, scooped up the little girl and galloped into the water with her, laughing and clinging to his wet shirt with her tiny hands. 

The younger adults teased the old man of the group about his bad kick, and he got them back, shooting it way high into the air for them to run around like ants between drops of water chasing it. I was inclined to ask to join their juggling circle but knew I shouldn’t, and refrained. I still wonder what this was. They shouted and laughed and I didn’t understand them. It felt good to know they were there. I was listening to a friend’s song Hope while I sat under the palm tree, and I highly recommend hearing it from the beginning.

“It takes a lot of work to have that,” my friend said when we chatted about them later. “They made a lot of sacrifices.” 

A few hours after dusk, the sound of people, buzzed socializing begins to surge and move and then concentrate at the location of the night. Bare feet on the dirt road, laughing and dancing. One night I danced for hours with strangers while my exhausted friend slept in a hammock nearby. 

A man I had met three days before told me, “te amo,” and followed it with, “you don’t have to say anything back.” What other than the place, the music, the warm breeze of the night, could possess someone to be so casual? Adults were like children playing under the glow of a halfmoon, mimicking what we’ve heard in romantic stories. Low consequence because we were only visiting. Later that night alone, my friend told me something resembling, “you have the wit of a mature woman but the heart of a teenage girl.” 

I met a handful of people my age that moved to Saladita from France, Australia, California. They were sweet and lovely, and they will live there for a year or two at most. Some of them work remote jobs that pay their country’s wages, others work at the local bar. Everyone gets along, foreigner and local, some are in committed relationships. Many of their bios online say surf, travel, photography, or (insert country of origin, arrow, México). 

The energy of the community ebbed and flowed much like the noise and heat. People are genuine and friendly, jumping at every opportunity to build their brand, their identity. But I felt more at peace for the five minutes spent watching a young family from a distance, than the hours I spent there with people my age. Maybe that would have changed had I stayed and lived there like many other gringas. But somehow, I doubt it. Right now I think of how beautiful Spanish sounds, the swirling water around my arms, the palapas and dirt roads. Jumping into the back of a truck to town, sleeping in the afternoon with the door open. The way of life.

Caminando por el pueblo después del atardecer—walking through town after sunset.