a weblog by Dax

Day 4 - Avellana or Bust

Posted on October 23rd, 2006 by Dax.
Categories: blog post.

Today we woke up to clear skies, super-bright sun, and lush green mountainsides. Today was going to be the day, Playa Avellana or Bust.

We quickly ate breakfast and packed up the family truckster, a Prado. Today I was not going to make the same mistakes I made in the past couple of attempts. We didn’t even bother going the route that the signs stated to go, we were going to go inland and attack Avellana from the south.

We followed the map towards de Abril, and along the way we started to see signs for Playa Negro, which is just south of Avellana. We decided to follow these set of signs. The road quickly turned into a one vehicle wide mudride. We had been driving for a while and I thought for sure we were lost, there were only fences along the trail. We saw two guys standing next to a telephone booth, that’s right a telephone booth out in the middle of nowhere along a muddy trail. I stopped and asked them if we were going the correct way for Avellana, and they said yes!!! This was a very good feeling.

We kept down this mudpath, that started changing elevations and the mud started to get more moist, this was definitely a driving adventure. I kept having to drop into 4 wheel drive and drive up on the side of the trail where the grass had added a little more traction.

And finally we started to see these little “surfing” hotels that I had seen pictures of online, this meant that we were very close to Playa Avellana.

The mud started to get more packed and then, there it was, the ocean, we had finally made it to Avellana. We turned down a road that parelled the beach, and pulled into a makeshift parking lot. It was low tide and the ocean was pretty far out there, the waves weren’t that great, but it looked like they would be great once the tide started to come back in. We were really stoked just to finally get there.

As we headed out of the parking lot we saw the same signs that would have led us back to the road that had been washed out, I bet it is a hell of a lot quicker trip when it’s dry.

We made it back to the hotel and I started thinking that maybe we could head out to Avellana after the tide came back in but first we had some time to kill. We decided to walk down to Madero and take some pictures. You can see these pictures in our Flickr account, but here are the direct links to the pictures 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34.

While we were down at Madero, I slipped on some of the lava rocks and jam my toe nail on my left foot, and gouged some of my foot out in the process.

We got a little lunch and I tried to relax a little due to my foot hurting a bit.

I thought that we could also go check out Playa Grande, so we headed back out in the family truckster.

We found our way there pretty easily, but neither of us really trusted the parking situation at all, and we hurried back to the hotel.

The tide was coming in and sundown was just a couple of hours away, so I decided to head out at Pico Pequeno. I figured with the mid to high tide being so close to sundown that it probably wouldn’t be wise for us to try to go back to Playa Avellana, go suring and try to find our way back in the dark.

It was nice to finally hit the surf!!! I paddled out past the rocks and was sitting there with a local who was on a longboard. The sets started to head in and he got a couple of good waves and I got a couple of good waves.

The waves were about head high, with an occasional wave or two a little overhead. It wasn’t long until some other people that were surfing in town noticed that we had the spot all to ourselves, and they paddle out past the rocks.

I stayed out until right before sunset, and I know Spracky could see the grin on my face the entire walk back up to the hotel.

Today was a good day.

Dax out-

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