tubes, tacos and puppies

I feverishly made my way up the beach from the water’s edge, shuffling my feet through the blazing sand, baked by the afternoon sun and doing its best impression of molten lava. Every once in a while, I’d pause on a palm leaf or a piece of driftwood or whatever else was strewn about, allowing a temporary respite for my poor Canadian feet, their soles tender from spending the preceding months stuffed into woollen socks and winter boots.

It was our first day in Mexico. Hanna Scott, Nate Laverty, Marcus Paladino and I had all fallen victim to the winter blues, and pulled the trigger on a last-minute strike mission to find solace from the dreariness that had set in at home. I had been to this infamous stretch of black sand a few times in the past. I had sampled the bone-crunching tubes that it has become synonymous with, but for the rest of the gang it was their maiden voyage.

We stepped off the plane just as the final gasp of the southern hemisphere swell season was making its way up the coast, and the opening three days served as a stern initiation to our new locale. We’d wake up in the dark and sip