Southern Exposure

About an hour north of Mazatlan, along the Maxipista, is an unremarkable turn-off towards the puebla of Celestino Gasca. Past the six or seven street town of Celestino is a rather rutted dirt road that runs along the beach for a couple of kilometers. The road pings along until you reach a stretch of RV parks and the Cardone surf camp.

We made it just inside the gate to Celestino RV “Resort”. We checked in and fired back up the van to drive down to our spot for the night; the ignition clicked, the starter wound up, the engine fired and the starter wound up, again and again and again. Natalie turned of the key, the engine died, but the damn starter kept firing and firing. Frantically, the park host, Brian, myself, and really great snowbird character, John, scrambled with the nuts to disconnect the batteries. Finally she quit. We deduced that another solenoid had fried, electrical gremlins be damned.

Brian towed us down to our spot on the beach where we camped for the next few nights, we found a mechanic in Celestino who had worked in the same capacity for the last ten years in Santa Ana, Riverside and Temecula and had just moved back in the last year. For MX$400 he replaced various fusible links, fuses, wires, connections, and anything he found suspect for about three hours. He said that the main source of our problem was a short in the plug to the dash AC. He didn’t have one and said that we should get a new one in Mazatlan. I’m not convinced but everything appears to be working for the moment.

Celestino is a pretty cool spot. The waves were head high and the surf camp patrons said that it had been two to three feet overhead and should be again in the next couple days. I never saw it really work but could see how it would. The camp, Cardone, is US$1000 per night, all-inclusive, including transfers from Mazatlan. Seems like a good spot to spend a week on a south swell. The only problem is that reef goes dry (already lost a fin) at low tide and the evening never really glasses off. So you really only have three to four hours a day to surf before its blown out.

John, a really great expat, when he wasn’t shuttling us to town or giving the tour, regaled us with stories of a bygone era, most of which are unfit to print in a quality family publication such as this, but they were of the old-school, surfer/trafficker variety from the seventies and eighties – crazy stuff.

As we pulled away from Celestino we were once again optimistic that the van would cooperate. That lasted about half way to Mazatlan.