After spending the past few months clearing out our new warehouse and getting it set up to start churning out boards for you lovely people, the Posteur crew felt we deserved a trip to warm waters and countless point breaks. Before you complain that you’ve already seen our short film from the trip (can be found here if you missed it), we figured in addition to the movie, we’d put together a travel guide of sorts to share some tips and tricks for those thinking of making a trip down there.
GETTING THERE
This was probably the least fun part of the trip, but I think that holds true for pretty much any destination. Although there are easier options, we opted to take the scenic and more economical route. We’re based in southern NJ so we flew from PHL to ATL to Mexico City, and then took a puddle jumper to Huatulco. Typically board bags cost $150 each way so make sure you factor that in to your budget, or cross your fingers and hope you find yourself at the desk of a friendly airline employee (I got my bag there for $40 after having a nice conversation with the kind lady at the counter).
You’ll need to exchange your currency, and I’d recommend doing it in the states, or when you land in Mexico City. Often times exchange rates aren’t as good when you get to more remote areas, and ATMs can be few and far between once you get to your destination.
Once you’ve landed in Huatulco, you’ll need to arrange a ride through your hostel, guide, or taxi to get you to your hostel (ours was about an hour away). We went through our guide/hostel which we would recommend as they are set up to transport all of your boards.
WHERE TO STAY
In the area we went, hostels are for sure the best call for lodging. We got set up with the nice folks at Ola Perfecta Hostel and rented their recently acquired house at Barra De La Cruz. There are different options for pricing, and the package we chose included a homemade breakfast every morning (highly recommend). The entire staff at Ola Perfecta was awesome, they had good insight of where to go and we had a great time hanging out swapping stories with them in our down time. If you don’t want to travel with boards and would prefer to rent, don’t sweat it- they have tons of boards on the beach that you can rent and they offer lessons as well.
THE WAVES
Now that we’ve arrived at the part everyone cares most about and half of you skipped right down to, I’d like to start by talking about surf guides. If you only take one piece of advice from all this it should be to get yourself a surf guide. Not only will they have better knowledge of what waves will work for what swells and save you countless hours of driving around getting skunked, they also offer transportation, food recs and some good laughs. Plus, if the locals see a van full of eight unguided gringos pull up to their spot, there’s a pretty good chance they aren’t gonna roll out the red carpet for you. You’ll have to pay to get in most spots you go to (usually 5 pesos per person) and some of the best spots you need a key to get into so if you don’t have a guide you can forget about them. Julian has been going down south for the past few years so we hit up his go-to guide, Simi. Simi is a local and has been a surf guide for years, and recently started his own company, Simi Solutions. The guy is super in tune with what spots will be working on certain swells, speaks great English and is hilarious and when you’re spending a few hours a day driving to surf spots that definitely makes the ride more enjoyable. We highly recommend you use him.
Okay, so the waves… As I mentioned, we were staying in the town of Barra de La Cruz, home to a pumping right hand point break that you’ve probably heard of from the Rip Curl Search event back in 2006. While the event really put the formerly unknown spot on the map and resulted in a bigger crowd, it’s well worth it and everyone got plenty of waves (trust me I had to film them all). We opted to stay here because of the consistency of the wave- you may not get pumping tubes every day you’re there, but there will always be something fun to surf.
If the crowd gets too thick at Barra, or the swell direction looks better for another spot, no worries. Start heading south and there are a number of other right hand points to be found that will remain unnamed. Another option is boat charters. We tried this out for a day and headed out in the early morning and had surfed 3-4 spots before 3pm.
If you’re looking for a great wave and maybe reconnect with civilization for a few hours, head the opposite direction and you’ll find yourself at Puerto Escondido. We took a day trip up there, surfed until our legs were shot, then set out to explore the town. The place is awesome. There were lot’s of great local restaurants, and tons of people from all over walking around.
I know that naming two popular surf spots and not specifying the others isn’t extremely helpful, but hopefully the rest of the information will serve you well on your next trip to Oaxaca. And don’t sweat it- the surf guides know the spots we’re talking about, after all, they’re the ones who showed us.
In the spirit of searching for waves, we've added some new swag to our surf trip collection- check out the surf shack tee.
