The Trip:I have 2 small kids and when I go on vacay I have to keep them in mind. This trip plain works out for us, like fish in a bucket. The tickets are cheap, the flight is short and when we arrive the kids get to do what they love to do the most, swim and play in the water. As a surfer, I was slightly gripping as I looked at the forecast for our week down there. We timed it 'perfect' to arrive just after a massive swell and right into a big lull in North Atlantic weather. If I was going just to surf I would have been so bummed. But being with my familia, I knew it was the perfect opp for my kids to go swimming and surfing in the calmer conditions and that eventually my time for surfing would come. Put the family first and the rest will come, when the fam is happy, I'm happy.
The Surf: Man, after Tony's write up I was sketch. But besides a few, new smallish condos, not much has changed. The surf was good, crowded at the name spots. If you don't mind sacrificing a little wave quality you can surf by yourself. Would you sacrifice 6ft perfection for 5ft and slightly fatter just to get it by yourself or with a couple buds? That's about what it came down to. I surfed in town at one spot and had it all to myself. The wave had a mushy right that was perfect for cuttys and a steeper left that you could hit at least twice every wave. The scenery was epic and spiritually impowering. Those sessions were very satisfying. The rest of the time we spent on the beach at Jobos. Now Jobos is the spot everyone goes to when it's flat or small. Even then the max crowd was 20 or so and I would just wait till the locals had their fill and paddle out after they paddeled in.
One afternoon they walked up by our camp and climbed a coconut palm, snagged one, came down, opened it up and drank it. How dude busted that thing open bare-handed is beyond me. Dude goes "the universe provides". I brought some fresh pineapple so I shared it with them. They also wanted sunblock so I hooked them up with that. We went back and forth between english and spanish and after that we were boys and I could catch all the waves I wanted. Those guys got the life, hanging at the playa all day, fit and trim, ripping, eating healthy, their own language and music. The world by the cajones. Almost all of them speak at least some english and they are proud of that fact so they will always address an 'americano' in english.
The beach there is just perfect for familia so I surfed Jobos alot. The wave is a worldclass, fast, down the line right point that begs to be smacked. One day a t-storm switched the wind offshore and it started barreling. Every day the swell got a little bigger and by the end of the trip it was solid 6-8ft. I surfed at La Ocho in SJU for the first time. That was a big, open ocean wave that made surfing feel like snowboarding. We cleaned up on the beach at Escambrón, returned the car and jumped on the plane and headed home. Like fish in a bucket, facilito. Can't wait to go back.
