Mazatlan Beach

I was in Mazatlan wearing my swim trunks, barefoot, and headed for the beach.  There was a long, low beach house between me and the beach and I didn’t want to go around it because I was barefoot and the native plant growth tends to be pretty thorny.  One section of the building was open through to the beach, w/ just screens, so I walked through and came out on the beach.  The house sat on a high bank, ten or fifteen feet above the water and the beach made a big arcing curve off to the left.  I was surprised to see that the whole beach, as far as I could see along the curve, was covered w/ boulders of ice and snow.  It was completely covered right down into the water, but the water was still open and bringing in waves like normal.

I wished I had some shoes, but this was unusual enough that I wasn’t going to let cold feet keep me from doing a little exploring.  There was a small cove, maybe 100 feet wide and 100 feet in from the main beach just off to my left.  It was full of ice chunks, too, but there were dozens of people swimming in the water.  They were splashing around and having a great time, so I guessed the water must be warm.  It looked dangerous, though, because the ice chunks moved around with the water and crashed into each other as waves came by.  Some of these boulders must have weighed tons, so getting mashed between them would not have been good.  I found a place that looked stable and went down the bank and got my feet in the water.  Sure enough, it was bath tub warm, except right next to the ice I could feel the cold of the melt water flowing off the ice blocks.

I went back up the bank and at the top of it there was a man lying on a towel right in the only clear path.  I had to step on a corner of the towel because there was no space between it and the rocks and when I did the man yelled at me.  He claimed I’d stepped on his finger.  I had felt what I thought was a stick when I stepped on the towel, but hadn’t seen that his hand was under the towel.  I felt bad about stepping on him and tried to apologize, but couldn’t think what to say.

I went on up to the beach house to what I thought was the same door I’d come out, but when I went inside this time there were several young people in the room and there was some furniture – chairs, a couch, a bar – and they looked at me kind of wondering who I was and why I was there.  I told them I was just cutting through and they were OK with that.  I went out the back door, but this time instead of coming out on the street I’d come in from, I came out into Mexican wilderness – cactus, rocks, all kinds of sharp things that a person in bare feet wouldn’t want to walk through.  I thought that if there was a path I would chance it rather than going back inside and feeling a little like Inspector Clouseau having walked into a closet instead of the exit.  I looked around and there was no opening.  My only choice was to go back through the room to the beach side and try to find the right way through.