We’re actually closer to Sayulita, Mexico, the surfing mecca north of us, than we are to Puerto Vallarta, to the south of us, but we hadn’t made it up there yet.

Sayulita is a really cute little town, with lots of restaurants, surf shops, guest houses — touristy but in a good way. There’s a healthy mix of Mexican families and foreign vacationers on the beach, so it’s one of those places that is popular for a good reason. The waves.

There are surfers, but there are also tons of stand up paddle boards (SUP) for rent on the beach (about $8/hour).

We had lunch on the beach (Drew’s beer, not mine — he’s feeling better, by the way, thank you to everyone for their well wishes!)

I paid way too much for this salad but it was pretty good (lunch for the three of us cost $30, which seems like a lot to me, but I’m acclimated to Thai prices for everything, so it’s probably pretty cheap).

I took all those pics with my iPhone, by the way, because we forgot the camera battery at home (oops!) so I couldn’t get many shots of Drew standing out on the paddle board (it was too far away for the iphone’s zoom) but I did convince him to come closer so I could get a pic.

“Come here Drew!”

“LOOK OUT THERE’S A WAVE, QUICK GET ON!”

Hahaha.

Almost there!

Ahhh….

Oh, no! I love that the little kid is like, “what are you doing, dude?”

If you’re wondering, yes, this is pretty much what your first day of SUP will look like: Stand up, paddle around, a wave comes, fall right off. Repeat. There are some people surfing into the waves and they make it look SO EASY.

Drew on the other hand, was wrecked.

(On the ride home ALL he talked about was his big plans for paddle boarding: “I wonder how much a used board costs?” and so it begins…)