First surfing mishap

Michael had his first surfing mishap this afternoon.

We were surfing chest high waves at the beachbreak beside La Punta, when a surfer paddled into Michael’s path as he was riding down the line. Michael kicked off the wave to avoid the other surfer, landing in the water, and the guy duck-dived his board into Michael. The pointy nose of the board tore a 2-inch long gash in the bottom of Michael’s foot. The cut was deep enough that you could see the layers of fat and muscle in there. Who knew Michael had fat feet? 🙂

A lifeguard in an ATV drove Michael to the nearest clinic, called Centro Salud, about 7 minutes away, and I ran back to our apartment to grab some cash. When I got to the clinic, Michael was in a room with a nurse, frantically trying to ask her in broken Spanish not to sew the cut up with all the sand that was still in there. We pieced together some bad Spanish sentences, letting her know there was still some sand in the wound (“Ha camina con su pie a la playa, hay mucho particulas en la laceracion!”), so the doctor came in and washed the cut out forcefully a few more times with a syringe.

The cut needed five stitches.

The care and medications (antibiotics and anti-inflammatories) all came out to around $11 US. Michael’s out of the water for the next 2 weeks, so expect to see more upcoming posts from him. He’s fine now, and still happy as a clam.

The strange thing is that our landlords had just recounted a story yesterday to us, about how a previous American renter of theirs had been surfing at La Punta when another surfer ran the nose of their board into his leg. He had only been in Mexico for two days, and was taken to the clinic in an ambulance and stitched up. I guess the moral of the story is: avoid surfing near people with pointy-nosed boards.