Issue link: http://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25178
Sayulita was first inhabited by the Huichollndians but with the arrival of Spanish conquistadores- and with them death and disease-local tribes were forced into more remote regions. In the late nineteenth century, the coco tree, native to the lush jungle and bearing the oil-rich nut, became commercially important. Along with the cultivation of the coco tree, cattle-raising haciendas sprung up as more families came to the region around Sayulita. Many of these people were from a town in Mexico's interior called Sayula. They began to affectionately refer to their new home as "little Sayula" or Sayulita. Surfing first came to Sayulita in the early 1960s with the onset of the Vietnam War and many hippies and revolutionaries fleeing to Mexico to escape the draft. They came to the sandy beaches of Sayulita bearing balsa and fiberglass longboards and found clean easy breakers, aver- aging from one to six feet, spinning along the edge of the river mouth. When these hippies went to Puerto Vallarta to restock with supplies, they would casually leave their boards on the beach. The locals quickly learned that they could "borrow" these boards, surf and return them just before the XOCHILT: SURF DIVA DAISY MAE SURFBOARD, WATERGIRL BIKINI, FREESTYLE SHARK WATCH, DAKINE LEASH. hippies came back from town. As time went on, more surfers began traveling to Sayulita, leaving more equipment behind for the locals. By the mid-1990s, locals and travelers alike were riding Sayulita's breaks. Today, an overwhelmingly talented local surfing community thrives in this tiny village. Sayulita locals, like the Cabenas brothers (Tigre, Pato, Fernando and Diego), Regis Rodriguez, Geovani Perez and Pepe Chuy, as well as the next generation of rippers under fifteen like William Frias, Adrian "EI Gatito" Placencia, Jose Manuel Jimenez, Israel and Adam Hernandez (to name a few), are some of Mexico's hottest and most progressive surfers.