It’s the only state to democratically elect a communist government, which provides universal schooling and health care.

As such, it’s the state with the highest rate of literacy in India and life expectancy that rivals many developed countries.

On the other hand, its industrial development is negligible. No one wants to do business with so much labour upheaval.

Kerala is strikingly green. The vegetation is lush and thick. The monsoons hit Kerala first, bathing the land in water and washing away what is old and weak.

Kerala has wealth of culture. It has a long tradition of literature, theatre, martial arts, and medicine. It’s where Ayuverdic healing, Kathakali dancing and Kalari fighting were pioneered.

And no other Indian language had as many books translated into it than Malayalam.

I spent some time in the coast around the beach town of Varkala. Here are some photos of my travels.

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Not one among the dozens of beach-facing restaurants in Varkala have beer and cocktails in their menus.

But ask a waiter for alcohol and he’ll produce a tattered home-printed sheet from his pocket listing Tom Collins, mojitos, Cosmopolitans, all the classic mixes. Order a beer and an ice-cold Kingfisher bottle will appear in seconds.

The restaurants aren’t allowed to sell alcohol. But like anywhere else, in Varkala, the rules are negotiable if the price is right.

According to multiple sources in the local hospitality industry, restaurants pay the police to leave them alone. This is quite standard and should surprise no one familiar with the ways of the third world.

But it gets interesting when this is used for revenge politics among establishments.

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The strip of cliff-top restaurants and shops in Varkala.

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Varkala, in the southwestern state of Kerala, is a beach resort town relatively new on the tourist map. A simpler, cheaper alternative to overdeveloped Kovalam, it lures hippie types who sport dreadlocks and wear Indian clothes by choice, not just out of respect.

The beach is actually just a small patch of sand, smaller than a soccer field, tucked between two red rocky cliffs. Most of the life is at the top of those cliffs. Five years ago there were barely five hotels; today you can choose from an unbroken necklace of cheap guesthouses, posh bungalows, cafes and restaurants, all offering Ayurvedic therapies.

The town seems to have been built and run by Nepalese and Kashmiris, who, to my surprise, excel in the tourism business. They work as managers, waiters, and souvenir sellers, closing shop and going home for the desolate monsoon season in June.

Local Indians do mostly menial tasks like repairing roofs and patching sidewalks.

I have been spending my evenings at a restaurant called Hill Top Indian Spice, the only place that openly advertises Indian food (the rest cater to homesick Germans and Britons with “continental” menus).

It’s delicious. The chef, a Nepalese man in his fifties, has been cooking at resort towns for 22 years all over India. The red curry sauce he makes on a stuffed tomato dish is so exquisite I demanded cooking lessons.

The restaurant opened in August of this year and was an instant success, the owner tells me. To the surprise of many, people who come to India want to eat Indian food.

For a month, Hill Top was packed while its continental neighbours struggled to fill a few tables. It’s clear Varkala grew faster than demand. There’s an overcapacity of eateries and lodging. So the politics began.

Hill Top hadn’t paid off the cops. Their neighbours tattled. And the restaurant was shut down for two months.

It’s back in business, and slowly filling up again. This time, with their baksheesh installments in good standing.

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Faithful perform ancestor worship at Varkala’s beach. The town is a place of Hindu pilgrimage, thanks to a millennial temple.

Photo by Chris Schoenbohm

Around 2 pm – shortly after breakfast – the first flyers are delivered by pretty Finnish girls with hangover sunglasses. Tonight’s specials are the same as last night’s: 25-cent beers from 9:00 to 10:00, then free vodka “buckets” from 10:00 to 10:30.

It’s monsoon season, so the many bars in Sihanoukville have to compete for few customers. If one is feeling bold, it will begin its free drinking period 10 minutes before the other one.

You don’t have to move far to learn this. You don’t have to move at all. You can park your haunches in one of scores of shacks on Serendipity Beach and everything comes to you: drinks, food, and persistent hawkers selling grilled squid skewers, sunglasses, and pedicures. And promotional flyers from bars.

The Finnish girls try to sound excited about tonight’s specials, but it’s symbolic. It’s their fifth straight hangover, result of working at one of the bars for free food, accommodation, and drinks.

Turnover at Jam and JJ’s, Serendipity Beach’s rival nightlife spots, is high. A sign at JJ’s that reads “Western staff wanted” is never taken down, even when they have a full crew that night. They never know when one of their backpacker peons will finally escape the gravity pull of this tourism blackhole.

We had planned three days in Sihanoukville, a short, mildly ironic stop as we travel Cambodia. We always try to avoid resort towns and touristy hotspots, so when we do, it’s out of exhaustion or curiosity.

This is our sixth day. We met people going on their second month.

Fire dancers at Serendipity Beach. Photo by Tuomas Lehtinen.

I wish I could blame it solely on the happy confluence of cheap drinking, good food, and easy beach access. It makes time irrelevant. The bars’ flyers have titles like “Wacky Wednesday” and “Thirsty Thursday”, but it’s purely for the benefit of alliteration. Every day and every night is the same.

Even if you lose track of how much you spend, you quickly discover it’s hard to top $20 a day. You have the sea, a full stomach and a woozy head and money remains a minor concern. You read menus offering “happy” pizzas laced with marijuana and the place becomes more than a beach bum magnet, it’s a Neverland where for a few days adulthood is put on hold.

But Sihanoukville has an eerie allure that goes beyond price and convenience.

Though growing rapidly, it still has an underdeveloped charisma. Every available space on Serendipity Beach has been claimed by neighbouring shacks, but they are mostly family-owned thatched-roof huts.

Many have identical beach chairs and loungers with adequately comfortable cushions. Several offer free wifi, drawing the growing legions of netbook-toting packers.

But the town’s most fascinating draw shouldn’t be. On the middle point of the beach, there’s a red flag hoisted high. One you cross this mark, the beach bars become noticeably simpler. Plush loungers give way to foldable chairs. The liquor bottles on display aren’t bathed in colourful light and there are no more signs in English offering 50-cent pints and $3 barbecues.

And the clientele goes from European to Khmer.

On the tourist side, people sit in individual chairs facing the ocean and nibble at their own plates. In the Khmer side, large groups crowd around a short table and share huge trays of food.

In the tourist side, European girls in bikinis wade in the calm waters in solitude. In the Khmer side, packs of girls splash and shove each other dressed in jeans and T-shirts.

I don’t think it’s intentional, but if it is, it’s brilliant: by keeping the beach facilities Spartan, Cambodians are able to repel comfort-seeking travelers and claim a piece of the beach as their own.

By the same token, travelers at once fascinated by the country but intimidated by the language and cultural differences have a place from which to observe the locals in their habitat while safely surrounded by their own kind.

It’s too seductive to not stay.

Lady selling squid. Photo by Nick Amis.

In one of the least-traveled islands of Papua New Guinea, you can find virginal beaches, expert-grade diving and surfing, back-flip into an emerald river, and feed a class of friendly eels.

Two hours into the sailing trip, Dave, the divemaster, brought out the pedophile jokes.

He had already riled the Irish on board (“Your body is 80 percent water, except for the Irish, which are 30 percent alcohol”) but was still several hours from touching on race (“Why is Stevie Wonder always smiling? He doesn’t know he’s black”).

It was, to be sure, an alarming start to a three-day cruise around the Whitsunday Islands.

We were 23 squeezed aboard the Apollo, a racing yacht that had won a Sydney-to-Hobart regatta. Like a used-up racehorse, the once-mighty sailboat was put out to stud, spending its golden years taking backpackers on diving trips and ivory beaches along the Great Barrier Reef.

We were given bunk beds that hugged the inside of the hull and were strikingly comfortable considering the tight quarters. Normally reserved for a full crew of 25, the boat was carrying a measly three crew members plus a backpacker that worked as cook and deck hand.

It was, we later learned, a much better deal than other budget options, like the 70-person booze cruise whose guests must spend the night on a land hostel.

The days are just packed

The crew wasted no time. Once out of the Airlie Beach marina, the Apollo headed for an island with a bustling reef. With such a skeletal crew, the passengers have to pitch in. The skipper put three men to hoist the main sail, myself included, and two on the head sail, while two ladies were stationed on a winch.

The head sail was so heavy that by the last four pulls of the rope, we had to lift our feet off the ground and let our combined body weight do the work. We watched with a disproportionate sense of accomplishment as the sails swelled and the boat tilted to the left, cruising at a laudable 10 knots.

It was an hour until we were moored at a tiny sandy cove surrounded by dense jungle. It was where we would receive our free diving lesson. That’s when Dave felt it was safe to introduce the pedophile jokes.

“What does a five year old’s penis smell like,” he asked. No one volunteered an answer, and I presumed no one really cared to know. But Dave, a fortysomething Aussie browned and leathered by so much sun and salt, indulged us anyhow: he exhaled loudly so we could smell his breath.

Lunchtime at the Apollo

The diving was everything you’d expect from the Great Barrier Reef: neon-coloured wrasses, rainbow corals, sea turtles that look like slightly bored spaceships, polka-dotted stingrays, little Nemos poking out from the anemone.

For first time divers, Dave wanted to minimize the stress, so he took five people at a time and told us to disregard the oxygen gauge and the buoyancy vests; he took care of those himself.

On top of the usual hand signals divers use to communicate under water, he taught us a few more: a W made by touching one’s thumbs together signifies “wow”. Placing the right hand on one’s head and thrusting the left hand through the resulting loop meant “fucking great”.

“If you’re German,” Dave elaborated, “you do it from behind,” and proceeded to do the same thrusting motion, but with his left hand penetrating from behind his head.

After half an hour under water, we exchanged scuba gear for snorkels and explored the reef while the next divers had their turn.

When dusk approached we were bused back to the Apollo on the life raft. The shower, they informed us, were small hoses attached to the sink in the telephone cabin-sized toilets. The minimal floorspace meant for one’s feet while using the bowl is also the shower floor. Despite it all, it felt great.

By nightfall the Apollo was safely moored a few hundred feet from an island. Amply fed, passengers broke open the beer cases and bags of goon that were perfectly chilled in three giant coolers.

Nighttime at the Apollo

Day 2: The postcard beach

By 8pm the Apollo’s diesel engine was humming. The sleeping deck began to smell like a truckers’ rest stop. The passengers that weren’t hungover were clutching plastic mugs with instant coffee or tea.

The boat was heading towards the Whitsundays’ postcard spot, Whitehaven Beach. No boat actually moors on the beach; they drop you off on the other side of the island and let you hike 15 minutes to the famous bay.

Whitehaven Beach encapsulates so much of the Australian condition. Like the country, it’s devastatingly gorgeous, but it’s crawling with things that want to hurt you.

Bianca’s rendition of the stereotypical jumping beach shot

The sand is as white and as fine as powdered sugar. The sea is impossible shade of topaz. But no one dares enter the water. It’s the tail end of jellyfish season, and irrikandji could still be floating around.

These jellyfish are no larger than a navy bean and nearly impossible to see. But their sting, we were told, burns like the devil’s hot poker and persists for days. The only first aid is splashing the sting with vinegar, which kills the venomous cells that stick to the skin.

Urinating on the wound, Dave informed us, is an old wife’s tale. “If you do get stung, don’t let any Germans know, or they’ll come running three at a time to pee on you.”

Lunch aboard the Apollo was followed by snorkel time at another reef. Diving from now on cost AUS$60. No matter. The reef had more lovely sea life, including a gigantic humphead wrasse.

Back at the boat, cases of beer and box wine still weighed down the vessel. The passengers were only too happy to relieve the weight.

Day 3: feeding frenzy

Our final beach for diving was carpeted not with sand but dead corals, and so it’s painful to walk on barefoot. Wearing flippers relieved the pain but made walking impossible. The only solution was to cautiously walk backwards. With flippers. On a coral cove. Throw a bunch of African tribesmen on a skating rink and they couldn’t look as awkward as we did.

The fish in this reef have long ago equated people with food, so snorkelers are quickly surrounded by schools of hopeful fish. I brought along a bag with the final crumbs of my breakfast cereal and suddenly it became a riot. We couldn’t see one metre in any direction, so thick they huddled. Swift little bastards, it’s impossible to catch one with your hands.

We let out a collective, bubbly underwater squeal when Elvis, the resident humphead wrasse, showed up. He had a kingly and comically blasé look that said, “Let’s see what these idiots brought me today.”

Uninterested by the muesli I released into the water, he seemed more intrigued by the cereal bag itself, which I held above the water. He tried to go for it three times with the speed and intensity of someone who has a whole day to do absolutely nothing. We ran our hands over his smooth and slippery flat body. More squeals.

Our last meal was a medley of leftover fro the previous two days. The food aboard the Apollo is not luxurious, but it’s far better than the standard backpacker fare of pasta and mushy stir-fry. In the three past days we had barbecued steaks and sausages, roast chicken, fetuccini carbonara, pumpkin risotto, garlic bread, and lots of salads. By the end of it, we were hopelessly enamoured with Michelle, the sightly English girl working as the cook.

The Apollo once again hoisted its sails and howled back to Airlie Beach. It tilted so far this time that we had to all sit on the opposite side, lest we slide to starboard and swept by the sea licking at the deck.

The skipper thanked us for our business and received a raucous applause. Dave made a few more inappropriate jokes, but by this time we were inoculated to any offense from his lips.

Some of us went up to him to shake his hand and have at least one moment of sincere interaction with our divemaster who led us to a dazzling underwater world and gave us memories for life. Dave looked agonizingly unfomrfortable with the candour and quickly defused the situation with a joke involving homo-erotic buggery.

Dave, divemaster

Photo by Dave Nicoll

It doesn’t take long to see that the eastern Australian backpacking trail, which stretches from Sydney to Cairns, is geared for the sub-30 set. Hundreds of young’uns, mostly European, flock to the Gold an Sunshine Coasts chasing sunny shores, bountiful alcohol, and beach-beautiful bodies.

Nothing wrong with this, but it’s not for everyone. Which is the reason that travelers 30 and above are a rare sight: it’s easy for them to feel they have outgrown this kind of budget-minded tripping.

1. You feel like a tourist, not a traveler

Byron Bay, Surfer’s Paradise, Fraser Island, the Whitsundays… All lovely places overrun with McTrips that process thousands of travellers daily. It’s difficult to feel like you’re on a journey when you’re just another body among so many others.

Yes, there are tours catering to more discriminating travelers, but the prices are well above the long-term backpacker’s budget.

2. You feel like a chaperone

Remember the last time you went to your favourite university bar or club and felt like you were officially part of another generation? It’s like this.

3. Trips are too organized

You came for a little adventure – and adventure is what the travel agencies promised – but got a grammar school trip. Everything is prepared and planned for you. You have to follow strict schedules and itineraries, even if there’s no guide. It feels like a holiday nanny state.

4. You turn your nose at goon

At some liquor stores you can buy a four-litre box of terrible wine they call goon for as little as $11. It’s a favourite on three-day tours where you must bring your own drinks: to young broke backpackers the price-to-drunkenness value is unbeatable. For you, it’s a travesty of good taste.

5. You complain about discomfort

You’re no longer content with the tissue-thin sleeping mat they provide on camping trips. You’re can’t fall asleep on rock-hard surfaces like you once could. Probably because you’re not drinking enough goon.

6. You long for quiet contemplation

Between the big crowds, the drunken hooting, and the sound systems constantly blaring top 40 hits, your only moment of serenity is that magical time between 3 and 7 am when everyone is sleeping. If you’re lucky, you can find a quiet corner in whatever touristy town you’re saying at for reading, writing, or meditating.

7. You’re not challenged

You speak the local language. The streets are tidy and orderly. Everything is organized and predictable. You’re not in an alien culture, having to negotiate unusual customs and learning something new everyday. It quickly becomes quite boring.

8. You’re done with all the partying

You’ve already done it all: the drinking games, the random hook-ups, the next-day amnesia. With your wild days behind you, you now seek more meaningful, lasting, and vomit-free experiences.

When they can’t be bothered with sound discipline, it’s customary for parents to scare their children with fantastic lies.

In Brazil, for example, children are told that if they play with fire they will wet their beds, or that cockroaches will lick their mouths at night if they neglect to brush their teeth.

And there’s the mammoth childhood lie, one that crosses many cultures and is so ridiculous that its survival is nothing less than a miracle: that a fat old man in the North Pole is monitoring every child and delivers obedience rewards on a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer.

Despite their absurdity, to the literal-minded child they are devastatingly effective. The young adult, however, is not so easily fooled. But Australian tour operators at Fraser Island have adapted the childhood scare tactic with lethal efficacy.

The premise is simple: give a group of eight fun-chasing twentysomethings an immense sandy island off the Queensland coast and an expensive four-wheel drive truck to explore it with over three days. Then fill their heads with so many dangers and threats that no one would dream of doing anything memorably fun with it.

The briefing

The day before the trip, travellers to Fraser Island are shown a one-hour video on the dangers of driving on sand. A live person, usually a worker at the hostel that organizes the tour, then repeats many of those warnings and offers further instructions.

An example: if you drive too close to the sea, the salt water will rust the body and you will be fined at least $200.

Another one: If you make a sharp turn in the sand, the truck will flip over and every passenger will be seriously hurt.

Finally, the person who manages the truck fleet and the equipment inventory completes the scare session with photos of cars that flipped over and news clippings mourning a reckless death.

They clump everyone into groups of eight, based not on compatibility but to ensure that every team has enough qualified drivers. This also boosts the chances of being paired with a zealot for rules whose burning need for control makes sure any potential for adventurous exploration is snuffed out (hiya, Lucy).

A wild dingo menacingly strolls on Fraser Island.

The trip

It starts with a barge trip from the mainland to the island. It truly is an all-sand island where a rainforest miraculously thrives. When the tide is high or rocks impede safe passage along the shore, sandy inland tracks offer a detour.

Travelers are given a detailed itinerary and everything is scheduled. Go to a lake at 2pm. Leave by 3:30. Be at the campsite by 5:30.

This is because of the tides, yes, but since it’s policy to infantilize visitors to the maximum extent, responsible independent exploration is strictly verboten. If anyone veers from the itinerary, they will be fined.

Despite the military scheduling, enforced by a group’s self-appointed despot (still here, Lucy?), the trip is lovely. Driving on sand is a unique kind of exhilaration. Soft patches make the van lurch slightly sideways and washouts, creeks of inland fresh water that seep to the sea, can make spectacular splashes if negotiated well.

Fraser Island boasts several lakes. Some are topaz blue with blindingly white sand that rival Caribbean paradises. Others are at the bottom of steep sand dunes and beg for sandboarding or just a good ol’ tumbling.

Bianca risks life and limb by enjoying a casual skip down a sand dune.

The lies exposed

By the second day on the island, most participants realize that driving on sand is actually quite safe and that no, the island’s dingoes aren’t really interested in eating  people alive.

With minimal reasoning, you realize that when driving on wet hard sand – the sand operators say offers the best traction – much of the it sticks to the underbody, taking salt water with it. And anyone who lives in a snowy country knows that cars don’t fall apart at the first contact with a salted road.

You also learn that hurtling down the pillow-soft sand dunes around Lake Wabee won’t really cause lethal spinal injuries. Or that the rough sea  won’t drag you to a drowning death if you simply wade at knee height.

And no one that I heard of suffered a cardiac arrest upon contact with a jellybean-sized jellyfish.

Still, no one wants to take chances. The organizers’ scare campaign is too refined. Their repetition overpowers common sense.

Back at the hostel we asked a staffer why they exaggerate the dangers so much. “We want to make sure you’ll be completely responsible.” My parents would be beaming with pride.

They say that those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. “They” are morons, because the same could be said for chemistry, math, or French.

Yet learning something is no guarantee that one won’t make the same stupid mistakes later. I, for one, know the legend of King Canute, and I still tried to stop the sea from washing away my hot tub.

A little background:

On the east cost of the lovely Coromandel peninsula, just east of Auckland, there’s a bed of underground rocks still red-hot from volcanic activity centuries ago. They’re right below the beach, and if you dig in the sand in the right place, hot water emerges to form a natural spa.

They call it, of all unlikely names, Hot Water Beach.

We arrived two hours before low tide, the best time to find hot water. The tourists were trickling in, many armed with shovels, which surely they must have rented, or New Zealand has the most over-equipped travelers anywhere.

We pushed through the crowd and happened on a surf shop. It was closed, but through the window I saw dozens of them, neatly standing in a box, NZ$5 for a one-day rental.

We were unarmed. Completely impotent. Until, that is, I went around and saw an outhouse labeled “Changing Room”. It was closed with a sliding lock, but no padlock. I peered in and saw it, the howitzer of shovels, one fit for a gravedigger or a skyscraper builder, not those wimpy tree-planting spoons others were holding.

I would have the greatest hot water hole in all of Hot Water Beach.

People were digging. Holes swelled with water, but none of them were hot. Maybe they weren’t deep enough. We found two friendly Kiwi girls busy with their own excavation and asked to join them. Teamwork and artillery, the winning recipe for any offensive campaign.

Our hole was impressive, but the water wasn’t. Every 10 seconds someone would ask, “It it hot?” When we thought we were getting close, the surf would rush in and fill the opening with the soft sand.

We dug five similar holes, each one of them canceled by the sea.

If I’m smiling it’s because the futility of it all hasn’t sunk in.

A murmur: it’s hot here, someone said. So hot you can’t stand in it. We followed the whispers. A few people were milling just a few meters away. I attacked the sand with my massive spade of glory and sure enough, scalding hot water appeared. The Kiwi girls pitched in. The surf came and wiped it away.

Barrier. We need a barrier. Two boys were watching and I told them to make a wall around the hole with the sand that I dug up. They were good. Patted it down nice and firm. A wave crashed ashore and the water crept inland. It reached the barrier. It held! Keep digging, keep patting!

People started to crowd around us. We seemed to be on the only spot with hot water. Some helped the dig, others took pictures. Just as we were closing the barrier around the sides, the sea ripped in. It was a tsunami, deeper than the barrier was tall. I got on my knees and buttressed the barrier with the shovel. The wave washed over it. When the water receded, our grand barrier was a sorry little mound, the remains of a lazy sand castle long ago crumbled.

About King Canute: he was some Danish king whose name was originally spelled Cnut, but changed it to avoid becoming a half-clever T-shirt worn by frat boys. He thought he had so much power that he could stop the tides from coming in. He tried, and the end of the story is obvious.

I know this story. I knew the sea would keep coming in. My hands were starting to bleed and blister.

I took a step back to rethink my strategy. Everyone was digging and getting sea-wiped. Half hour to low tide. The sea can’t possible recede more than this.

A successful hole. Cold, but successful.

A trio – two dudes and a chick – quickly took the spot I vacated and firmly planted their feet in the sand. One of the guys eyed the people around him, half defiant, half scared. He was just standing, his feet maybe warm, with no shovel, and no intention of digging. But dammit, he claimed his spot and no one would take it away.

He saw me with my shovel and looked like Czechoslovakia after Hitler invaded Poland. It was an open invitation.

“Watch your feet, I’m about to dig again,” I said, and started attacking, with all my might, at a spot just left of his foot. My hole grew quickly, faster than any hole on the beach, and again, others joined the dig or helped form a barrier. I looked at my new adversary. “You guys feel free to pitch in any time.”

He looked like was was lobbed an unexpected question at customs, perhaps something about his prostate. “If we all dig in, we can all enjoy a big hot tub later,” I said. He stepped back but looked no more resolved. “Or you can just stand there, that’s cool,” I offered and went back to work.

What a lovely hole we had. Six people could fit in comfortably. Even my adversary was helping. The water was unbearably hot but we left an opening in the barrier for the cold sea to tame it. Just a little water would get through, we thought.

But it was another tsunami. We were outgunned. Barbarians at the gates. I jumped on the barrier to protect it. The barrier was Obama in Mississippi, I was the Secret Service. The water calmly shoved me inland along with the wall, which I felt dissolving like Jell-O powder beneath me. POTUS was dead.

I couldn’t open my hands. They were cramped in a shovel-gripping claw. It was past low tide and few people were digging anymore. My adversary was standing ankle-deep in the sand, looking around nervously.

Rome fell two thousand years ago and people still think they can build lasting empires. Greek myths have done little to curb vanity, curiosity, or foolish ambition. I walked away from Hot Sandy Beach, my shovel dragging behind me, and King Canute sighing with each wave that splashed on the sand.

There were no naked people at Vancouver’s Wreck Beach, but there was a greying hippie feeding seagulls and a friendly bearded fella named Cloud.

This would have to suffice as a taste of this naturist mecca, where in the summer, thousands gather wearing nothing but a smile.

We happened on this notorious beach by chance: the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia was charging $14 a person, a few notches above the limits of reason for budget travelers.

So we walked around the building instead and happened upon a totem pole park and an art installation of tiny white plastic boats sticking out of the gravel. This, we thought, would have to be our discounted moment of culture for the day.

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But just beyond the poles was a promising nature trail that led to a steep zig-zag of stairs. It seemed to descend into the thick woods, with no end in sight. But soon a sign warned us that below was a clothing-optional beach.

Eight degrees and cloudy is too nippy for even the most dedicated nudist, but traces of the naturist savoir-faire were evident. Like the white-haired Tommy Chong lookalike with a throwing breadcrumbs at the seagulls. When we passed by, his birds took flight. For this, I apologized.

“They have wings, so they’re quite mobile,” he spoke in a lazy bullfrog drawl. “We only wish we could fly like them.” And without looking our way, he resumed his feeding ceremony.

Art?

Our attention was then caught by a young fella with a full black beard and an olive hoodie. He seemed to be drawing in the sand with two sticks that were taller than him. When I approached, I saw that he had carved an eight-figure in the sand, in which water from a nearby spring was flowing.

“It’s a filtration system for the animals,” said the friendly sculptor who calls himself Cloud. He’d been doing this for seven years, he told me. He comes to the beach a few times a week and arranges sticks and clay that trap impurities from the water dribbling down the beach cliff.

He pointed to an accumulation just past a miniature dam of sticks he made. “See, this is almost clean enough for you and me to drink,” he said. But it’s good enough for the dogs that come walking. But why the eight figure?

“So there’s a water circulation system. That way the mosquitoes don’t nest.”

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Cloud’s water purification system at Wreck Beach.

I asked his permission to take his picture. He took his sticks and walked towards the shoreline, saying, “I’m going to play. You can shoot me while I do that.” With this, he twirled his sticks like a circus performer or a martial artist. Or a West Coast beach filter engineer, for all we knew.

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The stairs back to campus were just as treacherous, and the sight of a hot dog stand claiming to be the best in town – or your money back – offered an irresistible challenge.

It’s manned by a friendly Asian lady and her Mexican assistant. Tourists emerging from an Olympic women’s hockey game,  drunk enough to fancy themselves great seducers, hardly managed to fluster them. “Oh, I’m too busy with school to go out with you,” the señorita would say as she handed one such lothario his dog.

A regular hot dog costs $4. One of eight flavoured “smokies” – sausages, essentially – go for $6.50. Not budget prices, but it’s understandable. They come topped with drilled onions and you have six condiments and 10 sauces to choose from.

I had the “volcanic” smokie, meant to be spicy, but it gave me a slight tingle. Bianca had the Cajun. Both were delicious. I highly recommend the cranberry chipotle sauce or the jalapeño barbecue sauce to give the dogs a little more emotion.

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Trip summary

Costs per person
Bus fare to UBC: $2.50
Museum of Anthropology: $14
Hot dog and drink: $8

Highlights
Stunning view of the sea and mountains
Brisk climb and and down wooded steps
Glimpse of Vancouver hippies/naturists in their element

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The grey sand at Monterrico slopes dramatically between the town and the sea, so that when you walk along the surf, all you see above the sandbank are the straw rooves of the hotels, scores of them, as far as the eye can see.

Yet, it remains a highly undeveloped coastal town, blissfully free of all-inclusive fortresses and perma-parasols in neat little rows, a quick weekend getaway for folks in Guatemala City and broke-ass backpackers. These beachside hotels, with names like Eco Beach Place and El Marlin, are simple little things, where hammocks outnumber showers and toilets combined.

Mine was called Johnny’s Place, a miniaturized, stripped-down, discount bin knock-off of a resort. If resorts were like movies, this one would go straight to video. Plastic beer-branded chairs surround a pool that barely fits four. The well-staffed kitchen-bar plays slow bolero and bossa nova covers of Bob Marley.

It’s a favourite among European girls, middle-aged gay guys, and the locals who come to ogle either, with a few private bungalows, some shared huts and a nine-bed dorm for 45 quetzales (about US$5.50) a night. And during the weekend, it’s the de-facto meeting point of Monterrico, since the town itself is still struggling to figure out the whole tourism thing. Which is at once endearing and utterly heartbreaking.

It’s got one paved, restaurant-lined street that leads to the beach. On the final 70 metres, there’s an attempt at a boardwalk, a stone walkway with one guy selling seashell necklaces. The rest of the town is a wretched, dusty dump, where dirty-faced boys try to knock cashew fruits from trees with empty beer bottles, and every other crusty-furred mongrel walks with a limp.

Rafts that bring cars to Monterrico, an island between sea and swamp.

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Which is why most visitors hang around Johnny’s. Which isn’t entirely a bad thing, since it’s where you’ll meet the town’s most interesting strangers, like the affable Kiwi girl doing Alaska to Argentina on a motorbike (read her blog), or the couple upping the ante and going from Washington State to Argentina on bicycles.

There’s only one person you won’t find at Johnny’s, and that’s Mike: “Folks here” — he pronounces it hir — “call me Miguel or Don Gringo.”

You can’t miss him: paunch like a wrecking ball, a blonde walrus moustache, and a baby parrot perched on his straw hat. “Keepsum frum crappin’ on ma shirt. Heh.”

Don Gringo, aka Mike.

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This retiree from Colorado bought a house three months ago, and regularly brings back second-hand clothes and used laptops, which he uses to teach the kids English and how to use computers. He recently helped a deaf, dumb, cross-eyed and bow-legged girl have her eyes corrected and get a hearing aid. Now he’s looking for a speech therapist to help her talk and some good crutches.

“Her father had pretty much wrote ‘er off. Jus’ kept’er sitting on a corner by hirself.”

And Don Gringo Miguel is adamant about bringing some business acumen to these parts. As an experiment for his favourite main-street restaurant, where you’re most likely to find him, he got some candles for the tables. Night-time business doubled in a week, he said. Then he convinced them to carry white wine, and now it’s regularly packed with Europeans, while the joint across the street can hardly get two tables filled.

“It’s a reason to git up ev’ry mornin’.”

When the weekend’s over, Monterrico becomes a ghost town, but you might be visited by some boys while wading in the sea, like I was. They showed me that if you submerge your head and stay still, you can hear the whines and groans of distant whales. Then they challenged me to body-surf a wave to the sand. That I did. So they made it a race: first person to the sand gets a Coke. Two of them, no older than 10, tied for first.

After they got their Cokes, they promptly vanished out of sight.

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