Puerto Escondido! In the mind's eye of every surfer is the image of a heaving, insanely powerful wave coming out of deep water, exploding on an inside sandbar. Rip-tides that more resemble rivers with brown sand-boils that form in the wake of the breaking wave, are standard procedure- along with the local sharks, to add spice to the "Mexican Pipeline". One minute it's paradise, the next, comes along a set that closes out the whole beach, creating survival-like conditions.
One year, l975 it was, a team of hammerhead sharks pulled up into the line-up and scared the surfers onto the sand. After about a half hour of watching perfect barrels go by unridden, the ecstatic surfers decided to "go for it", and paddle right back out- this time KNEEPADDLING out- just to be safe!
That year, the ride to "Puerto" from the city of Oaxaca was a grueling, 12 trip in a rickety bus that was not dissimilar to a Marine march!
The Kabbalist of this week's Torah portion, the Ohr Hahaim Hakadosh (27-20), no doubt had this bitter/sweet aspect in mind when describing the "beaten" olive oil used in the tabernacle. We are told in the Zohar that the olive itself is bitter, but by pressing it, the oil thereby produced becomes "sweet" and is the most ideal for drawing an even-flowing light on the wick. The symbolic "breaking" of the bitter in order to reach the sweet (oil, in Kabbala, representing an elevated level of spiritual bonding), is still recounted to this day by the old-timers who remember those "bitter", torturous bus rides, and ultimately savoring the "sweet" light at the end of those Puerto barrels!
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