San Cristobal de la Casas in Chiapas, Mexico offers some amazing shopping! A dress similar to this was 700 pesos in Puerto Escondido and here it’s 250 pesos. So hold your horses and monies until you get to the mountains where they’re made.

I have never felt so blonde and nordic before as I have done here, the kids and the oldies stare at me like I am a ghost.. My family is from northern Norway and northern Sweden. We’re so different and yet so similar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_peoples

From a beach to a mountain town 2200 meter above the sea level, talk about culture chock. We got to San Cristobal de la Casas with a night bus from Huatolco and the first thing we did was to take a taxi to the restaurant Tierra’Dentro. Just the taxi part was a little mission and for the first time in Mexico we had to struggle to bring our boards in the cab, not strange maybe considering most people here in the mountians have never seen a surf board before, maybe not even the ocean. But we made it! And Tierra’Dentro’s breakfast was well worth it. We have started to to this, take a cab to a restaurant instead of a hotel from the Lonely Planet book. This way you can eat, be happy and then let one of you sit with the backpacks while the other one can go and find an awesome place to stay.

Reminds me of the amazing pizza nights we had at Papazela’s in South Africa, this local restaurant in Barra was almost as good. Their drinks however were out of this world! Pizza, beer, pina coladas, margaritas and new friends; a great night!

The beach here is amazing. The only building on the beach is the restaurant which is a palapa/bungalow made of bamboo etc and easily could be taken down and poff, suddenly you would have an untouched beach with a beautiful wave in front of it! Kind of hard to find 2012. It’s the community who runs it all and the local families take turns running the restaurant. You pay 20 pesos per person to enter the road down to the beach, money that goes to the local school and to maintain the road etc.

If you ever find yourself in this little paradise make sure not to miss the guacamole with home made nachos and the torta de pescado (fish sandwich), it goes along great with a coconut! Feels like being stranded on a lonely beach with food as your only companion, could really be worse huh?

After recommendations from both Ed and our friend Oscar (also known as Kioskar) we took a bus and a taxi south and made it to Barra de la Cruz just to the sunset. This place did not disappoint us.. Nor did Andrew, Ed’d friend, a super cool dude from New York City that we’re gonna tell you more about later.

We met Ed on our road trip through Mexico. His story is cool if something so we made it a Sunshine story.

Ed used to live a different life.

He worked 9 to 5, went home and kept on working until early morning. Every day, every week. He managed to go to the gym one hour everyday, that was his free time.

Ed lived in Los Angeles. In Hollywood.

He was a graphic designer and web designer.

Caught up in the system.

He didn’t have any good relationship for many years.

And he didn’t surf.

Ed wasn’t happy.

In 2004 his mum was worried about him, so she asked him to come visit her  in Mexico for a two week holiday. Something happened down there. After the two weeks he told his work he was gonna have a six month break. It ended up beeing more than that, he went back home, packed his life together, sold is stuff and moved down himself. He started to surf, started to photograph, shoot surfing, started to enjoy life, fell in love, got married, started an international clothing brand, became a dad and started to understand what he was supposed to do. The six months turned into eight years.

His clothing company is called Quality Peoples and it’s story is just as cool as Ed’s own. It started as an collaboration between Ed Fladung and John Esguerra, both are artists that moved to different countires just like that. As well as the art part they have one thing in common, the nature of a life lived in search of waves. Ed is in Mexico, surfing doing his artish thing. John is on Hawaii doing his. Their marketing/sales manager is in New York city, the shirts are made in Los Angeles and sold world wide. Everything via Internet. That’s a modern way of making a living.

This is Ed.

Here’s some of Ed’s work, t-shirts and photography.

Here’s our meeting with Ed, shredding a secret along the Pacific coast in Mexico, taking some photos, making morning coffe Mexico style and just hanging out.