TEPIC, MEXICO… COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER ALL AROUND

FYI - for the podium we have to wear our bottoms and jersey.

Immediately following the champagne showers in La Paz, we were trying to get to our hotel to pack up and head out to Cabo for our flight the next morning. However, we would take two steps and then we would get blocked by a swarm of beach volleyball fans that wanted to take photos, sign shirts, and chat. We were very grateful for the love from the people of La Paz and the continuous support; however, it was nearly 10 PM and we still had not eaten dinner. We were very hungry and just wanted to get to the taco stand! My family was trying to make their way through the mass traffic jam in front of the courts to pick us up but the cars were relentless. Kristen, Jake, and I just started walking to the hotel in a stylish manner. (See image to the right) We were strolling down the streets of La Paz proudly rocking our brand-new champagne-doused medal around our necks, classic street tacos in hand and our trophy in the shape of a whale tail!

We were on a high! All of the adrenaline from the games and the excitement of winning a tournament is unmatched. Instead of taking the party bus back to the hotel and going out with the other teams to celebrate, we drove to Cabo with my family. As soon as we arrived at the house in Cabo, we had breakfast for dinner waiting for us (thank you Aunt Julie), did two loads of laundry, showered, repacked, and went to bed! We went to our beds, but we couldn’t sleep. Of course, we had to watch film and discuss our play while it was still fresh. It was very hard to celebrate as we knew there was a massive amount of work ahead of us in just under 72 hours. As you can imagine the next morning the alarm went off and as much as we wanted to slam the snooze button, we had another flight to catch and another competition to prepare for!

My uncle drove us to the airport and we were off, Jake on the other hand wasn’t. He was stopped and told via google translate that there was no seat for him on the plane. Tired, frustrated, hungry, and fatigued none of us were entertained by this statement. We left Jake to wait for his seat at the airport entrance while we grabbed breakfast and water for the three of us. We anxiously waited for the message that Jake was in fact assigned a seat on the plane with a great sigh of relief! We were informed the flight had started boarding so we grabbed some extra snacks from the lounge and a to-go coffee which came in none other than a standard red solo cup. I can’t say I usually drink from one of those in the morning hours, let alone walking through the airport with it in hand at 8 am.

The boarding process was very confusing! We were just trying to follow the wave of people and make sure we got on board with our bags. We flew Volaris, which is equivalent to Spirit airlines. On the budget airline there was no room for my legs. I switched with Jake to take the aisle seat because I physically would not have fit in the middle or the window. I was blown away as to how small the leg area was. I used the entire aisle during the quick flight, and I think the flight attendants saw me so squished that they didn’t even yell at me for blocking the aisle. Kristen barely fit in the seats! It was only an hour flight but we needed to get up and move and stretch and get the blood flowing as we knew we had another battle in the very near future!

After we landed someone with Mexico Beach Volleyball saw us at the airport and offered us free transportation for the 3-hour drive from Guadalajara to Tepic. (We were convinced that we would not have been given this perk if we would not have won the weekend before in La Paz! Note to self: Always win!) Why did we fly to Guadalajara? We asked ourselves the same thing as the 3-hour bus drive felt endless, there was so much baggage to load, and multiple stops to make with all of the tournament staff. We finally realized there was even more happening behind the scenes than we ever imagined. By the time we finally arrived in Tepic, we were drained! The restaurant in the hotel was the closest place with nourishment so we sat down, took one look at the menu and realized we were no longer in the touristy beach town of La Paz. The entire menu was in Spanish and there was no English menu to be found.

After dinner we set up a recovery session with our USA providers. We are so lucky USA Beach sends physical therapists, chiropractors, strength coaches, and athletic trainers pending the location and number of teams. Since half of the tournament’s entry list was made up of team USA, we had three on staff to help us out with recovery. All the other country’s teams made comments about “how it must be nice to have so much help”, well it really is! We appreciate all the recovery we can get! We were already one week into hola and gracias and we were just halfway through our trip in Mexico. It was a long, weird day of eating and we were honestly just too tired to go search for food so we made a protein and peanut butter sandwich in the hotel room, watched some film, and passed out!  

We luckily booked a training slot; however, we were too late to get one at the venue so we settled with the training courts in a park area on Tuesday morning. There were two courts with dark, shallow sand in the heat of the morning which was the exact opposite of what we were playing in at the venue of the tournament. (We found out as we stepped on the court to play our first match the next afternoon) Tuesday morning came fast, although it’s been so nice to have a mere 1-2 hour time zone change we were still pretty exhausted but nothing like going to Europe with an 8-hour time change! Just as I know all of you crazy people that get up for our 3 am games! (We really do appreciate your dedication to our dream and love all the messages of getting up at the crack of dawn to watch and not being able to sleep after the game with all of the stress/excitement!) The tournament provided transportation from the hotel to the training courts, we were always grateful for this especially when we would read the daily newsletter update for the tournament and it reads something to the tune of do not walk, Tepic can be dangerous, please be safe”. We were dropped off at the courts and Kristen was scheduling a ride back to the hotel post practice via our best friend Google Translate. It was a very intriguing conversation as both parties continued to speak in their own language hoping that the other would understand a keyword to solve the issue.

The practice was horrendous as you can imagine. If someone saw us out there trying to move or performing any basic beach volleyball skill, they would not guess we were in fact professional beach volleyball players. We were sore and it was tough to get moving after no sleep, a long travel day, and the crash of the adrenaline rush. Drew, our brilliant coach, said we just have to do something and it was good to move just didn’t look or feel good!

We were staying right next to a mall so we walked to the entrance to be greeted by police officers, which put us on high alert. We found a traditional Subway and made some friends with some college students in the area. We were even invited to his 20th birthday party on Saturday night! After we wandered aimlessly through the mall to find a grocery store that didn’t exist, we went to the venue for the preliminary meeting. The neighborhood surrounding the venue did not look ideal, then out of nowhere, a giant facility appears. The facility was great! There were two courts inside and a warmup court outside. The word on the street was that most of the international players had spent a great deal of money at training camps in the heat of Spain to prepare for the heat in the Mexico events. Then the entire event was indoor and climate controlled. Our only complaint, the lights were blinding! We soon found out in the games that there were perfect spots to serve from as you couldn’t see a thing when passing until right before the ball crossed the net!

We went back to the hotel and had dinner in the restaurant downstairs as we were reminded again that Tepic, Mexico was not safe and we should not explore. The qualifier tournament bracket was released and we were up against Mexico’s very own team in the first round of the qualifier at 11:30. One word to describe the match - mal (Spanish for bad). It was hard to get moving again, everyone in the arena was rooting against us but we pulled it together and got a win. We had to check out of the hotel by 1 pm and the matches were all very behind. As soon as we finished the match, we sprinted to the transport vans and packed up all of our suitcases for our late checkout (remember you only get a hotel room and dinner that night if you qualify). So, there we were sitting in the lobby with all of our luggage waiting for the USA staff to allow us to store our luggage in their room. While we were there, we got some life-changing treatment when the team chiropractor released our tense bodies and helped us for the next round.

Japan was up next, our favorite people (Ishii & Mizoe). As much as I absolutely adore them, it was game mode. We hung out at the venue as we were roomless! The match time finally rolled around, late of course, and we qualified! From finishing a Challenge tournament on Sunday night to qualifying on Wednesday night it was a wild couple of days! We checked back into the hotel after the game (we received the same exact room we had just checked out of).

Thursday rolled around and it was Main draw time. Who else would we draw except another USA team? We were scheduled to play Cheng/Hughes at 2 pm but the courts as they had been the entire day before, were very behind schedule! It made planning for transportation, eating, and warming up very challenging. We battled but eventually lost to them. It’s always a fun match up and super fun to fly to a foreign country to play another US team, but that’s how it worked out! It was time to regroup once again. We had another game against the home country of Mexico, except this time it was very, very late. We believe this was the latest game that we have had to play. We finished the match at 11 pm, we finished treatment at 11:50 pm and we were given a police escort back to the hotel and a boxed dinner. We arrived at the hotel to shower and sleep, just to find out that Jake couldn’t get an Uber at midnight. Jake had no other choice and stayed in our hotel room on a custom-built bed of pillows and blankets! Ask him if he is a fan of Mexico yet J

Friday morning after nearly zero sleep I was up and ready for the day. I am truly a morning person. Nuss gave me strict instructions not to wake her up and just leave her if I went to breakfast and I did just that. 15 minutes later Kristen zombie walked into the breakfast room asking, “are my eyes even open?”. No was the immediate answer that came pouring out of my mouth with a laugh. Jake came down 15 minutes after her for some breakfast and it was a toss-up to see who could go the longest without opening their eyes! Meanwhile, I was just chatting away, but it definitely hit me later that I was exhausted! We did more recovery, read, and put our feet up before our final pool play match-up with Australia. I don’t know how a “random” draw always places us up against all USA teams, AUS’s Mariafe and Clancy, & Brazil’s Ana Patricia and Duda. We lost and had yet another match and we had a quick turnaround to play for a spot in the quarterfinals against our well-known opponents of Brazil. We lost in a heartbreaker third set. We had opportunities and didn’t execute. It hurt. We changed our flights to Saturday afternoon on the bus back to the hotel and booked a ride to the airport. It sucks. We didn’t want to get 5ths but that would have been way better than 9th. The dinner that was provided was absolutely terrible to top off a bad night so we went to the lobby to find Theo and Trevor from the USA men’s side to have some dinner and a drink with our fellow USA losers. 

I didn’t sleep. I never sleep after tournaments. Losing is far worse than winning will ever be great! I sat up in bed and rewatched the game with my mind endlessly replaying the points. I was up before my alarm once again and I started getting ready for the travel day home! Here is where things start to get fun!

I woke up and went to my phone on the desk to find out that our flight had been delayed, then I realized that we would miss our next flight so Kristen switched us to a later flight. It was annoying but manageable and there was nothing else we could do about it. As soon as my feet hit the ground and I tried to get out of bed I felt like I had been hit by a truck! Kristen always says this post-tournament and I believe it is true, “our bodies know when we lose and finish the tournament”. Our bodies know when they can finally just feel all of the aches and pains from the last 12 matches in 8 days – and that they did.

Before we thought we were going to die.

We packed up our suitcases once again to stuff them into a car that smelt like smoke. We got another fun phone call from Jake who already dislikes Mexico after two weeks and some unfortunate events to say he can’t get out of the country and had to pay a fee for not having the paperwork finished. *Don’t worry, he was able to pay the fee and leave the country! As soon as that was said we made sure that we completed our paperwork to leave the country. After 15 failed attempts mine finally went through and Kristen’s failed for the hundredth time. She was not having it with that website and she had to pee so badly that she couldn’t think of anything else. It was a 3-hour drive back to Guadalajara to fly home and the driver let us know that he had to stop “quickly” and withdraw money.

So Kristen was thrilled it would work out that she could find a bathroom as he was withdrawing money and I would stay in the car and watch our belongings. Plans changed when we rolled into the sketchy city. I vetoed the idea that she would get out of the car as soon as we drove past a woman with two machetes in hand walking down the street. We both went into hyper aware and cautious mode with every street we were winding through. Not only were we going to miss our flight, but we were also scared of where he was taking us and the driver spoke no English. We both contacted our moms right away to send our location and that we were in a sticky situation and just to be aware of exactly where we were if something happened. Of course, we freaked them out but we were very scared ourselves! After being off of the map’s directions to the GDL airport I was trying to communicate that we didn’t want to be going this way and to take us back to the airport and he just kept driving, talking on the phone, and eventually made it to a bank 15 minutes later.  

The driver just parked and walked into a building while on the phone the whole time and peaking around the corner at us periodically.  Then a cop on a motorcycle flipped on his lights and pulled up right behind us. We went into supersonic protection mode and analyzed everyone and everything around us. The driver finally came out with money in hand and talked with the police officer. After a long discussion back and forth, the police officer then took off and the driver got in the car and began on the path to GDL airport again. We thought we were in the clear.

Then he took a turn onto a side street on a dirt road without anyone else around and the cop parked in front of us and the driver put the car in park and got out. The panic had set in as the driver slide the cop some money in an attempt to be sneaky but Kristen and I both saw what had happened. We were just sitting in his car watching this all transpire. The desolate road, the driver leaving us in the car, and the crooked cop all added up to the most anxious we were all trip. After the driver paid off the cop, the driver returned to the car and I was sternly telling him that we needed to get to the airport, Kristen was in communication with the tournament transport director and I was telling him that we were not safe and going to miss our flight. He asked Kristen to share her location so he could track us as well, then we finally got back on the Google Map’s path to the airport. Although we obviously made it out just fine it was truly a terrifying 60 minutes, especially with everything that had happened in Mexico just days before we were set to go play.

When we finally got back on the highway towards Guadalajara, we were winding through mountain terrain and curvy roads at very high speeds. The driver finally understood that we were going to miss our flight home, our eta showed 10 minutes prior to boarding time. Sorry airline, we would not be there for the recommended 3 hour before boarding window. Plus, Kristen had to pee this entire time. I thought she was going to explode. We were convinced that we were going to have to find another route home by missing the flight until we received a phone number from the tournament’s transportation director for special service at the airport. Angel, the transport specialist, saved Kristen’s life/pants whichever you prefer, and let us know there was a bathroom coming up as he still had our location. I’ve never seen someone so excited to go into a public rest stop and she sprinted inside and proceeded to message me that all the stalls were filled. She claimed to have given all of the people in the bathroom crazy eyes to say in zero words, no translation needed, to let her in the stall straightaway.

The driver went into sport mode. He began driving on the side of the road, flying over bumps and the inside of the car began to smell like the car was about to go up in flames! As soon as we arrived at the airport, we had 16 minutes to check our bags and board. We were greeted by the best day saver ever in the whole world, let’s call him Steve. We had no idea who he was but Steve got us to the front of every line and through every single person who asked for a passport or paperwork and to security.

At security, it was my turn to be stopped at security. They grabbed my brand new beautiful OGIO suitcase of which I claimed and she directed me to open it up. I watched her rummage through all of my things as she spoke to me in Spanish and I was unaware of what she was asking. Then our airport guru, Steve, came over and I asked him to translate. She was looking for “a toy” in my suitcase. I told him I didn’t pack any toys, then the woman behind me in line started laughing. Then the security woman and the people in line behind were speaking in Spanish laughing about “my toy”. Steve told me they were looking for a “electronico toy”. I finally put it all together, they were looking for the toy in my bag which happened to be my electric toothbrush.

Happy to make all of them laugh as I was sprinting to find Nuss and make the flight, just to find her shopping for Mexican Vanilla! I thought we were going to miss our flight as I didn’t have my phone out to see the time, we made it on time and I even got an upgrade, thank you Delta! We arrived in Atlanta and we were waiting for our bags to come out on the carousel and we walk past someone that looks familiar and I did a triple take and couldn’t figure it out. *Side note: I love to people watch and I am so used to having my sunglasses on that I can usually get away with it on the beach, but I forget that I am staring when I’m inside and don’t have the protection on my eyes! Kristen came up with it 30 seconds later, she was the celebrity in the show 90210. I absolutely loved that show! I instantaneously came up with her name from the show, Naomi.

📸: Beach Volleyball World

While in Atlanta, we were delayed cuatro times! Four times, as you can imagine we are not thrilled to get home at 1 am and probably put us in bed around 2 AM. However, while we were delayed in the Delta lounge I got in line for broccoli and “the Naomi” from one of my favorite shows that I watched in high school was in front of me. I definitely fan girled and had to talk to her! She was so kind and we had a great conversation. Kristen was not there to witness my story but as she was leaving the lounge, Naomi said bye to me and I about died! So that made up for my extreme exhaustion a little bit.

We had some colossal waves of emotion over the last 14 days. The stress of many tight matches, the highs of winning, the lows of losing, and the realization that none of that matters if we are stolen, lost, or killed in Mexico like we thought we were going to be.

Adios Mexico, until next time!

By: Taryn Kloth