I was just recently on a little trip down to Sayulita, Mexico—a little hippie/surf town about a half hour from Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific Coast. I hadn’t been to my beloved Mexico in about three years and was very interested to hear from the locals about the pot situation. So while there, I made a point of asking everyone I met about it and what I found was as interesting as it was unexpected.

The first person I asked was Nacho, a Mexican surfer-warrior who runs the surf shop on the beach where I went to rent my board. He seemed just like the likely type so I asked him, “Hey, is there any way I can get some weed around here?” He responded with a twinkle in his eye, “Well, yeah of course. But you’ll have to come back here in the evening and I can take you to meet him.” So I was like, “Okay, cool. See ya later then!” And off to the surf I went.

After a magical surf-sesh I returned, showered off, and paid for the board rental. I was about to leave when Paul, a friendly, funny-looking guy (who was on good terms with the surf shop guys), asked to buy me a drink at the gringo bar right next to the shop. Already feeling some cool vibes from that corner I accepted. And then almost immediately after we got there demanded what he knew about the weed situation in this part of the world.

And funny, as soon as I mentioned weed the bartender/owner—a cute, mid-twenties, tall blondie from the Southern States—took an interest in our conversation. “Oh yeah, you like weed? Let’s go smoke some now,” he suggested. Hahaha! So I was like, “Sure, dude.” And off the three of us went.

Luckily blondie lived right across the street in a one bedroom apartment with crazy high ceilings and a wrap around patio facing the beach—not a bad place to smoke. So there we were in this fantasy apartment on the beach and he whips out this bag of weed and it didn’t necessarily look too bad for Mexican-grown weed so I was kind of impressed!

But then I smoked it. Ha! Definitely not BC-quality weed.

What is it about Mexican-grown weed? Why does it taste sooooo darn shakey? I mean, nobody would pay for that in my neck of the woods no matter how stoned it got you. And it did get us stoned, it did, it just wasn’t an enjoyable smoking experience; it was all super dry and literally tasted like grass…yuck. But it got us stoned, like quite stoned…for about 30 minutes. Maybe. Not really what I’m used too but it was fun while it lasted.

So back we went to the gringo bar with blondie soon coercing us into another way overpriced margarita. I explained that my vegan-yogi lifestyle was really only suited to marijuana use, with only an occasional drink and he gruffly stopped trying.

This is when the story of Mexico weed got more interesting for me: Paul ordered another drink and told me about his Mexican weed experience.

Turns out he knew a cool, American, hippie family that spent half their time down in this part of Mexico and they managed somehow to always bring down a fat supply of Humboldt weed. For those who don’t know about Humboldt weed, well, you should. Humboldt’s a town in Northern California that has been known for decades as being a town that thrives on weed production—and grows killer hydroponic weed.

Since his hippie friends had been more than generous sharing their killer weed with him he decided to do similarly at a local party. So there was Paul, a super-obvious American at a party in Mexico, and he starts making friends by handing out free killer weed to everybody. Good thing he wasn’t so drunk that he didn’t notice a couple local Mexicans who had taken notice of this generosity and began following him, staring him down. Once it was obvious that he was being stalked, Paul was smart: he walked right up to them and said, “Hey guys, I’m not looking for any trouble.” To which they responded, “Give us all your weed.” Of course he handed it all over to them.

So that’s how his brush with a Mexican cartel ended…him without any weed, but thankfully he still had his head!