Below is a normal day at Punta De Mita beach; picturesque blue water, fishing boats, lounge chairs, complete with the sun shining.

And then, you see the water pull out away from the shore… Shouldn’t those people be running for higher ground???

I had to post the pictures above for awe and effect. But really, here’s how it all happend…

We were thinking of going fishing this morning, but couldn’t book the trip, so even though a couple days ago the waves were predicted at nothing, we decided to head to Punta de Mita and maybe get lucky with some waves anyway. Then we heard about this earthquake, and living in the land locked province of Alberta I’d never had to think about the effects of an earthquake through the ocean and the transfer of energy. But being so close to the shore here in Mexico, forces you to check your references before heading out to surf. The boys were doing some research to determine when the wave might come (if it did at all) and then we headed out.

When we were out in the waves we didn’t really notice anything different, besides that the waves were fairly consistent, and came in decent sized sets. But once we came in to shore and sat down for lunch, we noticed every couple of minutes (2-10) the tide would go all the way out, and quite quickly come back in (within 4-5 waves), before repeating again, and again, and again. The tide today was supposed to hit lowest at 3pm, but this started happening (we noticed) around 12:45 or so. We watched it for about an hour, before deciding to leave the beach before the calculated “hit” time.

So in the photos above you saw the higher tide, followed by the low tide ( with beached fishing boats), then repeat. Look carefully, its a big difference, and it got even more pronounced than this as time went on. Anyway, we think that this was the “tsunami” effect at least at our location, perhaps due to the sideways angle of the banderas bay?! The fishing boats were periodically stranded out in the bay because the tide was so far out, they couldn’t get back in. But, it was like Calgary weather, wait 5 minutes, and things will change. In rolls the tide… and the boats made a break for the shore, before being quickly beached again.

At the moment, (a few hours after this) we’re watching CNN live from Honolulu, Hawaii where people are waiting for some giant tsunami to roll in after the 8.8 magnitude earthquake hit Chile early this morning.

Video now added below. Watch how quickly the water comes in, it receeds back out just as quickly and repeats.