Nick Green - South of the Border

Nick Green is an artful photographer and keen surfer from Tasmania. Over the years he has captured intense and stunning images of his southern ocean state. Nick and three of his mates from Tasmania recently purchased a one way ticket to LA with a vague plan - buy a van, fill it with a bunch of boards and drive to the bottom of Mexico. Nick, always with a camera in hand, documented the trip and here shares just some of the images and experiences from the road.

'The somewhat basic idea of our trip was to fly into LA, find a campervan to buy and drive to the bottom of Mexico. With minimal preparation or research, we soon found our plan was logistically a little harder than anticipated. I like to think that it's often naivety that buys the plane ticket and gets you where you want to go - common sense and faith normally sorts out the rest.'

'Pretty much the only thing we had pre-organised was booking a motel online so we had somewhere to stay for the first week when we arrived in LA and were looking for a camper to buy. Little did we know we had booked to stay in the neighbouring suburb to Compton. The first night we arrived we were shot at (with paintballs) walking along the street on our way to get dinner and the third night someone was shot (not with paintballs) in the parking lot of the motel we were sleeping in.'

'Navigating our way through LA was an experience in itself, 4 clueless Tasmanians in the big city, totally out of our depth. It was fair to say we were pretty keen to get the fuck out of there but the tests had only really just begun at this point and 2 days after purchasing our campervan the transmission broke on us. A few rough nights sleeping on the street waiting for the van to get fixed and we were back on the road.'

'We were initially denied entry into Mexico, hardly surprising with the vehicle we were driving, filled with a dozen surfboards and 4 long-haired Australians Stuck in a weird no-man's land between the two countries, we were eventually directed to a different border crossing further inland.'

'The cultural shock of entering LA from Australia had already shaken us pretty hard, but it was nothing compared to the juxtaposition we saw when we crossed the border from San Diego into Tijuana... Literally in the space of minutes you are thrown into a completely new world. We had forgotten to get our paperwork sorted during the border stuff around and suddenly felt like illegal immigrants. Overwhelmed, we managed to collectively sort out some broken Spanish from a few locals, who directed us to the airport where we got all the registration papers we needed to cross the borders throughout Mexico. After a pretty stressful and eventful 2 weeks, we had reached the point that we had been waiting for, we were on the road.'

'Mexico is a massive country and there's a lot more to see than those perfect right-hand points that have become so famous over the years (they also happen to be located towards the bottom of the country so we had a lot of ground to cover before we got to them.)'

'It’s funny when you look back on a trip like this one, so many moments become more significant or perhaps less significant with time. The highs and lows of travelling are often appreciated at a later date when the pace of life slows back down and you have time to reflect on exactly what it was you went through. It sounds cliche, but I guess it's a cliche for a reason.'

Nick's Mexico trip will be featured in the next edition of Surfing World magazine. To view his incredible images visit  www.nickgreenphoto.com or @nickgreenphoto on Instagram.