In comparison to the previous days experience, the six hour trip from
Antigua in Guatemala direct to El Tunco, El Salvador was a breeze. After five or so sweaty hours in a cramped mini van, we emerged out onto a winding road that led us along the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean coast for the last fifty kilometers of our eastward journey. Every now and then a glimpse of stacked frothy waves momentarily appeared through the lush vegetation revealing another one of the countless pointbreaks for which this part of El Salvador is famous.
El Tunco is a small one street village of small eateries and hostels that runs perpendicular between the main road and the coast. It has that "tranquilo" (aka laid back) Central American feeling and is a good stop for traveling surfers with a couple of breaks within walking range: La Bocana and Zunzal - one a bouldery beach break, the other, a long reeling righthander.
We settled on a hot clean little room in the Papaya Lodge and were joined there by a friendly Aussie couple, Pete and Renee also from Perth, that we had met on the bus.
At this point both Jane and I were both down in the dumps so we laid pretty low for the next couple of days. I missed a small swell on the first afternoon of our arrival when I was feeling ill and groveled around in pretty average waves as I slowly recovered during the following days.
On the third day we caught one of the refurbished school buses into the nearby town of La Libertad to grab a few provisions. While in town we took the opportunity to visit the fish markets, set along a jetty that runs out to sea. At the seaward end, the locals haul their long narrow boats via an old rusty crane. The boats are then lined up along the central area of the pier while they unload their catch, and at the landward end a small canopy covers a multitude of fish mongers selling their produce. Tuna, snapper, lobster, prawns, it can all be found here. Although slightly more worrying were the tiny hammerhead sharks left beheaded and de-fined lying in a bucket along with butchered beautiful spotted eagle rays. The sharks would have been no bigger than a foot in length. A sad sight.
It is slightly concerning the amount of fish on display at these markets. When one considers how many of these markets occur daily all around the world, it is a worry that as humans, we appear to be taking fish as an infinite resource. Unfortunately the message is not quite out yet that it is not.
After a quiet night back in El Tunco we decided it was time to leave. A new swell was due soon and as the breaks around La Libertad experience big crowds during the weekends when locals descend from the nearby San Salvador, it might be good to escape. And so started one hell of a ride. Six different legs of cramped buses, hot taxis, and backs of pick-ups took us on a roundabout trip through the El Salvador countryside until we finally arrived some seven hours later at Flores, hot, sweaty and exhausted. Mentioned in my surf guide as the Savage East, the area around Flores is meant to be quieter so you can perhaps understand my surprise when we arrived to find the place packed full of surfers. We soon figured out that most of these "traveling" surfers are camped up in the luxury surf resort of Las Flores and travel around in fancy AC four wheel drives. Lucky them. It just doesn't feel right that they should be able to surf the same waves as those who fought hard to be here but hey, whatch'ya gonna do about it?
Besides being busy the surf at Flores was good...for the first few days at least...then...it got GREAT! The tight pack of surfers that crowded the tight take off spot whilst the surf was small were quickly scattered once the proper swell hit. A moderate rip current made sure of that as solid walls of water were sent pouring down the point. This sorted the men from the boys and finally Flores was worth the long bus rides, the cramped prison cell like accommodation and the inscecent mosquitos. Thank you to my beautiful patient wife for putting up with me and my endless search for waves. You make me a happy man...Is now a good time to mention that I have no effin idea how we're gonna get out of here? Ouch! We had planned on catching a boat from a nearby town across a large bay and arrive direct in Nicaragua avoiding Honduras all together but we simply didn't have enough information to go by and it sounded like we would need to be at least six people. It was too far and too much of a gamble. As it was, there were three of us. Jane, myself and Robert, a friendly yank from Austin, Texas that we had met back in El Tunco. Rob had attempted to cycle from La Libertad to Leon in Nicaragua but after having spent his first night in a small town where the only accom was a pay by the hour hotel (if you get my drift), he only made it a little further before he had his bike stolen on the second night.
And so it was that the three of us embarked on another "great" journey through to Nicaragua. Seven legs this time, two border crossings, and some nine hours of travel saw us end up in Leon, unexpectedly actually.
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