El Salvador

Playa El Zonte
La Libertad, Central Coast
El Salvador

June 26th-29th, 2006

After a one night layover in San Salvador, which is a super cosmopolitan city (for Central America), I descended an hour and a half to the beaches West of San Salvador. It´s a quick trip, even on the chicken bus, and I had gone with my bags and two English guys I met at the hostel in San Salvador. They surfed for a bit in the town of La Libertad, at the end of the direct San Salvador-Coastal El Salvador road. La Libertad is sketttchhy. We were there for 2 hours and were warned to stay away from the cemetary near where people surf because guys hopped up on crack will come with machétes and take your board, bags and money. He also told us about a "murder" he supposedly just witnessed. About an hour before sundown I set about looking for my way to the tranquil beachtowns just to the west of that crazy place. I had heard about this place Playa El Zonte, Surf Camp Horizonte, and I booked a pickup, private, easy, for $6 bucks. A steal if you ask me, because I saw the murder scene as I drove out of town, and there were a lot of shell casings there too.

Going to Surf Camp Horizonte was a great call. I´m on a poor net connection now but I´ve got some gorgeous pictures of the parots and other cool birds that live there. I´m staying in a dorm there, for about 10 bucks a night, right on the beach, in front of a pool, and I´m surfing some of the best waves in Central America. Actually, Punta Roca off of the filthy sketchy La Libertad beach, just on the other side of Crackhead Graveyard, is said to be one of the top 10 breaks in the world.

I´ve just been pickin up the board every day, going out to practice surfing, and chilling out alternatively between the pool and the Air Conditioned room of these buddies I made here. Two American brothers, about 10 years older than me, who are chilling away from their wives on a surf vacation in El Salvador. They´ve been really nice giving me rides around in their car, and surfing pointers. These dudes are good but they hired a local guy who is a bigtime serious surfer, grew up with these waves here. A good gang to learn from all in all.

So that´s it for now, my time is short, but soon (well probably at least a few days) I´ll get some photos up and let you really see how beautiful El Salvador is. I´m headed out tomorrow, moving east and south, going to spend the night in the opposite end of the country and take a ferry around Honduras´Pacific side, to nicaragua