"Surfing" in El Salvador

The next day I took the bus to one of the most famous surfing beaches in the world - playa El Tunico. There was not much there. Just a couple of hotels and a handful of restaurants on the beach. But the surf was intense; the waves crashing against the rocky shore. It was a sight to sit in one of the restaurants on the beach and watch the infinite saga of the sea play out. The sea here seems to have the intention of illustrating its extreme might and dominance over the very tiny human race:

I decided to go for a bit of a swim on my first day. The tide was high and the sun was shinning, so it seemed like a good time. I realized right away that one cannot simply stand on the edge of the beach here. If you stand in the water up to your calves, the undertow from the receding waves will actually pull rocks, coconuts, palm branches, and various debris and send them smashing into the back of your legs. There was more than one time when I almost fell as a big rock or coconut came crashing into my legs with the receding waves. So after a few minutes, I went all in to temp the fates. Almost immediately, a giant wave knocked me in the head and sent me around in two complete circles underwater before smashing my face against the sand. I quickly learned to duck the waves to avoid their abusive tyranny. After a few more minutes, I noticed that I was actually quite a ways out to sea; much further than I intended to be. There was a local El Salvadorian man watching me on the beach with some concern. I decided then to make my way in while the opportunity was still there. I learned to ride the big waves in, but the undertow from the receding waves was too much, and I was invariably pushed back out. After several minutes of back and forth with the waves, I made a little progress and managed to get close to the shore. When then undertow came, I swam as hard as I could and actually hurled myself out of the water for a moment in order to escape the powerful force. I then rode the next wave half way back up the beach and raced up as fast as possible to avoid the undertow. As I emerged form the surf, everyone on the beach clapped. The locals here apparently have enough sense not to go bathing in this stuff.

I was on the beach for a total of three days. I got to meet a lot of surfers, but decided after my experience in the ocean that I was not a good enough swimmer to seriously take up surfing. There is always a lot of talk at any surf beach about whom the “real surfers” are and who the hangers on or "posers" are. I thought about this question while in El Salvador. These were all clearly "real" surfers that could swim in surf with the fury of God without fear. So how do you tell a “real surfer” from a “poser”? It is all about how you can carry yourself with your shirt off. "Real surfers" have an innate ability to look completely natural and congruent doing almost any activity with their shirts off. They go out to dinner with their shirts off, conduct business, clean the house, speak to their Mothers. If one can do all of this with their shirt off, and still look natural, then they are a "real surfer". I tried it for a while. I went down to the patio in my hotel, sat in a hammock reading, cooked my dinner and talked with the other guests; all with me shirt off. But when some of the young hotel maids came to clean the rooms, I started to loose my nerve. I didn’t feel comfortable being mostly naked in front of the very young and conservative El Salvadorian women. I was concerned that my nakedness might offend them. I watched the other men with their shirts off while meeting with their accountants and realized what is already very obvious: I will never be a "real surfer".

Boarder Crossing to El Salvador

I arrived at the El Salvador border just before dark. I was immediately hounded by money changers and people wanting to take my bags. I walked across the border on foot and was questioned by about 5 different guys until they finally let me pass. On the other side, the boarder town was a typical boarder town, (sleazy motels, people trying to sell CD´s). I walked about 2 K´s to the bus station. There was only one bus leaving so I got on it. I didn’t really know where it was going, but they said something about Sonsanate which I knew was somewhere close to the coast. Anyway, it was already after dark and so I pretty much had to get on the bus in order to get off of the street.

El Salvador is a dangerous country. It has the highest rates of violent crime in Central America and much of the population is still very heavily armed as a hold over from the long and brutal civil war here. Gangs are rampant and often exist outside of the authority of the national police. Murders, violet crimes, and people "disappearing" are still very much a part of everyday life here. For the most part they leave tourists alone, but most of the guide books advise extreme vigilance and recommend not walking around too much after dark.

My planned destination was a place called Playa El Zonte, a small little surfing village on the Pacific coast. But the bus did not go through to El Zonte, and the bus driver said that since it was late, I should probably stay in Sonsanate for the night. We pulled into the terminal and he very generously offered to take me himself in the bus to a Hotel. Very nice considering that the taxis in El Salvador are astronomical. He asked me what kind of hotel I wanted. "Very Cheap" he said. I said "No Very Cheap, no Very Expensive either." "I want a clean room with a private bathroom." So he drove me down the street for about 5 minutes and dropped be off at a Hotel that looked OK from the outside. The room inside was actually rather filthy - there was something akin to moss on the chairs and a giant hole in the side table. Everything smelled like mildew. There was graffiti all over the walls, (apparently, that intrepid Latin American traveler Paco was here). I declined the room and went out in search of something that would not give me nightmares. But after about a block, I realized that the neighborhood was not safe. There was gang members driving around in pick up trucks and groups of young men hanging out in the streets. They noticed me walking with my pack and took an interest. I wandered for about two blocks until I resigned myself to the fact that it was too dangerous to walk around further and I was stuck and would have to bear this hotel for the night. After an hour in the room, I became aware of not one but two roaches in the room. I didn’t know the Spanish word for roach, (cucaracha) so I was literally trying to climb the walls to illustrate what a roach was. Finally, they moved me to another room that they said would not have roaches. In the middle of the night, I went to use the bathroom, and I saw a friend hanging out in the corner. Using that disturbing survival intelligence that they developed from living among humans for centuries, he was hiding in the corner very still, trying to blend in with the wall. I went back to bed; needless to say, I did not sleep well that night.

Harem on the Beach

After three and a half weeks, I finally packed up and left Antigua. Antigua is one of those places that is difficult to leave. It is so beautiful and one can always make excuses for why one needs to stay longer. I had some motivation to leave because I had made agreements to volunteer for a week at a Tortuga, (Sea Turtle) hatchery. It sounded like a fun idea. I have always loved sea turtles, and I thought it would be great if I could do my part to help them to survive. I knew from experience in Mexico that the eggs are highly prized by local populations and that activists and volunteers and necessary in order to sustain the populations. Turtles are also fun to look at and an important part of the marine ecosystem. So when I read about the work being done at the hatchery at Parque de Hawaii on the Pacific coast of Guatemala, I decided to give it a try. The Parque de Hawaii is about a two hour drive, (3 buses and one ferry ride) from Antigua. I arrived on a Wednesday in the late afternoon. The park director was on his way out when I arrived, so I was on my own to acquaint myself with my new surroundings. Immediately I was stuck by the fact that no one was doing any actual work. There were a total of 24 volunteers at the premises and not one person was doing anything meaningful. Some were in hammocks; some were sitting at the kitchen table talking. Some were at the beach. Some were reading. But everyone was basically doing nothing and no one at first seemed to be very interested in my presence. After a few minutes, I noticed something exceptional. Nearly all of the "volunteers" were women. All told, there were only 5 men at the park and 19 women! Here is the extraordinary part: nearly all of the Women were gorgeous. Some were drop dead gorgeous and others were just good looking, but all were beautiful and all very young. The vast majority of the volunteers were German students on a gap year after University. There was also two British nationals, one other American, and the park director, who was Guatemalan. After studying Spanish for three weeks, I was disappointed to learn that German was the language of choice at this place.


The group was planning a party for the night of my arrival, because one of the volunteers was leaving, (incidentally, it was one Of. the 5 men that was leaving). So after a group dinner, people began to drink - heavily. During dinner, the other volunteers began to notice me, (I noticed that the volunteers tend to suffer from a kind Of. lethargic sun stroke during the day, only to reemerge to consciousness around dinner time). The men were cordial enough, but it was the Women who were very excited by my presence. I quickly inferred that the few eligible men had been spoken for and this left an influx of 14 beautiful Women that were, as it were, available. During the evening, I was gradually approached by every single one of them. Some were coy, others taking a more direct approach, ("One week should be enough time for us to get to know each other") it was also amusing because all of the girls seemed to be engaging in a competition to see who could wear the least cloths. There were a lot of moskitos at night in the park, but all of the girls in a block refused to wear pants, preferring to complain about their mosquito bites and thus drawing attention to their flesh. To the dismay of the many German women, I retired early deciding that their could be no winners in a situation like this.


The next day, I was able to do a little work on the hatchery. The turtle eggs are buried in the sand about 10 meters from the edge of the beach. They hatch in groups of roughly 30-40 baby turtles at a time. They emerge from their nest in the sand and come up to a wire cage anxiously trying to make for the sea. After they hatch, we count them, measure and weigh them. We put them into a great bucket, and then carry them to the beach. Then we release them in a block. Often, we release more than one nest and their are more than 80 Tortugas scrambling across the beach at the same time. It is extraordinary because they always instinctively know in which direction the sea is. Our main job is to make sure that the locals yield for them as they walk by the beach. The babies are cute and was fun to hold them in my hand with their hard shells and squirming bodies.


The problem is that there is essentially no other work to do in the place. The only other thing you can do is walk the beach hoping to find turtles in the act of laying eggs so we can claim them. The problem with this is that for some strange reason, collecting Tortuga eggs in actually legal in Guatemala. For this reason, there are literally hundreds of people out on the beach at night, watching for Tortugas. Several times, we were able to find the tracks in the sand that led us to Tortuga holes in the sand with the depleted eggs. Even though there were more than 20 volunteers, there were many more local egg thieves. On any given night, you can expect to see 50 or more people on the beach, all searching for Tortuga eggs. I got into a few arguments with some of the locals, especially the Tortuga sales brokers, (people that buy Tortuga eggs directly from the people that find them) but it was to no avail. If the government cannot make egg collection illegal, there is certainly little that one person can do to convince them that this practice is unsustainable. The only bright spot in all this is that the government says that they have to donate 20% of the found eggs to a Tortuga hatchery like ours. Unfortunately, most of the found eggs went unreported and those that did donate eggs were consistently less than 20%. After a few days, I came to the conclusion that what we were really doing was keeping the egg collectors in business by helping them to sustain the populations to some extent. We were not making the change that I had hoped for, and the German girls were apparently much more interested in sex and gossip then anything else. After two days of mostly just sitting around, I decided that it was time for me to move on. All ready, several of the girls were beginning to stake their claims on me. Everyone was scandalized that I left so suddenly, but I had to go because it was the right thing to do. It was the Oracle at Delphi that said "Know Thyself". I knew full well that if I were to stay for a week, it would be a matter of time before I would get myself in trouble with one or more of the beautiful and very young women there. I boarded a local bus in the late morning for the El Salvador border.

James and the Volcano

I heard from around town that there is a tour group that will take you to see an active volcano just a few hours outside of Antigua. The volcano is known as Pacaya and it is has been active for several decades. Some of you, (hi Mom) know that I have something of an obsession with Volcanoes. Well, not volcanoes so much as "Hot Lava". As a young boy, I was frankly obsessed with the idea of hot lava. The idea that a full grown man could literally fall into hot lava and his body would physically disintegrate within seconds was facinating to me. When I was in the habit of playing rather elaborate fantasy games with my Star Wars "action figures", (not to be consfused of course with Dolls - Dolls are for girls and in my games there was much fighting, blood, guts, death, and evil men performing evil tasks. Also for the record, Darth Vedar and Han Solo never had tea together. In fact, they did little else then desperately ply to kill one another for about a decade,) hot lava would always play a very central role in the games. The objective for every battle was clear and well laid out for both sides from the very beginning: get as many of the "Bad Guys" to fall into the hot lava as possible. The objective for the "Bad Guys" was identical but for the death of the “God Guys”. The only difference between the two sides was that the "Bad Guys" would use slightly more menacing redoric and would employ slightly more duplicidous means to accomplish their objectives. In any case, the battles would usually end with one or more of the guys getting pushed, kicked or thrown directly into the hot lava that "existed" on the far end of the room. Once the guys “died” in the hot lava, they went to a kind of Dantean hell that would last for several months or years depending on how bad they were and their level of relative "sin". At some point, they would regenerate back into the game but only after going through a long cycle of many years of Hell and deprevation.

So in my games, it was very, very, bad to go into the hot lava. Most of the guys would have prefered death which was impossible becaue they were all essentially immortal, (except curiously for princess Laya, the only women). So the hot lava for me was a representation of a kind of gateway to hell; to the unfathonable eternity of all depredation and suffering in the world, (years later I read Dante and was frankly shocked at the similarites). So needles to say, the opportunity to actually see hot lava in real life, (and not have to go to Hell) was one that could not be missed.

The tour left Antigua early in the morning. It arrived at the base of the volcano about hald past 8a.m. There were about 20 tourists in our group and a prebucecent female "guide" of about 12. We hiked up for about an hour and a hlaf and then we reached a large sea of volcanic rock. Volcanic rock is deep black and extremely fine. From a distance, it almost looks like sand. According to our guide, this volcano had a major eruption a few years ago and that is what had caused this large sea of black volcanic ash. Most of the group proceded across the lower slope of the volcanic ash in relative safety, but James Bond and I could not resist the temptaion to take the high path so that we could run down the volcanic ash and meet our compatriots at the bottom of the slope. The others all gave us quizical looks as James and I ascended the moutain of volcanic ash. When we finally reached the top, we glanced at each other and then wordlessly proceeded to race down the mountain. It was a lot like running down a sand dune except that the ash was courser and a bit more stable. The hill was very steep and we both started to pick up some serious speed. About half way down the hill, (and I still do not know why I did this) I said to James in a playful tone, "I am going to beat you". Seconds later, James began to accelerate dramatically. James is nearly 6 feet tall and he must have accellerated to a speed approaching 10MPH. Within a few minutes, we came near to the bottom and I could see that James was going to be in trouble. He was still going at full speed, taking giant strides when he was within only a couple of meters of the bottom. I slowed to a speed that was controlable as I watched helplessly. James attempetd an abrupt stop but tripped and fell forward dramatically and spectacularily. He landed directly on both of his knees but managed to protect his face and internal body. He looked to me like a bloody Christ except that his wounds were on this knees and rather than feet and hands. Blood was literally poruing out of the injured areas to the abject horrow of all the group. In characteristic James Bond fashion, he quickly picked himself up and acted like nothing at all unusual had happened. He looked at the others quizically and seemed to wonder why they were all staring at him with mouths agape. He said "It is no trouble - does not hurt at all. It is all on the top see." He then proceeded to show the others that the wound was maybe only two or three layers of skin deep and therefore of no immediate concern.

We did what we could for him - washed out his wounds as best we could, but there was still volcanic ash in there and we did not have the proper equipment to remove it, (my first aid kit was safely back in my room). When we returned to the house, we tried to remove the ash but it was impossible because the wound kept bleeding and one could not see well enough inside it to remove the ash. Finally, James went to to local hospital and ended up with a total of 10 stiches in each knee. Since the wound was on the top of the knee there was no more skin left and the doctors had to literally stretch the skin to make it cover the would. James returned to the house with two huge bandages on his knees, cheerful as ever and by no means out of step. Later, he proudly relayed the whole of the story to the Spanish class without the faintest trace of remorse or regret. He is the consiment James Bond.

Back on the top of the volcano and after the bloody fall, we proceeded to the summit. There, like a flash was a river of hot lava about one meter long and stretching all the way down the back side fo the volcano. It was red, glowing and mixed with rock and ash. The heat eminating from it was intense. There was a thin cloud of steam surrounding everything and the heat was sometimes unbearable. One had to watch ones step and their shoes. More than one person in our party had the rubber on their shoes begin to burn. In some places, you could look down between your legs and see a river of hot lava not more than a foot beneth the surface of relitively stable rock. I was able to get within about one meter of the river of hot lava before the concentrated heat from the lava was unbearable. An entiprising young Australlian actually brought a stick and marshmellows, but could not get himslef close enough to actually roast them. As the lava descended down the mountain, it devoured everything in its sight. It was a facinating sight to see rocks get literaly swallowed, twisted, mutilated, and then spit back out by this magnificant river of lava. Some threw wodden sticks into it and the wood would disappear in a matter of seconds. It is in fact true with one could put ones foot into a river of lava and it would disappear within seconds. But the heat eminating from the lava is its own barrier fence and one could not bear to get near enough to it to experience such mutilation. Intense heat or fire is perhaps the most repugnant element to the human body. The locals say that the body will literally shut down from the heat before one can get close enough to touch the lava or do any real damage.

The hot lava may not have been a gateway to hell, but it was pretty exciting to see and hear it with my own eyes and ears. Next time I play with my Star Wars guys, I will have some first hand knowledge of the properties of hot lava to bring to the experience. Little consolation that will be to the ill fated "bad guys".

Volcan de Aqua "Antigua"

Me and my Spanish Mom

Catedral de Santiago

This is one of the most important monuments in Guatemala. It is the original main Cathedral for the Latin America colony. It its catacoms lie the graves of the original Spanish conquistidor of Guatemala, Pedro de Alvarado, and his sidekick, the historian of the conquest, Bernal Diaz.