Surfing in El Salvador

I’m sure tons of you have been going CRAZY wondering why I haven’t posted in a whole week!  Well your lives can resume as normal now that I’m back in Guatemala and have a few posts in mind that I’d like to get up.  First and foremost is my Monday – Wednesday trip to El Salvador to learn how to surf!  I’d like to say first, that the day of my last post, 133 people not including myself (I wonder how many were my Mom though…) visited my blog in that one day!  That’s the most yet.  I can’t describe how good that makes me feel; I really appreciate all of you caring enough to check up on my trip.

 

So we went to this beach called El Zonte and stayed in a hotel called Horizonte (pretty clever).  It was a gorgeous beach – the first time I’ve ever actually seen the Pacific Ocean!  The hotel was gorgeous too.  It was a 4 hour drive, then we arrived Monday and had our first lesson like 3 hours after we arrived.  I don’t know if this is the normal way, but we started learning to stand up on “the whitewash” which is waves that had already crashed.  I got up a few times, then I think accidentally, I stood up on a real wave that had not yet crashed.  I fell maybe a second after I got up, but my instructor was like “Yeah!  You got a real wave!” and I did real waves from there on out.  The town of El Zonte is absolutely tiny – I think there are only 2 streets – and there was no night-life at all.  The town was dead at night and we were asleep by 10pm.  We met a few Salvadoran people who were real friendly.  One of the guys we chilled with for a while was just vacationing there from San Salvador and he mentioned that he liked this beach very much because there weren’t many gringos.  So of course I jokingly responded “Que?  Tienes una problema conmigo?” and he laughed and said “No, no muchos gringos.” And mentioned that if there were a lot of gringos with all their money there, then the places would jack up their prices.  Made sense to me.  The food really was phenomenal and incredibly cheap too!  I think it was the best food that I’ve had in my 5 weeks in Central America.  And El Salvador has a popular beer called Pilsener that is better and cheaper than Guatemala’s Gallo.

 

The next morning we had our second lesson and I wasn’t so pleased.  There were 6 of us taking lessons and 3 instructors.  I think the entire 90 minutes I got less than 10 pointers said to me by an instructor.  I was working on the real waves and I didn’t get up once the entire session I don’t think, yet still I got very minimal instruction for improvement.  My friend Tristan was seeming to get it a little quicker than I and gave me some pointers.  Then we practiced a little after, still didn’t get much, but watched a lot of surfing during lunch.  I mean a lot.  I think I started to pick up some things from watching them because we had our afternoon lessons and I still didn’t get that many pointers from the instructors (maybe 10 or so), but I got up a few times!  I was pumped.  Its hard for me to distinguish between the times I got up that afternoon and the next morning, but I probably got up maybe 6-8 times total during my trip including a few which I rode all the way to shore.  Unfortunately the photographer didn’t get pictures of any of them!!  One time Tristan and I were riding the same wave and were close enough we could almost high five.  That was one of the highlights of the trip.  I put up the best pictures of me that the photographer took, but like I said, it wasn’t even one of my top 10 rides I don’t think.  I think it is just the end of one of my rides?  Or maybe a really small wave?  One picture is a shot of Tristan wiping out so you can get an idea of what some of the waves were like (and we were at the more beginner part of the beach). OK, I will be posting again very soon!