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El Salvador: A Surfer’s Dream Come True

By Henry Morales/Fotos por J. Kevin Foltz

The navy blue of the ocean is soothing to my eyes, its surface rippled with the corduroy lines of swells approaching from the infinity of the Pacific. Through the window, from an airplane at 10,000 feet in the sky, the waves appear to be standing still. It’s the opposite when surfing these waves, liquid phantoms—there one moment, gone the next—moving faster than my conscious thoughts. Only in my subconscious can I catch them. We begin our descent. A sultry wind blows over the ailerons. I hear doors opening beneath me. The landing gear is released from the bowels of the plane.

I walk across the tarmac, sweating profusely despite the fact that it’s only 7:30 a.m. and the sun has only just begun its ascent into the equatorial sky. I’ve flown almost all night from Los Angeles to get here, but sleep is irrelevant. I can’t wait to change into my board shorts, wax up my surfboard and paddle out into the lineup at Punta Roca, or El Sunzal, or El Zonte…

Baggage claim and customs are the only things that stand in my way, but these minor inconveniences are soon behind me. Soon I’m zooming off in the truck with Rodrigo Barraza from Punta Mango Surf Trips, my guide through this surfers’ Disneyland—El Salvador.

Rodrigo tells me that the summer has just started here and that the surfing conditions will be excellent with the new southwest swell arriving today. Our first stop is La Libertad, 21 miles from San Salvador.

La Libertad
From the deck of Mango’s Lounge, overlooking the famous surfing breaks of Playa La Paz and Punta Roca, it’s obvious why La Libertad is the center of the surfing culture in El Salvador. Sure, it’s the closest spot to San Salvador and the airport. But the beach and surrounding land here assumes the shape of a natural “amphitheater,” where surfers are the main attraction, riding the waves sideways along the contour of the headland that begins with Punta Roca at the top of the point and terminates with Playa La Paz just before the fishing pier in town.

Playa La Paz is a beginner’s wave. The wave is normally two to five feet in height and is more suited to longboards (above nine feet). This is where the local children learn to surf. Just beyond Playa La Paz is Punta Roca, El Salvador’s most famous wave. At Punta Roca you’ll encounter El Salvador’s best surfers and a contingent of international traveling surfers competing for fast, tubular (see “Surfing Slang 101”) surfing in the four-to-10-foot range. The surfing area is rife with hazards that include whirlpool currents, slippery rocks on the inside, sea urchins and a submerged boulder in the impact zone. Normally Punta Roca and Playa La Paz are two separate surfing spots, but on the biggest swells of the year, waves will actually “connect” from Punta Roca all the way into Playa La Paz, a distance of over 1,600 feet. If you’re lucky enough to catch one of these waves, it feels like you’re riding a water train that zooms you right into La Libertad.

Striking surfer’s gold in El Sunzal and El Zonte
El Sunzal is El Salvador’s most consistent surfing spot. In the summer it’s where everyone surfs because it’s usually breaking even when the other spots are not. This is because the coastline at Sunzal is very open to the ocean swells from all directions, and the waves will concentrate their energy on the natural “point” of the land that’s formed there (over eons of geological time). There are several new beachfront hotels either just completed or being developed on the point at El Sunzal, among them the Roca Sunzal Hotel, which is a good option for surfers seeking deluxe “surf-front” accommodations in El Salvador. The Café Sunzal overlooks the beach and offers excellent seafood; in fact, the ceviche here is as good as the view.

Unfortunately, today we had no luck with the famed waves of El Sunzal, so we headed 20 minutes up the coast to El Zonte. Here we strike surfers’ gold. The waves are four to five feet and perfect. We surf amongst a friendly crowd of about six to eight Salvadoran surfers. The waves are arriving in sets of six or eight waves at a time, so everyone has his or her own wave and is stoked. The waves at El Zonte peel like a machine—like an escalator that you ride for 656 feet all the way into the beach. Here is where I catch my best wave of the morning—a mutating aberration of water that nearly engulfs me. Rising to my feet, I accelerate down the line, executing perfectly symmetrical turns on the wide-open wave faces. As the wave approaches the beach, I feel the depth of the water beneath me diminishing. At any instant the ride will be over as the wave reaches the terminus of its long journey from whatever distant ocean storm created it and dispatched it here to El Salvador—the sand. I pivot the board back into the face of the breaking wave and as I ascend, I release my weight from my back foot and float over the crest of the exploding wave. This is a called a “floater”. Gravity returns my weight to the board, landing me in front of the frothing whitewater.

After about three hours of riding the waves at El Zonte, a combination of exhaustion and hunger finally force me from the water in search of fresh seafood, a cold drink and shade.

The wild east
On the final morning of my trip I awaken in El Este (The East). We’re on our way to a surf spot you only reach by panga (a small boat). It’s called Punta Mango, a long tube. (see “Surfing Slang 101”) The swell is six feet and strong. Our captain is Toño, a fisherman from Playa Las Flores, and he anchors us out beyond the line of crashing waves and we paddle into position just behind the impact zone (the place where the waves are breaking). Rodrigo and I struggle to catch anything. At one point we are being pounded by whitewater on the inside rocks, and we look up and see Toño catch one of the best waves of the morning. He surfs with the confidence and style that only a local and a fisherman can, showing us up a little. Rodrigo and I manage to catch a few waves, but not like Toño’s wave. Soon the tide drops too low and the waves at Punta Mango turn off like a faucet. So we hop back in the boat, headed to Playa Las Flores, another great surf spot.

In a short time we’re off the boat, surfboards ready, waiting for the waves while the sun beats down. The only sounds are the explosions of the waves detonating on the sandbars of Las Flores, breaking halfway to the town of El Cuco. I see a big one approaching on the outside, a massive train of water, refracting down the point like a snake. I stop abruptly and spin into position, my hands on the rails of my board, coming to my feet, my body vertical to the wave. And then I cease thinking and let go. Everything that has happened to me up to this point in my life is erased, and there is no future. My feet lock into position. I am in the instant now, a lone rider propelled by the momentum of the wave, inside a vacuum of foam, air and time...

Getting Started
One good option for exploring El Salvador’s waves is a guided trip. Punta Mango is an El Salvador-based company that provides surf tours, lessons and accommodations packages to traveling international surfers.

In the U.S., you can reach them at 888-899-8823. In El Salvador, at 503-236-0025. Or check out their website at puntamango.com.

Surfing Slang 101
Tube/Tubular. The space inside a breaking wave between the lip and face. The wave obviously curves as it breaks over the surfer, creating a sort of tube of water around him or her, which is why these waves are referred to as “tubular.”

Floater. A maneuver in which the surfer rides over and/or along the top of a breaking wave, sliding across broken foam or a pitching lip, then drops back down into the main part of the wave. Its name comes from the floating weightless sensation produced by the move.

Point Break. Variety of surf break when waves wrap around a point of land, creating perfectly lined up, peeling waves.

For more information, please visit: www.DiscoverCentralAmerica.com.

Flying to El Salvador
TACA flies you nonstop to San Salvador, El Salvador from the following cities: Los Angeles, San Pedro Sula, Tegucigalpa, Guatemala City, San José, Managua, San Francisco, México City, Washington, D.C., New York City, Havana, Boston, Roatán, Dallas, Belize City and Miami.

You can also fly to San Salvador from other cities in North, Central and South America with connections in San José, Costa Rica. For more information, visit your nearest TACA office, our website at www.taca.com or call our Reservations and Telephone Sales Center in your home country. For a listing of our phone numbers, look inside your ticket jacket.