The Surf Part, scene 1

So I finally made it to Sipacate, Guatemala, for the surf part of this adventure. On the way in, I was gawked at on the bus. I don't think they get too many gringos down this way. And then a guy sat next to me who wanted to tell me about how he snuck into the United States to work, but got caught by INS and sent back to Guatemala City, where he held people up at gunpoint to buy food for a while. But then he found God, and his eyes opened, and he insisted on giving me his number and really wanted me to call him on Wednesday to come over for dinner, at his house in the middle of the country a couple hours from Sipacate. He stank of booze.

From Sipacate, it's a short tuk-tuk ride to the public 'pier' (a spot on the river where small boats leave), and then a short ride through the mangroves to El Paredon, where the actual surf camp is. Walking through town, everyone knew exactly where I was going. Paredon probably only has a couple hundred people in it, sandy roads, no hotels or markets or central parks, just folks mending their fishing nets, a football pitch, and a surprising number of tiendas (7 or so, the town was surprisingly well supplied and inexpensive for being so remote). There wasn't much in the way of telephone service, and certainly no internet. Everyone knew exactly where I was going and were happy to point me on my way before I could even open my mouth. There's only one reason for a gringo to come to Paredon, and only one place to stay, and that was the surf camp.

When I found the camp, there was a kid maybe 18 or 19 (Carlos) sleeping in a hammock, some bamboo huts, and an unspoiled black-sand beach, overlooked by a set of four hammocks roofed with thatch. Carlos found me a room, explained how to mark down what I purchased so I could pay at checkout, and then kind of disappeared. I was all alone at the camp, the only current visitor. A fear of loneliness set in. It actually wasn't a fear of the actual loneliness, as much as a fear that I would be lonely, which would make the whole thing way less fun, and I had been so excited for it. Which kind of turned out to be what happened.

Seeing as how Carlos didn't even turn on the fridge for me, so I couldn't even wait for the beer to cool down, I went into town to see what was what, and see what I could get for food. I was hoping to prepare most of my own meals to keep costs down, and was looking for cans of fish (good protein, surfers need protein) and bread (I bought a Costco-sized peanut butter jar in Antigua, as well as some really tasty, not-too-sweet blackberry jelly, but I needed bread, which is usually around. Pan frances they call it, it's pretty mas o menos. There's also pan dulce, which just means any bread with sugar in it, always different, sometimes it's more like a cookie). What appeared to be the local camp dog followed me, which seemed to bad for him since the other dogs in town turned out to be super territorial, and the camp dog got beat up several times, although a vicious bout of sneezing on all sides usually broke it up. In town there were the tiendas and a couple comedors (little eateries). There were also a lot of prepubescent girls cat-calling me, saying stuff like 'hey handsome' or 'do you have a girlfriend?' and then laughing really hard. It was... weird. Generally all the kids were super nice, they all wanted to run out and say hello, and then run away. Everyone seemed very friendly, in that pre-contact way, before they realize that white people are really just all a bunch of cheap rich assholes that want to buy the place out and build a Coors beer-themed hotel over the homes of the locals.

Let's see, what else was around town... a kid in a truck holding a large iguana by the neck. A tortugario, or turtle sanctuary, that looked like it had been built and then abandoned. Several really nice looking houses on the beach, I'm guessing vacation homes since they didn't look to be currently occupied. Once night fell, I was in my bunk, trying to read by the pitiful single bulb dangling from the roof. Then, around 7, the evangelical service next door started. This turned out to be a nightly event, not just next door but at several evangelical churches in town, usually large in area but usually with only 5 or 6 people inside. I don't know what the deal is with evangelicals in Guatemala, but it seems to be a growing, fanatical faction. This particular service featured a woman wailing for an hour and a half, sounding on the verge of tears, and clapping and general shouting from the 'crowd.' Have you ever seen the movie 'I Heart Huckabees?' Remember when Mark Wahlburg's character talks to the old Sicilian woman, who wails about the famine in her village? That's more or less what the woman in this church sounded like, only with more tears in her eyes. It was awful.

The camp is alive at night, although not with people. A huge sow and her piglets mill about, looking for food, and the dog chases them, when he gets bored. Huge toads, bigger than my fist, come out. Geckos take in the cool moisture of the toilet bowl. Around 3am, the pigs decided to look for food in my cabin, and I woke up and turned on my headlamp to catch a pale white piglet ass making out the door with a bag of grub. It was the snack bag from the bus, all my cookies and crackers. Fortunately, my Reese's cups package remained unbroken (I was SAVING those, stupid pigs!).

Fortunately, a group of four Americans arrived the next day. I saw them in the morning on the beach, where I was running while waiting for Carlos to show up (he said he would open up the kitchen at 5am so I could get in and make breakfast. He woke up around 8:30, so I ate sandwiches for breakfast instead of cereal, and then went for a run). Lucky for them, since they had overshot the camp and were hand-carrying their rolling suitcases down the beach. They were Steve, his sister Kristen, Courtney, and Coral. Steve had been in the country for a while, in fact we were both in Xela at the same time without ever meeting; the other three were down just for a week or so, with a couple days in Sipacate to surf and chill on the beach. So that was rad, I had some surfing buddies, we shared boards and hung out, and Steve got attacked by a crab in the outdoor shower. Like a crab so big we should have thrown it in a pot of boiling water and eaten it. I guess his pinch wasn't so strong though, the whole thing was funny and amazing more than anything else. Steve was also good at finding large spiders under the beds.

It was also good to have those guys around since they were taking lessons, which meant we had access to the fun boards (I was told the fun boards - these are boards over 8 feet with round noses - were only for use during lessons). But I'd never ridden a short board before, so was trying to learn to balance and duck-dive through oncoming waves and stuff. The surf was good, but tough, the rip usually wasn't bad but sometimes it was vicious strong, the waves were too big for me in the morning at high tide, so I stuck to the late morning and afternoon. I'd never ridden a beach break either, which was hard because the waves don't break as consistently as a point break, so you have to paddle out through them, which can be difficult. I never did catch a wave on my short board, although I was getting close by the end of the second day. When I got frustrated I would take the fun boards out, which are a lot more forgiving and can catch smaller waves. The downside is they can't duck-dive through the breakers so good, so paddling out can be tough. It was super fun though, surfing is great because no mater where you do it, you can guarantee you're in a beautiful spot. One of my favorite parts of surfing is sitting past the breakers, watching waves roll in, and just sort of connecting with the place, whether it's a black sand beach in Guatemala or a cove on the Oregon coast. It's the opposite of snowboarding, where people have taken a mountain, cut paths through the trees, and built a ski lift, and basically bent nature to the task. In surfing, you just have your board and your own strength, and you have to figure out how nature works to do what you want to do. There's no manipulating the waves, your only bet is to understand them. But since things are being done on something else's terms, there's not as much rush, not the push to get as many runs as possible, or anything like that, not for me at least. It's peaceful.

I decided to leave Sipacate after just two days. It was kind of expensive, and while it was nice, I just wasn't digging it enough to risk staying, and thus losing time in another place I might really love. A German guy came along (I've met a lot of Germans on this trip, unlike my other trips abroad, strange), and three girls had shown up the second day, so I wouldn't have been alone, but I wasn't digging the German guy, and the girls seemed incredibly boring, even though one of them was breathtakingly beautiful (she was from Utah, there seems to be a lot of breathtaking girls in Utah, what gives? We seemed really different, not surprisingly, since my being left-of-center would make me the most liberal person in Utah. She talked a lot about hating the government, I didn't mention my work on the Obama campaign, seeing as how I have an interview to be a diplomat when I get home).

I took the launcha back with the American folks, and then we caught the slowest chicken bus ever, which eventually broke down after more than three hours. We weren't even in Escuintla, which should have taken two hours (we needed to change buses in Escuintla, me for the border and them for Antigua). The girls in the group, having only a few days of vacation, were fed up and hired a taxi to Antigua. They were nice enough to wedge me in the back and drop me in Escuintla. But by now, I wasn't sure when I would get to the border. I was guessing 4:30, but I wasn't even sure if immigration would be open, sometimes it closes early. Also, I had over $100 in Quetzales to change, since I had taken a weeks worth of cash to Sipacate, and borders usually offer poor rates. Looking in my circa 2006 Lonely Planet, I found that the hostels in the Guatemalan border town are 'not recommended' but instead I should try the 'friendly cowboy town' of Chiquimulilla, about 45 minutes away from the border. There was even a friendly, family-run hotel I could stay at. Unfortunately, that hotel no longer exists; in fact, there are no hotels in Chiquimulilla. There are two pensiones, local guest houses geared towards short-term stays and not at all towards tourists. The first was full, so I didn't have much of an option but to stay in the second, where I slept in what was easily one of the worst rooms I've ever been in. Now I've stayed in some real shit-holes, both in Bolivia and SE Asia, but this one was pretty damn shitty: a long row of concrete-block coffins, with ratty, filthy-looking mattresses barely covered by a single, threadbare sheet, a bare lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. No ventilation, no windows, but the room was only covered by a sheet of corrugated metal, leaving several inches at the top for mosquitoes and whatever else to come in, which explained the numerous spiderwebs, some filled with small leaves (I think even calling the room 'indoors' would be a stretch, ironic giving the stifling feeling inside). The large metal portal into the room didn't have a key, but instead had a lever inside to allow access, to get to the lever you had to reach your hand through the small window on the door. The bathrooms had some frightening-looking wiring going on with the electric shower heads, which didn't function, although that was probably better - it was sticky and hot out anyways, and if I die from poor wiring in a shitty motel, I'll be right pissed off. The toilets had no seats, the whole bath area had no lights and was pitch dark, and I would pee outside at night. A small consolation is that the owners live in one of the rooms, and so put up with the same stuff. The old man would cough and groan every 20 minutes or so, eventually cough up a lump of flem which he would hock from the back of his throat, then go outside for a cigarette. I could hear all this because the rooms were more or less connected, for purposes of sound travel. In fact, the owners liked to watch TV loudly and until late at night, and then switch the radio on early in the morning.

The woman first showed me a room identical to the one I wound up staying in, which she said was Q50 (about $6.25) for the night. This is a real shit deal by local standards; in Antigua, a very touristy and relatively expensive town, I paid Q50 for one of the nicest dorm beds I've seen, a comfortingly clean and accessible bathroom, and a breakfast buffet in the morning. I made to leave, hoping to find another place, and she showed me the second room, only Q25 (about $3), the only difference to my eye being that this room lacked the moldy armchair of the first. I think it was still a rip-off, but I wasn't even sure if there was another place to see, so I said OK and rolled out my silk sleeping sheet that is supposed to keep out bedbugs.

At least it really was a 'friendly cowboy town.' Actually, maybe not 'cowboy,' but people were really nice, wanting to stop and talk to me in the street and be helpful. I wouldn't say you should break your back to get to Chiquimulilla, but if you find yourself there, it isn't so bad, outside of the accommodation. I didn't really get that good of a rate on my quetzales, although I figured I would be able to get an early start and arrive early in La Libertad, which I was worried about because I was arriving on a Friday, and my (shitty, shitty) Fodors Central America said La Libertad accommodation often fills up on the weekends.

So I got up at six, and started making my way to La Libertad. There was some confusion on my part at the border, since the Salvadorian officer just looked at my passport without stamping it. I thought at first it would get stamped farther in, but then it became apparent that I was already inside the country. So I went back, and it was explained to me that I have 90 days for the region of Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, with no separate stamping. I'm still not sure why I have a Guatemalan exit stamp, but I guess I'll just run with it.

The Salvadorian side has a small town too, which was... identical to Guatemala. At first blush, at least. After a short time I began teasing out differences: no tortillas evident, more papusas (corn patties filled with stuff and heated on a grill, topped with a cabbage salad and hot sauce, delicious); the people are more mestizo looking, the buses appear to be run by actual companies with set tariffs, versus the lasaiz-faire free-for-all of Guatemalan chicken buses; instead of Mexican tuba music the Salvadorian buses play almost equally bad American e-z listening love ballads; the girls are way cuter. I noticed I was the only person on each bus with (a) white skin, (b) glasses, or (c) a beard. We passed through several tunnels, all sponsored by Claro, a cell phone company, which I found ironic since the inside of a tunnel is the last place you're going to get cell service. Salvador smells good, once I got on the bus and we started moving through the country. Most developing countries smell like shit; cow shit, chicken shit, pig shit, burning piles of trash in the street, animals decomposing in the gutters. Salvador smelled like jasmine and wild rose and fresh-cut wood.

The people are friendly, but not necessarily helpful. I kept getting shuffled onto buses, being assured they went where I wanted to go; 3 buses, lots of doubling back, and 10 hours later (this was for a 75 mile journey, and included 2.5 hours waiting on the side of the road in God knows where; at least they sold tasty tortas where I was waiting, sweating in the heat: a long bun with avocado, grilled meat and onions, mayo, ketchup, cabbage and hot sauce, all grilled again once on the bun, only $1 and pretty damn tasty) I finally arrived in El Sanzul, 15 minutes outside La Libertad. I decided to skip the city, figuring stuff might be getting full, and not wanting to negotiate a strange city known for being grubby and gross, late in the day with all my stuff, all sweaty and sticky and tired (at least the buses had enough air moving through them to be pleasant, and the views of the ocean and the private seaside mansions were nice. The whole place feels very Socal). Small towns are easy to negotiate. I looked at a couple places clustered on the road, and wound up at 'Surfer's Camp,' run by the most friendly family ever. The dad is Antonio, his family has a tienda at the front of the property that sells beer and papusas; the property is a former mango plantation and the mangoes are just beginning to fall, four kinds in all, coco (big, like a coconut), manzana (small and round, like an apple, which is what manzana means), platano (long, like a plantain), and indio (I don't know what to say about these ones, except that they taste good). So if I want a mango, I can walk outside and pick one up. There's a kitchen to use, and worn but serviceable surf boards to rent for just $6 a day. My room is nothing special, but is clean enough, although the bright pink walls and matching sheets are a strange aesthetic choice in my mind. It's a 3 minute walk to the Sunzal beach, with one of the most famous right-point breaks in the country. I haven't ridden it yet, but I will. A little nervous about the rocky bottom, I'm used to sand, but at least the point will be easier to navigate than the beach breaks at Sipacate.

I'm in La Libertad now, and am getting ready to go buy some of today's catch off the pier. Lobster, $4/pound; tuna steaks as big as me for $5 each; a variety of fresh shrimp and fish whose names I don't recognize (one of them is red snapper, which in Spanish is a certain... I don't know what). I think I'll be happy here.