The Surf Part, scene 2

Just an update. Salvador is nice. Mangos are yummy, and every time I turn around my family is trying to give me more (they're so nice!). Each morning, they get up and rake the mangos into piles and feed them to the cows next door, or they attract birds I guess. It's crazy. The seafood is good here too, I bought boca colorado (literally 'red mouth,' but it's red snapper to us) yesterday and made fish tacos. There's good street food here, and I love street food. I talked about already, corn flour patties with stuff insided and cabbage/hot sauce on top, but there's also pupusastortas, a long bun with avocado, grilled meat, pickled cabbage, mayo, mustard, hot sace, all put together and then grilled again (pretty tasty, and only a buck!). Minutas are good too, shave ice with fruit syrup soaked in, with this super slow, tasty honey globbed on top. Great for the mid-day heat (it's pushing 95 during the day here. Ice is a welcome snack).

I'm getting to use my Spanish here with all the friendly locals, although their accents are harder to understand than in Guatemala. But yes, they are friendly, and a lot of them speak a little English and like to practice: a guy on a bike wearing a shirt decorated in a thousand little American flags rode by me while I was waiting for the bus the other day, waiting until the last second to yell, 'how are you?' in that self-conscious, just-learning-a-language kind of way. The guy at the post office chatted with me, earnestly, while he patiently figured out how to fit five giant stamps on each of my nine postcards. I found a beach house to rent from this couple who had lived in L.A. for 30 years; the woman held my arm constantly and treated me like her grandson. Although I hear stories of some real assholes, maybe Salvadorians operate in a land of extremes.

That's right, I found a beach house to rent, or actually it's on a hill a few minutes from the beach, great views of the ocean, mango trees, a small pool, barbecue... it's pretty complete, and is only $20 a night. I just need some people to fill it. An Australian guy I met in Flores will be here today or tomorrow, but he's got four friends, making six of us altogether, and the woman was balking about five. Maybe we'll still do it, and have some of us stay someplace else. It would be SICK to have a house like this, to barbecue seafood after surfing (did I mention that snapper was $3/pound, and that fresh lobster is only $4/pound?). Speaking of seafood, locals go fishing with a spear gun and an inner tube. They float out on the tube, dive with the gun, and shoot what they can get. Kinda cool.

The buses here are way, way bigger than in Guatemala; Guatemala apparently got all the little old buses and Salvador got all the newer, longer ones. They're slower though, hence 10 hours to go 75 miles.

Surfing is going OK, I cut my foot pretty good on the rocky bottom yesterday, but I put iodine on it and I think it's OK. I went out just after sunrise today, although when the waves started finally getting good more than two hours later, I was exhausted and had to come in. I'm going back out this afternoon, there're fewer people then anyways. There can be 50 people on the Sunzal break in the morning, way too many people for so few waves. And you can tell who's good, because they're the ones surfing while the rest of us watch. Still working on the short board bit, although I was watching people today and I really admire the slow grace of the long board, and might switch back. The big disadvantage to the long board is that it can be hard to paddle out if you have to go through the break, but it's not a big deal on the points they have around here.