Mi Amigo

2013 Guatemalan Staring Contest Award Winner

Ruta De Las Flores, El Salvador

“It supposedly comes at two but your gonna want to be out there by 130.”
I had already missed the six am pass of the bus when in my half sleep I simultaneously hit the snooze and shoved my phone off the bunk. Now it was 230 and I was waiting motionless in the shade of a crumbling palm thatch bus stop trying to somehow stem the flow of sweat coursing out of my pores. Eventually the overloaded bus came tumbling down the hill and slowed to a crawl for everyone to jump on. The bus will pick up anyone, anywhere on the roadside but it never comes to a complete stop. Even the seventy year old women with boxes of fruits and drinks balanced on their head are scrambling to grab the buses railing as it creeps along. I guess it discourages lollygaggers and tourists like me who try to ask if its the right bus and are obligated to hop aboard to find out.

We spun down the windy road along the Balsalm Coast of El Salvador as cliffs fell away to the sea on one side and rose to impenetrable jungle on the other. Our driver must have had a sick sadistic streak or was late for a hot date because every switch back turn was handled like a formula one race. Every hand was gripping the seat in front and on several of the switchbacks the G’s threw passengers sprawling down the aisle. After an hour the road broke free from the jungle and straight lined into the coastal plains. Wind whipped the bags resting on the metal slides over my head as we opened it up on the hot flat highway. The road imperceptibly creeped into the range of mountains and volcanoes that stretches from Mexico all the way down into Chile. Windows started going up and coats were pulled from bags as a steady rain drummed the glossy road. Coffee plantations crept up verdant hillsides looking like fishing nets thrown over the dense green. The bus coughed and wheezed past farmers carrying bundles of firewood and women nonchalantly balancing baskets of strawberries on their head until it came to a roundabout beneath a glimmering white church.

I strolled into town past colorful murals thrown up on every available surface and walked the cobblestone streets staring off at the views from every rolling rise. Little conical hills surrounded the valley which fell away into lush ravines at odd angles throughout the town. Dozens of waterfalls cascaded over the exposed rocky hillsides and fell away to rivers rushing far below. I didn’t see any other gringos but I was being reminded enough of home everywhere I looked that it was tough to feel alone. A tuk tuk buzzed by with a massive Oakland Raiders logo and another storefront was covered by a giant Minnesota Vikings flag. Locals were trudging up the long roads in various sweatshirts from American universities and driving cars with bumper stickers from various US locales. A cowboy hatted El Salvadorean panned me for change and when he figured out I could speak a little Spanglish started off with me down the street. He told me all about his family and the wife and children he had in Baltimore and other family in Phoenix before he turned and walked off down the road.

The day before I had started talking to an American born Mexican guy from Austin who was in El Salvador working on his masters thesis about El Salvadoreans who get deported from the US. The Fourth of July had just come and gone pretty quietly for me but he had been in San Salvador where he said people were parading, having barbecues and lighting off fireworks into the night. He told me about some of the people he met in their twenties and thirties who had spent years up in the States and were then thrown back to a country they felt they no longer belonged in. A lot of them worked in call centers and foreign offices splayed with American flags, saving up to hopefully be somehow allowed back into the States. They had barely anyone in El Salvador and banded together to celebrate the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving. I wondered, weren’t they bitter with the US after they had been so traumatically deported? “You would think” he said, “but its their home and all they talk about is wanting to go back.”

That night I got back to the little hospedaje where I was staying and stopped to watch futbol with the family on my way to the room. I rambled in my beat down Spanish about the Cup of the Americas futbol championship which has teams from all over Central America, North America and the Carribean playing each other and how El Salvador had just tied Cuba the night before.
“Yeah, next time we are going to win” he said. “And if we don’t, ill cheer for the US. I have family and friends all over there.”

Surfs Up

My nerves were bundled into a tight coil in my stomach that extended down my limbs and rattled them uneasily. I was sitting idly on the sandy floor of an abandoned and dilapidated restaurant yet could feel the increasing tension trying to push the recently devoured eggs and beans back up my gullet. My bodies fight or flight response was activated and I was amazed by the sincerity in its willingness to evacuate its bowels. I hung my feet over the peeling beachfront wall and watched another set come rolling around the point. Rising from the loose patch of boulders, the walls of barreling water rose up and careened into the bay. A pair of surfers paddled into the first waves of the set and stood up as the waves crested and dumped them over the falls. The rest of the set walloped the pair stuck in the break with frothing masses of whitewash as they scrambled to duck dive the slop before it dragged them back to the rocky shore. The local El Salvadorean surf dude at my hostel, complete with California surfer accent, assured me that this was the easiest wave in town.
“You just gotta go for it”

El Tunco – not the spot I surfed but the epicenter of surf in El Salvador

That sounded encouraging when I was standing on the hostel terrace watching the waves off in the distance, their speed still scary but their size and stature diminished by the perspective. Now I was sitting on the crumbling wall above the launch point where the waves leapt over a minefield of tumbling stones with my leash strapped and my stomach in knots. The locals in the shadows of the deserted building were whistling as each set approached and then Ooo’ing and Aww’ing as each wave either tore a surfer apart or shot him off across the bay. From the jungly foliage a pair of scrawny local teens appeared with surf boards in hand. The boy topped out at one hundred pounds soaking wet and the girl looked like a rogue wave would snap her in half. They strapped their leashes and flung their arms in an unsteady stretch before charging off down the black sand. Now I had to go out.

I paddled out behind the pair and got swept with the current across the horseshoe bay, the rip taking me out and around the crashing beasts to my right. My arms went rubbery as I moved into the twentieth minute of my paddle out, the going slow as the ocean let me out at its own pace. Finally, I came in from the side of the break at the long rocky point and laid out on my board to let my noodly arms recover from their wheeling. From my new perspective six inches above the dark blue water, the real nature of the beast emerged. A wide set appeared and the girl from the local pair paddled madly for a speeding wave only to fall short and wind up in the infield where the ensuing waves scrambled her back to the beach. Ocean one, surfers zero. I waited for the set to clear and paddled over to the shoulder of the breaking waves where I set my goals for the day modestly, stand up.
I sat on my board and looked back towards the coast, the jumbled stretch was a series of deep bays set amongst rocky cliffs with towering jungle rising from the shoreline. The array of green against the steel blue of the sea was a startling juxtaposition for the eyes and I felt I was staring out at the set of a big budget Hollywood film. The blasting sun blazed my skin and my thoughts drifted in the stunning setting. Just then, a voice behind whistled out and I turned to see a wave setting up perfectly behind me. The big face was closing on me rapidly and the other surfers disappeared over its back as they hollered out, paddle, paddle, paddle. The big blue monster was arching like a cobra and lifting itself eight or nine feet off the surface as it hurtled menacingly towards me. My muscles shot with adrenaline and I paddled like a drowning cat to intercept the wave. Lined up on the hulking shoulder I felt the board carry up the steep wall and right as it reached the top, catch. I pushed myself off the wobbly surface and stood up for the drop down the waves face. The board tapped the energy of the wave as I crouched and took off like a speeding bullet. It all happened to quick and as the board shot down the face it also shot out from under my feet. The wave quickly picked me up in its watery arms and carried me up and over the falls, the peak driving me down and tumbling me along the sandy floor. I waited for the spinning to stop and the beast to let me out of its grip before I tried to locate the surface. Disoriented from the assault, I pushed off in several directions before my brain set itself straight and led me back towards the light. I emerged gasping for air and drained from the fight. I pulled on the leash and reined in my board as I laughed at the beating I just took. I thought about all the waiting, positioning, and paddling just to get my ass handed to me by Mother Nature. For a half hour of work I got ten seconds of practice on the back of the beast. When was I going to get anywhere? Then I thought, it was all worth it and turned my board back out to sea.

BW NZ I

You are every song in the world – On An On

Pretty Bird

All my love is circling the drain now – Houses

Old New Zealand

Grammar: the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you’re shit.

Miraflor Miradors

Five in the morning should be a time reserved solely for late night revelers. In no ones book should it be classified as a proper hour for rising and shining. If the sun has yet to make its colorful foray into the day I don’t see why I should be expected to be standing by the dusty roadside on the receiving end of murderous stares from leathery cowboys while I wait for a bus in the predawn. Everyone looks like a hardened criminal at five am. There are no smiles or botched “hellos” from friendly locals. There are only serious looks from Stetson hatted, early 90s Starter Jacket flaunting Nicaraguan frontiersmen. Usually when I board a bus I lightheartedly accept the gringo theater performance that is my existence, but this morning was of a different variety. I was determined to dominate the cold faced staring contests that accompany my attempts to shove my pack in the little metal rack between the splashing containers of cooking oil and chickens popping their heads of out tiny cardboard boxes.

This particular route must be where decommissioned school buses go to die because the fake leather benches had worn down to metals nubs that when combined with two hours on a rocky dirt road produced an effect akin to sitting on metal nubs for two hours on a rocky dirt road. I couldn’t think of much worse but then the bus started and the beast roared to life. It seems the driver was not a fan of personal conversations because although the bus was literally splitting at the seams, the metal boards under my feet rose and fell at different paces like shifting seismic plates, the speaker system was glistening. Although I had no one to talk to, and had to keep up my hardened gringo image of icy stares, I opened my mouth to let out a few words as a test. I wanted to see if maybe I would be able to hear my own voice over the pounding salsa/reggaeton slop that was driving nails into my brain. I failed in hearing myself but I succeeded in securing a bench for my sweaty self alone. Who’s going to sit next to the angry looking gringo that’s talking to himself? The music drove on and the bus limped by fields of dewy tobacco as I tried to picture the shimmering green hills that awaited. I was heading into the cloud forests of Northern Nicaragua to stay with a family for a night and clamber around the green hillsides. Reverting to sleep was quickly ruled out and so was looking out the window due to it being so severely tinted that all I saw was my own tired reflection. At one point I thought I had garnered relief, someone had approached the driver with a question and Pitbull’s wailing turned into a whimper. There were a few seconds of idling silence, rooster calls floated on the fresh mountain breeze and I could actually hear the sputtering engine of the dying monster. Then the driver seemed to realize his gaff and his hand was back on the knob, turning the system that doubled the buses value back up to eleven. Eventually the bus pulled into a gravelly circle and the driver motioned over his shoulder at me, he knew there was no hearing him if he yelled. It was the end of the road and I jumped out with my bag in hand. The bus bumbled away in a cloud of dust and torturous sound and I was left with perfect stillness, a shimmering green valley of beautiful silence. The contrast was overwhelming and maybe that was his plan from the start.

Approximation of conversation in Spanish between me and this dude:
Me “Cool weapon. You go hunting with that bad boy?”
Him: “Yeah. I killed a bird and grilled it and fried it and it was delicious and I didn’t tell anyone so don’t tell my parents.”
Me: “Your secrets safe with me. (The rest of his family has by now walked away) So you coming with me?”
Him: “Yup, you wanna use my slingshot?”
For the next two hours he pointed out every plant and animal and bird and talked nonstop while I understood about 20% of what was being said. Best improvisational tour guide I’ve ever had. If you ever find yourself in La Pita, Nicaragua ask for Yoxson the eight year old slingshot sniper