Hey Dudes
Hope everyone had a good weekend!
Another very eventful one down here. Saturday I spent much of the AM in thelittle workshop Santos has behind their house here. Some sail track hadpulled off my boom on the passage down so I made use of the space and toolsthere to tackle the task of repairing it. The boys (Santos’ teenagedbrothers-in-law), Cheke and Ronny, gave me a hand with alot of the epoxy and painting work and we got that old thing back in shape and looking betterthan ever. Spent some more time lazying around the island with them,watching them scurry up trees with machetes and watching the coconuts comecrashing down. Those days and nights in the shop with the boys will alwaysbe very precious to me….the pounding of rain on the tin roof, the whippingof the tarped off walls from the wind, the flickering of the swinging lightbulb overhead, the warmness of laughter, the beauty of their family…
Later that evening, Santos called me to let me know his friend Olmy had cometo the island and did I wanna go up the river with them again. Like duh, dude.. so off we went. Up the river a bit is a guy named Octavio who makeswhat has been described to me a magical potion of Sopa de Hyba (aka Crab Soup). Santos swears by it, that it’s health benefits are off the charts andI myself can vouch for the fact that it reallly does leave you feeling great. Octavios secret? Fish heads. Lots and lots of fish brains in thestock. Cool.
Anyways, this particular jaunt up the river we were all feeling very distractible so we made side treks out past the shoals where the river opens to the Pacific to take a look at the dramatic crashing and rippling ofwaves. We stopped on another island for some one to take a pee but we allended up getting off to take a stroll as the shore had lovely black sandwhich is oh so fun to squish your toes into. I found some giant bits ofdriftwood and challenged another friend with us, Gil, to a dual. I think Imust have been a swordfighter (is that a job??) in another life because Iwas even blowing my own mind with what spectacular form and agility I havewhen armed with the tool of the trade. I won every match, Santos took a fuzzy polaroid:
Anyways, all that’s just to say we wasted all our time goofin’ off and that by the time we arrived at Octavio’s, the bro had gone home and sadly no soup for you. I mean, us. Not to worry though we made our way to the Palapa ofManuel and sat and laughed and talked and drank until we had our fill.Revolution songs blared from a fuzzy radio as we loaded up and snaked ourway back down river, armed with just cell phone lights against the blackness of the night.
We were up early Sunday morning here because at last the day we’d beenpromising ourselves had arrived: WE WERE GOING SURFING! With all theprojects and work and seriousness of departure encroaching on our good vibes we’d made a promise that if we finished all our work we’d make a roadtrip to La Libertad, the surf hub of El Salvador. Well, we finshed most of our work so we decided to go ahead and give ourselves a break - we packed up our boards and hit the road. It’s quite a hike to the beach as the connectingbridge we needed is shut down for who knows what reason - either the tropical storm destroyed it or something about gangs, cant remember.Anyways, by the time we got there our beautiful morning sun had turned intoa fog of grey overcast weather. our first attempt at findings some waves wasat a place called Punta Roca - a break reccommended to us with a sly “good luck…” as punctuation. The place really lives up to it’s name and theplace was literally COVERED in rocks…which for the new safety-minded mewas freaking me the f out. We climbed and winced our way over boulders largeand small towards to break others were surfing. right at the head of pointwe came across a dead dolphin carcass, bashed up on the rocks. it wasominous. “if the dolphin can’t make it here, who am i kidding??” i thought to myself…and, then, audibly in santos’ direction as he dove in and paddled out. we gave it a go for a little while as a I mostly whined about how terrified I was. I’m proud of myself for at least paddling out andwatching the breaks in all their huge, magnificent glory….we swappedlocales for the “milder” Sunzal where I was finally able to have myself somefun. in all honesty, that break was still pretty wild….a big sloppy messwith insanely strong currents. i got some scratches and stuff to prove im not a total wuss though.
Anyways, lots of fun was had…and now it’s time to quit stalling in thelovely A/C of the hotel lobby and get back out to the boat. Mucho to do,mucho to do…
Bye for now…
I’m still at sea.
This post is from my first voyage, sailing alone around the world from 2009 to 2015. These days I live aboard El Dorado in France and send dispatches from the boat.
Get the dispatches on Substack →
Or get real mail from the boat: the Foreign Correspondence Club.