Beach Living

Life settles into a rhythm fairly rapidly when one is based in a surf spot with few other occupations. Days normally start at around 5.30 with an early morning stumble out to a wave to try and beat the crowds and the wind, enjoying a solitary hour or so before the hordes descend. Breakfast and coffee follow, normally reading or writing for a while before picking up the board and returning to the ocean for more time in the water.

Of late this has involved hopping on a crowded public bus and spluttering along the coastal road with nothing more than board, the clothes that will be surfed in and enough change in pocket for a return bus trip; normally about 70 pence. Discharged on the side of the road, a walk commences through small settlements to beach access and the surfing session and then a drip dry walk back to the road to await the bus or, with luck, a successful hitch hike afterwards. A late lunch follows before cowering in the shade from the blistering heat of the day reading, playing cribbage or watching one of the countless pirated DVDs floating around the hostel. As the day cools, Surf Number 3 commences with a return to the hostel in time to cook supper before the hordes of hungry insects arrive to devour every inch of uncovered flesh. One large beer and a game of cribbage later and self mummification in bedsheets to protect against mosquito death squads ensues shortly followed by sleep at around 10pm to prepare for the same thing the following day.

El Tunco, El Salvador
26th August 2009

Local Hospitality

Written just in front of the Punta Roca surf break, just outside La Libertad. Despite stories of dire events, the attitude in the water has been fine, with no trouble from the locals and respect shown all round.

La Libertad, El Salvador
26th August 2009

Living In The Shade

My current base of operations from which I point myself towards various beaches can best be defined as the "cheap and cheerful" end of the spectrum. Run by a pair of very amiable San Salvadorian brothers, Jose and Mauricio, La Sombra tends to attract the slightly more laid back crowd, leaving the partying to the other end of the collection of hostels that is spread along the beachfront from the main road up to the rivermouth. Home to a trillion mosquitos, funky odours from the septic tank, sporadic and untimely noise from the construction site of a more upmarket hostel in progress and the most damp smelling couches in the history of mankind sheltered under a leaking palapa in the tv area, the place is still held in fond regard by its owners, guests and various passers through, myself included.

El Tunco, El Salvador
25th August 2009

Aquafilth

The last two nights have heralded ear splitting storms, tearing palms from trees, flooding roads with torrents and drenching all and sundy with near sideways rain. I, naturally, slept like a baby for both nights, waking in a slight confusion to stories of the others of hours of window shaking thunder and lightning.

At these times the rivers swell, pregnant with the weight of rainwater, and gush out into the majority of the surfing breaks, turning the water an opaque brown with the weight of silt and mud. It also brings other unwanted gifts to the surfing line up, as I discovered when paddling out the day after a big storm, dragging my arm through plastic bottles, crisp packets and packaging of all shapes and sizes; the glorious effluence of a growing consumer society eagerly stoked by plastic loving multinationals.

"The people in the villages up in the hills just throw everything into the river; there's no refuse collection services provided" explained my Argentinian roommate Nico, as we sat watching detritus turning over in the brown foam of one of the local waves, Bocano. "As soon as there's a big rain, it all gets dragged down here. I've heard of dead animals floating around out there, and a lot of surfers get really sick after surfing when there has been a storm. I've been up the hill to the river source," he added somewhat whistfully, "and the water is beautiful and clean there."

Water pollution is a huge problem in El Salvador, with the government taking no initiative to assist those who live on the coast by providing public services for dealing with refuse and educating the coastal populus on the issues of sustainability of the current approach. With the local residential and business communities placing online petitions to try and draw the attention of the government, steps are being made but progress still seems like a distant hope; in the meantime the water users of El Salvador keep their mouths shut when in the sea and hope that it keeps raining often enough to flush out the steadily building refuse piles up in the hills before they get too big.

El Tunco, El Salvador
22nd August 2009

Paddling Out

"I guess we to in here?" one of my Australian companions suggests, lacking the certainty that I'd hope for. Thirty feet of rounded boulders covered in scratchy marine plantlife stand between us and the thundering point break of Punta Roca just outside the main beach of La Libertad, which periodically disappear from view as the whitewater from the waves powerfully surges over the rocks. With boards underarm, we skip from rock to rock and brace ourselves every time a wave comes crashing across our path, like a game of statues but with serious consequences as the black specks of surfers already in the line up observe us with interest. I survive 3 waves until my feet are swept out from under me and I am dragged across ten feet of cheese grating stone, almost totalling one of my fellow rock hoppers, frantically cradling my board against possible injury while sections of my skin are removed. Gently bleeding into the water, I brace myself against rocks and heave back into a standing position, preparing to attempt the same distance for the second time.

"There's someone getting in over there" someone says, and suddenly everyone freezes, 3 pairs of eyes swivelling to follow the progress of a lone figure hopping across a section further down the same unrelenting rocky point. As we watch, he totters to shin depth and waits, crouching, asa wave breaks and the white water hammers towards him. As it arrives within feet, he leaps over the jumbled heap of foam and paddles furiously out to sea, sucked sideways by the after tow until, finally released, he slogs his way out of the churned up inside section and duck dives through the advancing waves that follow. Within minutes we are, with varying degrees of success, following his example, bouncing between rocks and off the shallow bottom in a frantic flap out to sea, which eventually rewards us with the welcome experience of waves that don't break on our heads as we sit in the lineup.

"We weren't supposed to get in at that spot, were we?", one of my group asks another surfer as we sit waiting for one of the grinding sets of waves to come through. "Nah man," comes the reply, "but we thought you must be Brazilians." After a brief pause, he adds, almost by way of explanation, "They alway end up getting into macho shit like that."

El Tunco, El Salvador
17th August 2009

Tour...and Relax

So began a week of tourism at a blistering pace, covering a large proportion of Belize from the sheltered environment of the tinted windows of a rented 4WD, exiting occasionally to engage in activities and to eat and sleep. Boat rides to offshore tiny islands, rope swinging over rivers, swimming through caves by the light of headtorches, watching thunderstorms across the bay from the shelter of a top floor bar and general abuse of our vehicle on the long and winding dirt roads ensued.

By the time that Tim (whose photos I have stolen and am displaying above; thanks very much for that) flew from belize city airport to return to the world of work in the UK (a world that now felt more or less completely alien), I was feeling decidedly anti-social and in need of some alone time; it is mildly surprising to me that I have steadly become more averse to constant contact with others over the period of weeks, and certainly accentuates the point that I would find it very difficult to travel for any great length of time with the same group of people, finding great value in personal space and solitary time.

Thus I found myself crossing the border between Belize and Guatemala feeling strangely welcomed by the prevolence of Spanish, which had been steadily rotting in the back of my mind, and the general chaos and dirtyness of what seemed to be a slightly more genuine slice of Latin America. Parting company with the Whitaker sisters after a fairly gruelling overnight bus ride to Guatemala City, I bumped the hours away on a chicken bus to Quetzaltenango (fortunately also known as Xela) with no particular plan other than to drop a book off with a fellow ex-teacher before heading on to the Promised Land of El Salvador.

After a ride from a very amiable but completely inept taxi driver to the seeming unknown location of ex-teacher Abi (despite assuring me that he knew the spot right up to the point where we drove away from the curb) and meeting a very friendly and welcoming bunch upon arrival at said mystery location, it became abundantly clear to me that for the first time in a while, I really wanted to put my feet up and stew in one place for a while, and hence became the latest victim in the spider web that is Xela, where people come to stay for a couple of
days and wake up one day to find that months have passed.

Xela
29th July 2009

Gwan Snarklin

The Belizian Cayes, and in particular Caye Caulker, did everything that they could to cultivate and sustain the Caribbean stereotype. Life never raised above a saunter, everything was haphazardly contructed of misaligned wood and one of the girls in our party was duly informed by local pedestrians that she was "wahkin like a champion".

Inadvertantly pursuing the textbook experience further, we booked onto a snorkelling trip towards the outer reef provided by Ragamuffin Tours. The twenty or so tourists that gathered at the alloted departure time, ranging in skin palette from light brown to pink were split into two groups, each of which were dispatched to a 40ft wooden sailing boat. Our bright red vessel for the day, the Ragga Queen, was helmed by Captain Raf who gave the sort of safety briefing that would start convusions in UK health and safety exectives and shortly afterwards we motored away from the jetty.

Within minutes the Captain turned on the stereo, surprisingly to reveal that the music of choice was...reggae. "Does anybody nut like de reggae?" he asked the assembled passengers. No response was elicited. "Well den," he continued, "if nuhbody like it, tell meh and I turn it up."

The whole experience turned out to be absolutely fantastic. Over the course of the day we were dropped into three different uncrowded spots, allowing us to glide among shoals of fish that seemed completely indifferent to our existence, nurse sharks that snaked over the shallow bottom hunting out unfortunate fish and scrapping unashamedly with one another for the remains some feet away from us, manta rays, a solitary manatee (much to the delight of our female contingent, and the disgust of Tim, who was looking the other way at the time) that mournfully flapped off into the distant underwater twilight, and a colourful and strange array of coral.

The abundence and variety of marine life was astounding, especially for a place where the through traffic of unskilled snorkellers must have been enormous, and the potential for destruction and exploitation of the natural resources huge. Without ever seeming uptight, the staff on the tour gently sheparded us between and around locations without relenting to the measures that seem to be repeatedly resorted to in order to sate tourist greed; there was no evidence of infrastructre around the reef, or of littering. It also never seemed that we were being herded along a well trodden route, recipients of a fairly sanitized and templated tour, the presence of our fellow boat passengers never being felt as overbearing and the quantities of dive boats at sites never exceeding a couple.

Somewhat sun fried and giggly from the strong rum punch that we'd been supplied with and steadily drowning in after the last dive, we arrived under sail to the jetty from whence we came. All drunken promises to exact a rampage upon the town in the evening rapidly disintegrated as the effects of a full day in tropical sun and the booze set in, sending us to our beds in our small, lopsided wooden shacks at a disgracefully early hour.

Caye Caulker, Belize
18th July 2009

One Very, Very Good Reason to Visit El Salvador

Chetumal
15th July 2009

Killing Time

So, after an excruciating day of trailing around Palenque town performing administative duties required to eventually get a new passport from the British Embassy in Cancun, Lou and I wearily put ourselves on the next bus to the captial of Quintana Roo, Chetumal. This dusty and soul-less town sits on the border with Belize, and would form our base for time unspecified as the dynamic forces of the Embassy processed Lou's passport application. After a single night, we realised that we would probably end up killing and eating someone if forced to spend a full week waiting in the same place, thus hiring a car and driving with enthusiasm towards the Carribean coast.

Our point of escape, with no particular form of planning, turned out to be Mahahual. Arriving on a blustery and overcast day, we were greeted to the sight of a deserted town bordered by acres of dead mangroves on one side and a classic carribean sea on the other. Two days was about all we could handle in our slightly fragile state, frustrated by our forced improsonment in Mexico by circumstances; the strangeness of the town was, in our particular state of mind, a bit too much.

Mahahual grew fast from a small fishing village into an overflow point for the more famous beaches to the north of Playa Del Carmen and Tulum, also developing a healthy passing trade in backpacking tourists. Things were going nicely until Hurricane Dean hit in 2007, flattening the entire town and tearing the life out of the mangrove forest that consequently delivered a crushing blow to localised marinelife and ecosystems. Since then life slowly recovered and Mahauhual regained some form of income as a cruise ship stopover, with up to 5000 people simultaneously flooding the tiny town at sporadic moments to come ashore, engage in drunken debauchary along the seafront and return back to their cabins after some hours. This, no doubt, was instrumental in breeding a very predeatory feeling to the place; one could not escape the sense that the locals watched you like hawks as you passed; not through curiosity, but sizing you up to see how they could get what they needed from you before you left.

Speaking with Evan, a young Texan expat with verbal diahorrea who was the proud proprietor of a new local bar/restaurant/cabaña setup, another sobering revalation came to pass. At the point of our initial arrival we drove up the coast in a bursting desire for exploration, and noticed a fine skin of rubbish littering the ungroomed aspects of the shoreline outside the main seafront in town.

"I've picked up some of the rubbish to check the labels when I've been wandering around the beach sometimes," explained Evan, "And it always says that it was made in a different country; China, Cuba, Europe, the United States. It never says 'Made in Mexico'".

It was saddening to realise the global impact of negligence in such wide scope, and got me thinking about the footprint of human activity at a time that was already more gloomy. Turning the car around and heading back inland, we once again began the search for a place to put our feet up for a few days, recuperate from our traumas and wait.

Chetumal
11th July 2009

Bad News for Democracy

I've just indulged in my first surfing excursion for two months, escaping in the twilight weeks of the teaching semester to the coastal town of Puerto Arista. Now, you would think that the experience of thrashing around in the turbulent, hurricane fueled waters of the pacific under steely grey skies would be a fine subject for discourse. One would assume that conveying the experience of swimming in warm ocean water whilst the seasonal rains pound the coastline and strong storm winds bend the palm trees would be a priority, and under any other circumstances I would happily oblige this focus, but for the unfortunate incidents of Saturday afternoon.

Having climbed out of the sea with a powerful hunger, I advanced with the two teachers with whom I was traveling, Willow and Lewis, to the nearest restaurant in sight. Within seconds of arriving we were purchased beers by a stringy grey haired chap in a standard issue Mexican vest sitting amongst a group of men. Despite the amiability of the gesture, alarm bells were ringing in Teacher Willow's head, warning of impending sleaze. This, unfortunately, turned out to be a perception of painful accuracy.

Swaggering over, our new (and fairly sozzled) acquaintance introduced himself as a figure of Great Importance in Local Government, sat down with us and proceeded to pester Willow with comments about how beautiful she looked, requests for her phone number and eventually (in sotto voce so neither Lewis nor I could hear on the other side of the table) complimenting her on the size of various parts of her anatomy. Willow, at this point shell shocked and disgusted, told The Towering Pillar of Sleaze with incredible restraint that his company was no longer required, sentiments that I echoed to him as soon as I realized that some fundamental boundaries had been crossed. The Excuse For a Human Being unapologetically apologized and wandered back to his group, leaving a trail of slime in his wake.

The whole incident passed time no greater than 5 minutes, but it cast an unpleasant air over the rest of the weekend trip. Up until that point all of us had been treated for the most part with respect by the people that we had encountered and such a disrespectful violation of said respect (by a figure of authority in government, no less) left us all raw and distrusting of how others might treat us for the remainder of our trip. It is unfortunate that the kindness which is received and trust which is bestowed following the actions of so many others can be shaken by the inconsiderate ramblings of a single pendejo drunk on alcohol and their own position of power.

In advance of the national elections on the 5th July, not a vote swinger for the resident political party methinks...

Puerto Arista
22nd Julio 2009