Starting on Thursday March 17th, we had a four day weekend. Ten of us decided to go on a little excursion to Playa El Tunco, El Salvador. Tunco, in the indigionous language means, pig. Thus, The Pig Beach. We packed our bathing suits and boarded our chartered van, and set out at 2pm on March 16th for our five hour journey. The van rental was $200 dollars round trip total. Leaving Copan, we traveled 15 min. to the Guatemalan border.
After passport check we loaded up and made the 2.5 hour trip through mountainous rural Guatemala to another Guatemalan border, bordering El Salvador. After stopping to have the Guatemalan immigration officer stamp our passports, we loaded up again to drive two blocks to the El Salvadorian immigration check point. We unloaded, had our passports stamped and loaded up again for another 2.5 hours to Playa El Tunco. Once again we traveled through mountainous rural Central America with a few medium sized cities in between. Central America has much beauty, although we learned that 92% of El Salvador is deforested. This means that the virgin forests are virtually gone. When you travel through, you will see many tropical trees but you can tell that they are mostly young.
We arrived at the beach on time and promptly split up into a couple of groups to find rooms. We layed to rest at La Pupa motel. It was very nice with a pretty plant garden, a community kitchen and hammocks outside. The room was a room with a bathroom and two beds, tile floors, a fan and a two minute walk to the beach. All for $18. Playa El Tunco is a very small community beach town known for its great surfing waves. There are numerous restaurants along the beach that are what I would call very open air restaurants. It's a great place to play. Thursday we got aquainted with the area. Then we played in the waves and did lot's of body surfing. Amy doesn't like to get slammed by the waves so she just went in long enough to get wet. Once, I was waiting for a wave only to look up to see Amy running for dear life toward the beach to out run the wave wash from the wave that had just come in. it was a pretty good size wave. There is an ice cream stand in Playa El Tunco that makes home made paletas, (popsicles). You can choose from flavors like, Fresa, sandia, ron con pasas, coco, mente con chocolate, mango or mango con chili, papaya or papaya con chili, Irish cream,and a few others we can't remember. Flavors in English that aren't obvious. In order, strawberry, watermelon, rum with raisins, coconut, mint with chocolate.
Friday, Kyle, Cristina, Max and Lori, and myself, took a surfing lesson. $15 each. Our guides were going to keep us close to shore but the waves were not cooperating, so they decided to take us "outside" to where the good "big" wave were happening. We looked at the girls, who had been a bit anxious to begin with, for a thumbs up. They smiled, shrugged, said "I guess", and we were off. Let's do it!! Those waves were beautiful. Good form, big, for us, nice cut to the right. Let's go surfin' now we are just learnin' how c'mon get wiped out with me. My play on the Beach Boys tune. After a good paddle out, the guides helped us position ourselves to be in the right spot to catch a wave. I should clarify that we did recieve a short surfing workshop on how to paddle and stand up along with other doos and don'ts. Of course that was done on the beach. Ten minutes later we were ready! YEAH!! I'm up next. OK get ready, NOW, paddle paddle. I catch the wave, pick up speed, grab the side of the board with my hands, push up. I get on one foot and one knee. Push to stand up and WIPE OUT! Ok, I come up for air, look for any approaching waves. Looks good, although there is a swell coming. I pull on my tag line, reel in the board and climb on top. I begin paddling to the side though I see I'm not away from the wave break. I roll off the board and dive under water beneath the wave, resurfacing to paddle to take position once again for the prize catch. My last wave of the day was one of the bigger ones. I started out at the crest of the wave and shot straight down the wall, which by the way is not the best form, but oh well. I felt like I was going a hundred miles per hour. I could feel the board skipping across the glassy surface. Once again, on one foot and one knee, i push up to stand and double WIPE OUT!! Oh well, we had fun. We all had good rides and wipe outs even if we never stood up. It was a beautiful sunny day with warm water and good times.
