Photos by Lou.
Serendipity – Derived from the old Persian name for Sri Lanka; The effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.It was Neil Young, and possibly the Bible before him, who said that the devil fools with the best-laid plans. But what about a lack of plans? Does he fuck with those also? Or does someone bless them instead? The latter may be true.
The surf trip to Nicaragua in May/ June 2009 began as many such trips do – lots of use of the words “dude,” “bro,” “sick,” and “offshore-barrels-all-day.” The credit cards were charged and we were three, three goofyfoots in myself, Scott and Lou. Within weeks and many more usage of said buzzwords, Oscar joined the trip as the token regularfoot. The voyage was set with work time taken off and discussion of what boards were to be taken.
Emails began to pour in, advice was received, and confusion and strong opinions ensued. Our friend, Matt, who has been to this area twice, gave us a breakdown of all the surf spots in the region and recommended places to stay and who to use for boat tours. Oscar’s friend had a friend who owned a hotel in a small town with access to boats, and on the day before the trip a friend of mine said simply, “go to Colorado’s.” We had a car lined up to take us to San Juan del Sur, knowing nothing of the place and its accessibility to surf, simply on Matt’s recommendation. No hotel booked, swell models checked but without cross-reference, we were headed into virgin territory. My friend, Max, had sent me a message a few weeks back that he was in San Juan del Sur, I replied, but didn’t get a response, so I figured he had moved along to somewhere out of reach of the Internet. How dare he!
The first day was the first night. We arrived responsibly early – midnight for a 2:12am flight - to LAX with eight boards in tow. We were psyched, we saw lots of other bros with boardbags and hoped they wouldn’t end up on the same beach as us, but hell, we didn’t even know where we would end up. We then began to hear rumblings of something not so great – a delay. We only had 45 minutes to make a connection in Panama, so any delay would throw a wrench in the operation, make us get in much later than noon, as planned, and mean no surfing that afternoon.
It turns out some pussy had a heart attack on the plane ride up from Panama and they had to land the plane in Mexico City. We boarded the plane at 4:30am and took off at 6:00am. I had taken too many pills to know all this was going on, but the sources of this information are numerous and generally reliable.
Fast-forward to Managua, where the weather is hot and it is dark and pouring rain. Copa Airlines offered us a hotel to stay in Managua or Panama City for the night, but since we had arranged a transfer to San Juan del Sur we went for it. I had sent an email from LAX to the guy who set it up with hopes he would get word on the delay. We got our gear and just as we were about to say, “fuck it” and accept the free taxi ride Copa was offering, Scott spotted a man holding a sign with my name on it. Our luck had begun to turn.
Fifty porters grabbed our bags to try to help load them and make a few Cordobas (20 Cordobas = 1 Dollar). The bags were on the car and we were off into the dark unknown on some sketchy roads and with a driver who spoke no English. Stop for beer? Check. We tried to convince the driver to take us to Oscar’s hookup in Gigante, where the boats were nearby, but the driver said the roads were too bad to drive at night in the rain. What a whiner, we all thought, as we grumbled about how shitty the surf was going to be if we didn’t go there, all possessing the sagely prescience of someone who has never been to a particular geographic locale.
We arrived in San Juan del Sur and the driver informed us (read: Oscar and I as translators) of a couple hotel options. He drove us past a bar that looked like it was going off. It was 10:30pm on a Friday after all. We opted for the slightly more expensive hotel with air conditioning and our own beds, settled in with a few more beers and shots of rum then walked to the Iguanas Bar that we had passed earlier. We were all close to delirious at this point, having barely slept in the last 24 hours, having taken pills to sleep, consumed countless beers in planes, hotel rooms, tarmacs, and old 4-Runners, but still ready to enjoy our first night in Nicaragua.
The lightning was lighting up the dark bay in which San Juan del Sur in nestled. We ordered a round of drinks, saluted our valor of having survived having been improperly pampered by Copa, and checked the scene out.
In Panama beautiful, round-rumped women seemed to grow on trees. Every woman we saw in the airport was reason enough to sell one’s entire life and live in a shack in the jungle. We were beginning to find that in the sleepy tourist town of 15,000 known as San Juan del Sur, the same was true. I love this place, we all kept saying.
I looked across the bar and saw something familiar, but couldn’t place it, perhaps due to the mental haze described above, but then I realized that it was none other than Max! I couldn’t believe our luck since landing in Nicaragua – first our driver just happens to be there when our 8-hour-delayed flight lands, then Max and we are in a bar in a town in which we had made only the vaguest of plans to meet. He introduced us to his lady, who we came to find out is the daughter of the biggest drug dealer in San Juan del Sur, and we bullshitted for hours, eventually moving to a disco and another field of haziness.
Shredasarueses
The cocks crowed and it was time to get down to business – shredding. One soon finds out that getting to the surf when staying in San Juan del Sur is not easy. Why not, you may ask. Well, even though there are miles of swell-exposed coastline within walking distance, many of said miles are filled with coves, large rocks, or other structures suited very well for scenic beauty, but not for surfing. We went to the “surf shop” across from our hotel – I brought more gear in my boardbag than they had in their store – paid $5 per person for a ride to the closest spot, Playa Maderas. We arrived to find 3 foot offshore peaks with a small crowd, a perfect way to start our trip.
In Nicaragua everything you buy at a grocery store comes in a pink plastic bag, and since everyone carries these around full of their day’s most important possessions, we came to call them “Nicaraguan backpacks.” Everyday we would load up our sunscreen, wax, and liters of water into the Nicaraguan backpack to go surf. Sunscreen is essential, and if someone invented something that would stop you from sweating it would kill it in Nicaragua. The sun is vicious and indiscriminant down there, sapping every bit of energy from anyone who dares pass under it.
The second day we went back to Maderas and found it with a little less swell. The waves were still fun, but nothing dreamy. We were all pretty sunburned after spending the whole first day in the sun and it was a quicker session this second day, especially as the tide drained out and the locals got on it.
I hadn’t heard much about the locals, good or bad, before going to Nicaragua, but I found them to be not unlike locals of many other breaks around the world. Some of them could certainly surf, whole others couldn’t surf too well or would just ride bodyboards. They fought hard for position and usually caught the best waves of each set due to local knowledge and determination. Only the best of them surfed with good style, with many focusing on huge maneuvers over smooth transitions.
The third day we opted to go to El Yankee, a 45-minute car ride South of town on the craziest dirt road we had seen so far. The ride cost $10. We began to see why, if the road was similar, our driver who brought us from Managua to San Juan del Sur didn’t want to take us to Gigante at night and in the rain. There were dry creek beds crossing the road, deep bumps, and steep, slippery sections to climb. Anything but a good 4x4 wouldn’t make it to El Yankee.
If nothing else, Nicaragua is the land of rumors. One quickly becomes acclimated with the local people and hears stories of who is sleeping with who, what spot is going off, where people are getting robbed, and which pizza place has the best deals. None of this information is exceedingly reliable, but it is everywhere. We kept hearing that Yankee was a sketchy place to go because of thieves, but information was predictably complicated. Some rumors we heard:
They come out of the bushes, hold a knife to your girl’s neck and steal her purse. They stop your car on the road and take your stuff. Don’t leave anything on the beach, even t-shirts, because they will steal it. They have guards on the beach so it’s safe now. Don’t leave stuff on the beach, but it’s ok to leave it in an unlocked car.
We thought we had figured out why they call it Yankee: the place is so sketchy that you have to hide your money in your ass, with a string dangling out so you can get your stuff when you leave the beach. The problem is that the locals come out of the bushes, see your string and yank the wad out of your ass, hence the name “Yankee.” Add that to the San Juan del Sur rumor mill.
I brought my shortboard out for the first time in the trip because we had heard the waves were bigger than the day before and lined up really well. We also heard that they were smaller, but should be better than Maderas. The waves looked like chest-high, slow and offshore Lowers. We pulled up during a good set and we were all psyched to get out there, but the waves stayed pretty weak for a while until the tide dropped and there was probably an hour window of really fun, peaky surf. The tide got too low and it was definitely time to go.
That evening we walked to the end of town to a restaurant called El Coquito (the Little Cock). The place was cheap and had some great food, including some ceviche and really good BBQ chicken. There was a group of Nica guys next to us eating and as they left we noticed the cat they were carrying was no ordinary cat. It looked like a tiger and had huge paws. It’s an ocelot, the guy told us. Holding it, you could hear its baby-growl, much different from a cat’s purring. Welcome to Nicaragua.
The time had come for the boys to take a trip farther north into the great unknown… for us anyway. Lou and Oscar went on a fishing trip the afternoon of our first trip to Yankee and met a driver who would take us North all day with food on the boat and fishing to be done, all for $200. Sign us up, we thought, it is time to see what this place is all about.
We met our guide at 5:15am to push off by 5:30am, and we were off. The panga ride north out of San Juan del Sur is beautiful. One sees where many a man has built his dream home and bought into a slice of heaven, though the number of houses is closer to Big Sur than, say, Malibu. The first stop was Manzanillo. This left point was rumored to be very good, but only on a big swell. There was some swell this day, but not enough. We pulled the boat in the check it out and found it to be too small, but kept it in mind. We moved up to Playa Colorado, a chucking beachbreak reminiscent of Puerto Escondido on a good day and a closeout on a bad one. This day was closer to the latter, but still good for a couple open pits. Colorado is said to be the best spot in all of Nicaragua. So is Popoyo, so we went there next.
Our guide told our boat driver to drop us off far down the beach so the Popoyo locals wouldn’t get pissed about having surfers put straight into the lineup. Somewhere between the guide, who was bilingual, and me, with enough Espanol to get around, the driver didn’t get it. He dropped us right into a lineup of only a few, but not too happy locals. We saw two good peaks coming in and tried to work our way in. The rivermouth peak was working better as the tide dropped and the local surfer who had been ripping the spot moved away from it to surf a right down the beach on his forehand. I paddled over just as three local kids around age 14 did the same.
Two of these kids could barely surf, but only enough to get into waves. The other wasn’t very good, but managed to snag a couple barrels. Lou left to surf a peak way down the beach and Scott joined me to wait for some waves. There would only be one or two waves in each set, and with the groms not keen on sharing their spot, we weren’t catching anything. Then suddenly, all the groms left. This had happened more or less each of our other sessions before, and would continue through the trip: rather than leaving the water gradually, other surfers seemed to leave the water at once just as the waves were getting good.
The left started to fire with the dropping tide. It was a mini-slab takeoff into a rippable wall on a good one. Scott and I, then with Lou and later Oscar as he joined us from surfing the right, traded off lefts as we moved into a sun-driven state of delirium. One more, then I’m going back to the boat turned into another hour and a half into complete exhaustion.
Once back on the boat we stuffed our faces, drank a beer and plotted our next stop. It was only 2pm after all, and we weren’t going to be on the water anything less than all day. We moved to Panga Drops, a reef near Colorado that has a mushy left and a fun right, though the wind was better for the left since it was slightly south. Here we saw our biggest waves of the trip so far, with a few reaching a couple feet overhead on the face. We traded great waves, but it had been a long day with 5 hours already logged in the water. The boatload of funboarders was our sign to get back to the boat for some fishing.
I am no fisherman. I think the last fish I reeled in was in elementary school at a fish farm. Still, I wasn’t going to turn down a chance to catch something tasty. We had been trolling for a few minutes when we hooked our first fish, a 10-pound barracuda. Within an hour we had landed six jacks and a bonita and made it back to the harbor just as the sun was going down. We took our gear back to the hotel and went to a great restaurant behind our hotel with a Venice vibe to have our fish cooked properly, and the meal was phenomenal. Our whole group enjoyed the filets of barracuda and jack with some of the local beers, Tona and Victoria.
The next day we were back at Yankee and ultra crispy from the sun from the day before. We had been slow to go that morning, sleeping in then cruising around San Juan del Sur before finally deciding on Yankee. The surf was pretty fun, but it started to close out sooner than we expected. I wore a wetsuit jacket to surf, which was too warm, but necessary to shield my white rig from the blazing heat. When the waves turned sour I grabbed Lou’s camera and took a couple (horrible) videos of the boys pulling into wedgy shacks. Max left that morning for Guatemala with a stop in Granada, and we had planned on going to Gigante for the swell that was beginning to fill in. We paid for our hotel and lined up a driver for the next morning at 6am to take us to Gigante.
That night it became clear that we would not be going to Gigante the next day. On our trip to Yankee were two girls, one from Belgium and one from Nicaragua via Boston, both of whom spoke great English. They told us about a band that was playing at a bar close to our hotel, and we met up with them and our new buddy, Luis. He sent a text to our driver, Eduardo, saying we wouldn’t need to ride to Gigante in the morning, but he never got a response. We ended up staying out pretty late, until we could no longer bear the exhaustion and had to call it a night.
Six am came and Eduardo was outside our hotel, so we had to let him know we were going to stay in San Juan del Sur and thus it was another day of sleeping in. In many ways Nicaragua is a lazy man’s paradise. The beer and food are cheap, for one, along with everything else, meaning work is not usually first priority. Also, the wind is always offshore, so one need not worry about getting up at the crack of dawn for peak surf conditions. The only consideration is the tide, but with similar tide swings as California, the tide would be the same in the evening as the was in the morning.
After mulling the possibility to move to Gigante some more, we decided on staying in San Juan del Sur for the rest of the trip and taking boat trips. This way we could go north or south, depending on where the swell was working best. We hired our same driver as our last boat trip to take us on an afternoon boat trip South, to Yankee and Hermosa. On our boat were Josue and Pedro, a 17-year old who rides for Quiksilver and is the 4th ranked junior in Nicaragua.
First stop was Yankee. We followed Pedro’s suggestions since he clearly knew the area. The waves were about head-high, and really fun. It seemed that every session we had became the best of the trip so far. Maybe we were getting used to Nicaragua, or getting the spots dialed in, but either way the surf just got more fun the whole time. I watched the boys surf a peak a little down the beach and get completely kegged on a few, while Pedro and I slipped into a couple love dens of our own. As could be predicted, the tide dropped and Yankee suddenly turned off. The waves started to close out badly and we made the always-tough paddle back out to the boat to move up to Hermosa.
The waves at Hermosa didn’t look as big or as good as Yankee had been when we got on it and we questioned our call. Scott looked like he had just eaten an egg sandwich washed down with bitter beer, but Oscar was psyched to surf what looked like a pseudo right point. The waves at Hermosa proved to be one of our better sessions until, you guessed it, the tide changed and it got shitty. On one of my first waves I got a good backside barrel, Scott’s turns looked like Occy’s from the back, and Lou was changing like a banshee. Oscar was lustfully pulling into barrels and got a few great rights when they lined up right. Another great session in the books, where do we go tomorrow?
Sandino’s Revenge, It’s Not Esafe Here Anymore Nicaragua is known to older Americans as a sketchy country, mostly because of the association with the Iran Contra scandal in 1979. The American government supported the Contras, a group opposed by the Sandinistas, which was started in the 1930’s by Augusto Sandino to oppose American intervention in Nicaragua. Sometimes when in Latin America a man of pale skin may feel a rumbling in his belly. In Mexico they say, “Don’t drink the water” and call this Montezuma’s revenge. In Nicaragua, we began to call it Sandino’s Revenge, getting back at those who tried to take over his country.
One evening Lou went out to find a lighter, used to light cigarettes to mask the bathroom odors associated with Sandino’s Revenge. “If I come back and lick my lips,” he said, “that means it’s not safe to open the door.” We exaggerated this the whole trip, and if anything remotely sketchy happened, we would lick our entire mustaches and say, “It’s not esafe ‘ere anymooooore.” That was some hilarious shit.
Back to ShredlandWe were greeted at our hotel with a note from Joey, the Aussie who Matt had suggested to line up rides from the airport and boat trips, that if we wanted to do a trip the next day to call him ASAP. Within 30 minutes he was at our hotel and we were getting the lowdown. We had planned on a half-day trip up North. Get in, get out, hit it and quit it. This would be $160, no lunch, only surf one spot. For $200 we would get lunch and be able to move from spot to spot throughout the whole day. So a full day was the call, to push off at 6:30am and make it for the tide to bottom out then start coming back up, when the waves are supposed to be best at every spot.
We were late to the boat and Joey was waiting with the whole thing set. We weren’t too worried about being late – we chartered the boat for the whole day and he wasn’t leaving without us. The first stop was Manzanillo, the left point we had checked a few days before. Joey reckoned this would be the spot of the day, and the first looked proved that call. There were no boats on it yet and the waves looked to be a bit overhead. Oscar, then Lou, then I paddled from the boat into the lineup. We struggled to find the right takeoff zone and navigate the rocks just inside of the inside barrel section. Joey, on the other hand, had the place dialed. He showed us where to takeoff and would consistently get the longest rides of the day. It seemed like he should have been paying us for this trip considering how many good waves he caught.
The waves were getting better and connecting longer as the tide filled in. We were the only ones on it for an hour and a half. A freaking empty left point, pulsing swell, a picturesque backdrop of sheer rock along the point and a lush jungle on the beach; it was epic. You can take the beachbreaks, I will take the perfect left points all day long. Predictably, another boat soon came into the channel, extremely close to where we were taking off, and dropped a load of Floridian professionals (I know, probably a contradiction in terms) to surf with us. They sat in the perfect spot to be in the way without being able to catch any waves. Screw it, we said, we’ve been on it for a couple hours now and it’s time to move to a new spot.
All of us made it back to the boat and it was perfect timing. The Floridians were joined by some Euros and some bros while we jammed to Colorado. As I was sitting on the boat cramming snacks down my gullet I felt a cramp in my back, I had felt this before a few times in the last year and it is usually really tough to surf when it cramps badly because I can’t pop-up or twist my upper body very well. I opted to stay in the boat with Lou while Oscar and Scott went to surf chucking Colorado. Oscar got some deep pits and Scott tried to get some lefts, but they were mostly closing out. The rest turned out to be the best thing for me, since we were about to return to Manzanillo for what would be my best session of the trip.
Our boat rocked up to see a few other boats in the channel, and about eight guys in the lineup. The wind had turned straight offshore, from slightly south, the tide was full and dropping, and it looked epic. I took out my Pod, a 5’4” fish, to navigate the mushy walls and race the inside section. It turned out to be a great call. I could catch the waves that swung wide, fade a little, then have time for 5-6 turns before the wave started to flatten and my legs turned to jelly. I got at least ten waves like this in the first hour.
Just was the sun setteth, the sun also riseth, and things were bound to change. The tide was dropping and the surf was getting less consistent, though bigger, and a new boat rolled into the channel. It was packed with a huge group and in minutes so was our lineup. At that point the lineup consisted up Scott, Lou, Oscar and I along with two other people. The huge new group paddled straight into the lineup, sat right at the top of the point with no regard for the rest of us who had been establishing position. For those who don’t know proper surf etiquette, for ignorance, like these gentlemen, or for naïveté, this is not the way to enter a lineup. The best way to go about it is to enter slowly and down the point, then let everyone in the lineup catch a wave and wait for your turn. You don’t paddle straight to the takeoff spot, deeper than everyone else, and you certainly don’t have your boat drop you directly into the lineup, as one of the guys did. Most of them were good enough surfers to know this, which made it particularly insulting.
Other lineup patrons perhaps wouldn’t be as kind as we were. After all, I had just had some of the best waves of my life, why would I let some dickheads ruin my session. I was getting tired, Lou broke his leash and had to swim for half an hour looking for his board, only to find it smashed on the rocks, and it was time to go. The last session of the trip was certainly the best for this bloke.
The last night we went big, first going to Iguanas then the disco, a repeat of the previous Friday night. I think we got to bed at 3am, knowing we had to leave at 11am the next day, but that I had to get up at 7am to call Copa and arrange our ride – a deal we arranged for having our flights delayed.
Our ride was arranged in the form of two taxis, and we wove through some beautiful country, past smelly chicken farms and Managuan slums to make it just in time for our flight. When Lou and I got to the airport Oscar and Scott were waiting and Oscar looked sour. “I’m on standby from Panama to LAX,” he said. I wasn’t worried for the guy, usually when you’re on standby they find a seat for you. I was finishing checking in and he asked the woman to check on his status again. “It’s going to be the same… oh, you were moved to first class,” she said. The pout turned into a huge grin as he got his ticket for seat 1A from PTY to LAX, and we were off.
We made it back to LAX without a delay, swearing we wouldn’t fly Copa again, but swearing that we would go back again, especially to Panama, the land of the reputed dumperignon and rumored home of many a good wave. Then again, Peru sounds fun, lots of left point breaks. And El Salvador seems like it would be cool with all those right points. Oh, and Brazil for the reefbreaks and gorgeous women. I think Australia would be a great trip too. Maybe back to the Basque country in the fall. I could go on like this forever…
