This is the second chapter in a series of articles on El Salvador by Honduran writer Gustavo Peña Flores.

Surf Lesson.

Drawing your line on a wave while surfing, your board goes where your eyes go. The Surf City campaign communicated a clear and unequivocal message to the world: El Salvador is now safe. During the period of pacification—2019 to 2023—tourism grew from 5% to 11% of the country’s GDP, according to its Ministry of Tourism.

The industry generated $3.793 billion in 2023, softening the trade balance deficit, which was still $5.057 billion in the negative, according to El Salvador’s Central Bank—its economy heavily relies on remittances from an emigre population of 2.5 million in the United States; additionally, the country imports much more than it exports.

In 2023, 3.4 million tourists visited El Salvador—more than half of the resident population. 43% entered by land to this small territory that can be driven across in five hours. 57% entered through the Comalapa Airport—conveniently connected to the United States by direct flights to fifteen cities. Its five busiest routes are to Los Angeles, Houston, Washington DC, New York and Miami.

In 2024, tourism figures spiked, with 400,000 more visitors and 11.7% more in revenue. However, most tourists to “the home of the right surf” were not surfers. 

In 2023, 44% of visitors to El Salvador came from the United States; 23% from Guatemala; 14% from Honduras; the remaining 19% from the rest of the world. Motives were diverse: 42% traveled to El Salvador to visit family and friends; 40% for leisure, 6% for business and 3% for sports tourism, according to the Salvadoran Tourism Corporation.

The waves, which are worth every drop of their reputation, serve as a powerful magnet for a niche audience, highly valued by its host. The surf lifestyle incorporates romantic elements of freedom, nature, and adventure, and all are a source of national pride. But the Salvadoran hospitality industry lives, above all, from the “faraway sibling” who returns from the United States; from visitors from neighboring Guatemala and Honduras; and from domestic tourism.

These visitors prioritize different elements. “Safety drives interest in visiting us and Surf City puts us on the map. But few people surf. Surfers are a specialized public. Very specific,” explains Silvia Orozco, manager of the Salvadoran Chamber of Tourism in 2024.

“I would never go to another country to do sports. It doesn’t fit my persona”, she confesses, while inhaling her vape in the Chamber’s boardroom on a seventh story in San Salvador. She is right: anchoring Salvadoran tourism to the waves implies a necessary cultural shift in the near future. El Salvador, until recently, has yet to develop its full maritime potential.

According to the Pan American Health Organization’s December 2024 report, the national rate of drowning is 8.3 per 100,000 citizens, compared to a regional average of 1.6 and a global average of 3.8. This is nearly four times more than its homicide rate.

“Most people in the Salvadoran society cannot swim. Something terrible happens. You take away the surfboard from many of the surfers and they don’t have the necessary skills to survive without it”, explains Otoniel Almenar, president of the Association of Professional Lifeguards of El Salvador (AGUAPES), endorsed by the International Life Saving Federation. 

On Saturdays, youngsters like El Boyita, from this series’ first article, work toward earning a lifeguard certificate through AGUAPES. “They just float,” he states, proving his teacher’s point.

A nation, similar in size to Massachusetts, now faces a daunting mission: to nurture a generation of athletes and seafarers, each the embodiment of its new values, of a modern historical and cultural change. They are the representatives of a new era.

AGUAPES students cheer together.

Redefining a national self-portrait

“It’s like being on a boat. You jump out and you’re in the wave. You open the door and pum (the wave breaks). You sleep listening to the Sunzal,” says Felipe, from Galicia, Spain, of his hotel, La Ola Surf, which opened in 2021, right in front of El Salvador’s most consistent point break. This is adjacent to El Tunco—a tourist jaunt beloved by hipsters, backpackers, and digital nomads. This is also ground zero for Surf City 1.

View of El Sunzal from the Ola Surf Hotel’s Terrace.

Felipe has owned two surf camps in Spain for the last twelve years, one in Galicia and the other on the Atlantic island of Lanzarote. During the pandemic, he crossed the Atlantic with his partner to find a point break suitable for both of them. And there, before a cross commemorating a drowned person, they found it. 

“I was looking for a warm water wave to surf with my girl. We are at different levels, and a friend who is a very good surfer recommended El Zunzal as ‘the most user-friendly wave in the world’. There are better waves, but I haven’t found others as consistent or accessible for all levels as this one,” says Felipe, watching the water from his terrace.

Waves of El Sunzal, with a cross in the foreground.

“Costa Rica has consistent spots, but it rains a lot more. The only Spanish-speaking country on this continent that comes close or exceeds it is Mexico, clearly. But there’s its reputation. It’s dangerous,” he concludes.  

In 2020, the couple started a third surf camp—their first in El Salvador. “We never wanted to invest just for the sake of it. It was this or nothing. But it’s one thing to want to and another to take the step. Bukele’s policy helped. Having a safe country is a solid foundation.” 

Felipe says that after signing, they still wondered if sooner or later a marero—gangster—would pay a visit to extort them. None showed up. But, one by one, a big set of international surfing tournaments did. Since 2020, El Salvador has hosted about twelve such events.

In 2024 alone, Punta Roca hosted a stop on the World Surf League (WSL); Sunzal hosted three more competitions, the International Surfing Association, the World Masters Surfing Championship and the ALAS Pro Tour. The country jumped from decades of invisibility to a competitive frenzy. It is still readjusting to a new understanding of itself, staggering from such a sharp turn.

In Punta Roca, next to the remodeled urban boardwalk of Port La Libertad, a free, public and peaceful park in front of the break point was built. Today, it is one of the most recognized sites in the country. Judges keep score during the tournaments from a tower in that park. Decades ago, the city council had designated the adjacent lots to the municipal slaughterhouse and cemetery, given their low value in the market.

Entrance to Punta Roca Park, with the municipal slaughterhouse in front of it and a humble neighborhood in the background.

Today, Punta Roca is a true portrait of El Salvador’s transition. It was there, moreover, at the 2024 World League stop, that Salvadoran surfing reached its peak (to date). The government obtained a “wild card”, or participation, for a national surfer in the stop. This was a top tier opportunity.

Bryan Pérez, 25, who grew up in a line of humble abodes between the slaughterhouse and the Punta Roca wave, held a direct duel against Brazil’s Italo Ferreira—first Olympic surfing gold medalist at Tokyo 2020 and #2 in the world at the moment, according to the WSL.

In front of his own people, and with the weight of the national Surf City project bearing down on him, Pérez was driven to genius by necessity. He was lagging behind Ferreira; to the crowd’s surprise, he soared over a wave and came out on his feet after disappearing under its lip. He won the duel.

Bryan Pérez’s aerial in 2024.

On the spectator’s platform, together with other youngsters of the new surfing generation, El Boyita was in disbelief at what someone like him could achieve. On that day, for an instant, El Salvador was on the verge of glory in a sport that it chose as its national banner. It was brief, yet a glimmer of light in the darkness, like a distant signal from a lighthouse.

Not since witnessing the dexterous displays of Jorge Alberto “The Magician” González, the unruly Salvadoran footballer playing for Cádiz in Spain’s top tier league, who gained the friendship of local Flamenco music legend Camarón de la Isla and the praise of Diego Armando Maradona—citing him as the only player of his era better than he was—there has not been such a high point for Salvadoran sport as with “the aerial” of Pérez from Punta Roca.

“We are already competing. Not en masse, or as a country, or as a powerhouse, but individually, yes. Now the question is if we can multiply it,” says Marcelo Castellanos, founder of the Puro Surf Hotel and Academy, and Pérez’s coach since he was fifteen. Together, as mentor and student, they competed in the Paris 2024 Olympics in Tehaupo’o, Tahiti.

But being a “powerhouse” and making surfing more of a culture than a publicity hit is still a lofty aspiration with a feeble base. Although there is new support, the institutional delay is immutable. 

Milton López, manager of the Surf Federation, comments happily about the Surf City Effect: “From 2023 to 2024, we went from US $10,000 to 40,000 in budget.”

“$40,000 is what I spend on soap in one year,” reacted Eduardo Paz, manager in 2024 of San Salvador’s five-star Intercontinental Hotel, as a reflex act when hearing about this fact.

Building the house from the roof down

El Salvador is discovering the benefits of basic public goods provided by a strong state through the unprecedented degree of security it now witnesses. But the current design of its state apparatus in other fields responds to previous convictions—those of the post-Cold War Peace Accords of 1992.

After what Francis Fukuyama called “the end of history”, the prevailing development model opted for a state reduced to a minimum in size and scope. It opted for market solutions to many situations previously addressed by the state’s apparatus. It also dispensed with strong central planning—as in Germany or Japan—which neighboring Costa Rica succeeded in achieving.

This paradigm took a battering wherever it was implemented in Hispanic America. The region drifted at the hands of left and right governments alike, with rampant corruption in the privatization process and racketeering in the coverage of basic services—health, education and security—in the midst of demographic, urban, and economic expansion.

A man intoxicated with alcohol celebrates September 15, Salvadoran Independence Day.

“The State is cornered. It functions only as a facilitator of mercantile activity and does not concern itself with labor, education, health, and development. That gets done by the market, which acts on all these privatized territories,” explained Dagoberto Gutiérrez, former guerrilla commander who signed the 1992 peace agreement, in a 2023 interview to the LA Times.

A huge vacuum thusly developed. “When the state withdrew from the territories, the gangs were left with a free field and replaced it,” said Gutiérrez, who was an early voice in denouncing the failure of the bipartisan era—whose origin he enabled with his signature—and in pointing out the value of a reform as basic as Bukele’s, before passing away in 2024.

El Salvador grew with no architecture, in confusion and chaos. Wealth increased, but so did instability and inequality. Social problems multiplied without proper response channels. It was a permanent, unruly negligence enhancing the worst of the public and private spheres. Faith in the public sector dissipated by state corruption and ineptitude, if it ever existed. 

Surf City came into this scene to order a pre-existing chaos, or to be absorbed by it. Outside of security, however, today’s solutions to other national challenges are devised within the prior paradigm, or conceptual box. This includes the Surf Federation’s affairs, which depends on the Sports Institute (INDES) whose honorary head, Yamil Bukele, is the president’s brother.

A local woman with a child wait for the bus besides a rock on the other side of the road where there is a Surf City bus bench, in front of El Zonte.

This evidences the Executive’s commitment to sports. But with the small budget of a small Central American country, INDES covers all the federations. From highly appraised surfing or beach soccer to spotlight-shy chess, sports are given a general push. 

But surfing is not just a sport. It is the symbol for a new El Salvador, coupled with a sizeable media budget. And to become a classic destination and powerhouse on the world stage, homegrown surfers are needed.

Despite its “boom”, the inconsistency in the chain of construction of new athletes is evident. The sport’s federation does not play an axial role in its major events. Nor does it have the money or expertise to train national athletes who can compete at international competitions—which, incidentally, the country pays for and hosts at its best point breaks. The situation is dissonant.

The flow of resources, cooperation, and development of Salvadoran surfing resembles the construction of a house which was built from the roof down. “The best international events in the world are brought in, but the national circuit is in its worst condition in history,” reflects Marcelo Castellanos.

“Surf City is six years old now. There should be more people on the tour and in the qualifiers. We have top quality waves. And there are athletes, but they need to be strengthened. In the competition in Nicaragua, our junior Erickson was second in the Continent, but most of the athletes had to go on their own,” says Rodrigo Larios, Castellanos’ administrative counterpart in Puro Surf.

Due to monetary constraints, el Boyita did not attend the competition. “An elite surfing career based in El Salvador costs between 60,000 and 150,000 dollars a year. The boys are short of money. We managed funding for Bryan Pérez, but for six juniors from the academy?” questions Castellanos. As an elite sport, the challenges are great. But as an engine of reform in the country, even more so.

From the wave to the mountain top

Tall and thin, with long hair and a small head compared to the width of his chest and back, William is a free surfer, donning a galactic alias that he embodies with a special aura. Walking down the star-spangled sidewalk a la ‘Hollywood Boulevard’ of El Tunco’s celebrated hostel, “La Guitarra”, he exclaims, “One day, a star is going to call my name: Martian.”

Marciano—the Martian—grew up despite the fact that no one had any particular interest in raising him. Luckily, he found a mentor in Arcángel—a hotelier and longboarder who, as a teenager, shot an anti-aircraft battery in the Civil War. “I don’t surf to compete. What makes me happy are the waves,” he says. Together, they share a love for not letting anyone or anything get in the way of their time in the water, or watching the sunset.

Arcángel takes a selfie at sunset in El Tunco.

Arcángel manufactures chocolates decorated with dried fruits, harvested in his family cocoa farm near Lake Ilopango; Marciano sells these at El Tunco. “They are energy pills for surfing made with a product developed in Central America: chocolate,” says Arcángel, whose ambition is to renew the pre-Columbian tradition of his land by developing his idea commercially.

They both are part of the surfing community of El Salvador’s Balm Coast, which witnesses the hardships their government currently faces: reorganizing the country’s territory, from the wave to the mountain top. El Salvador embodies a mess all too common to Hispanic America: making sense of what has already been done on the territory in waves of arbitrariness, abuse, or poverty.

But there is more at stake. The cobblestone point breaks—core to the nation’s tourism campaign—lay at the end of watersheds that start in the mountains. From the mountains’ “talpetate” rock — rough as an asteroid — stones break free and wash down to Surf City. Everything is connected.

Mouth of a creek with a break point at the Balm Coast.

“I don’t surf in the rainy season in La Paz. It gives me an ear infection,” says Arcángel of the sister wave to Punta Roca, situated in La Libertad. According to a 2022 river water quality study by the National Ministry of Environment, only “4 sites out of 123 evaluated nationwide have the water quality to be used for recreational activities without restriction.”

Today, pollution is common to almost all warm seawater destinations. Even to surf beaches further north, like San Diego, Pacífica, or San Luis Obispo in California, according to The Surfrider Foundation. But for a developing country with surfing as its flagship tourist offer, the short watersheds of the Balm Coast can serve as an example.

“Before Surf City, there was no plan to manage development. There was already a lot of building and watershed damage that affected the wave, tourism experience, health and water quality. Now they are smartly addressing these problems,” says Nik Strong-Cvetich, CEO of Save The Waves Coalition, based in Santa Cruz, California.

Saltwater pool at El Palmarcito cove, in the Balm Coast.

Foresight, planning, and respect for the common good demands a profound cultural change in those who rule and those who are governed. “For example, garbage is a cultural thing,” says Minister Valdéz. “We are all responsible here.”

Sunset over Conchalío Beach, near Port of La Libertad.

As the old makes way for the new, everyone needs to adapt. And an opportunity to do so too. Amid the row of little shacks, locally called “ranchitos”, upon the pebbled black-sand beach of Conchalío, in La Libertad, the Pelícano Surf Camp’s waters are home to its own bulging-eyed, fin-fanned health guards, patrolling at a gentle beat. 

Fish patrol the water deposit at Pelícano Surfcamp, Conchalío.

“These zambitos—native species of brackish-water fish—were caught in the river to be used as bait. They didn’t use them and were thrown on the beach to die. But they are very resilient. Now they are my babies,” says their rescuer, hostel manager Roxana Ramírez. “They eat the larvae so dengue fever won’t spread,” says her partner, Ulises Rosales—a surf ambassador among his country’s simplest people.

Miami style

Goodbye old, hello new: but whom does this serve? Unplanned growth, without zoning or a uniting goal, could mean bread for today and hunger for tomorrow. “If you touch the river you’re screwing the wave. Like up here—from Puro Surf, in El Zonte. They touch the rivers without knowing how [their actions] impact,” says Bryan Pérez about sand-dredging by developers.

Today’s main threat to sustainability is that of a “Miami-style” real-estate boom. It would bring more development than the public systems, and the waves, could absorb. “The word ‘city’ in Surf City to me… I don’t understand. They must have studied it. It’s a concept. But someone who surfs doesn’t want to be in a city,” says Felipe, from La Ola Surf.

A future real estate development for the Balm Coast.

“If you pay a lot to surf, and there are already sixty people and you want to bring more … or if you make a twenty-story building … that’s great for Surf City, but it is zero per cent sustainable. That’s the problem of Ericeira, or similar so-called reserves,” says Felipe, drawing a comparison to the surfing hub of Portugal; since the 2013 International Tourism Fair, the city has bet it all on surfing as its flagship tourism operation, overcrowding itself.

“There is a study in tourism—Butler’s Model—that says that if a destination starts with few people, but then too many follow, tourism tanks because the dream is different from reality,” says Nik Strong-Cvetich. “If we have an overflow of surfers, the market would turn to Nicaragua, because it’s quieter,” explains Rodrigo Larios of Puro Surf.

Such overflow may derive from the plans for Mizata, a few minutes’ drive west of Surf City 1. “Where do you put 2,000 surfers? The wave holds forty per session, and there are only four hours a day of good surfing. By that rule of thumb—a surfer has two hours in a session—Mizata can fit eighty a day. And if twenty of them are locals, that leaves sixty slots for tourists,” says Felipe.

It begs the question, what does the country aspire to achieve? “There’s no denying how successful Surf City has been in creating a brand for El Salvador that it didn’t have before. But the idea is divorced from actual surf tourism. No hardcore surfer would see something that advertises itself as Surf City and want to go. But they’re not the bulk of the market either,”says Jess Pointing.

Salvadoran tourists are drawn to the new Surf City 2 advertising totem in Las Flores Cove, in the cliffs east of the Lempa River.

Pointing doesn’t believe Butler’s Model spells the end of tourism, but a mutation of the ideal. “It’s an old myth that when a place gets too crowded people will stop coming. What seems to happen is that those who went because it was authentic and lonely stop going, and others with more resistance to the masses take their place. If you go to El Tunco, I’m sure there are a lot of people surfing, but the bar will be full of others who didn’t go there for that purpose.”

Development can clash with the local temperament if it runs counter to its spirit, as it does in El Zonte. For decades, a bohemian local community has coexisted there with the old-money beach houses. But today the government has hung “Bitcoin Beach” and “Surf City” signs in front of the town, when the locals have long since christened it Pueblo Loco, or Crazy Town.

A spontaneous “Pueblo Loco” logo painted on a pole next to the official Bitcoin Beach billboard, just before El Zonte.

“There’s definitely reluctance to be labeled Bitcoin Beach or Surf City,” says Pointing, who led a study by the prestigious STOKE Project in El Zonte and the cliffs east to the Lempa River; the study addresses the “acceptable limits of change” for locals amid the specter of surf development.

This 2022 study, funded by USAID, is the most comprehensive on the industry to this date. However, it uses Australia as a comparison, despite the disparate cultural and socioeconomic

realities between them. An accurate understanding of the comparative reality of Central America, from Oaxaca to Panama, could help local authenticity survive development.