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

“If you can count on waves, time will give you everything,” explains Aitor Francesena Uría, AKA ‘Gallo’ (rooster), when asked about Surf City and El Salvador. Gallo is a Spanish Basque Country surfer, a five-time parasurfing VI Surfing World Champion. He is blind.

He’s a protagonist in the surfing world, witness to the highest levels of competition, in a geographic setting that has somehow managed to integrate into the upper echelons of the sport. The Basque Country  is not only home to supreme surfing, but also to a community that deeply cares for nature, local customs and cultural heritage. That’s why he was consulted for this work.

He is fifty-five, two years older than Kelly Slater—perfect vision—who boasts the same number of world titles. Gallo belongs to the second generation of surfers from his Spanish homeland.

He was born with congenital glaucoma and fell in love with a sport that he knew would take his sight away. In 1988, he opened the first surf academy in San Sebastián. Realizing that his glaucoma would prevent him from reaching the crest, he sought out a young man with similar talent and better eyesight to whom he could teach what he knew—Aritz Aranburu, European champion in 2007.

He knew how to be a teacher before he knew how to be a champion. In 2012, at the age of 42, a wave ripped out the cornea implanted in his only good eye. His gaze was suddenly covered by a black curtain. He remembers his daughter as she was the last time he saw her, at age eight. Today she is twenty. But her face lights up in his mind with every word, gesturing at the tenor of the last uttered sentence.

Gallo did not always see the world in black. “I always watched the sunset. I knew that one day I would no longer see it.” That’s why, after losing his sight and breaking through a threshold of helplessness, he surfs ten-foot waves. After all, he still has four senses left, a keen mind, and the soul of a champion.

Sunset over La Periquera cliff beach, in eastern El Salvador.

He possesses an instinctual understanding of the process, an exceptional perspective of the wave’s cycle. Because he became intimate with the waves as a young man, he can now imagine their cycle with precision, in its infinite reconfigurations. He sees the surf. When discussing the subject, even though he has not been to El Salvador, he sees its waves and tides.

His recommendation to all parties involved is to have a vision of the process as it is. Recognize it. Keep the silence. And then, define what to do. If they do it right, they will be what they want to be. This is the responsibility of Salvadoran society today, with regards to its eastern territory.

Walking with the dogs towards the wave with the first light over La Periquera beach.

The road

With its four stages, the wave teaches us that the only constant is change. On a hot April evening in 2025, a drone rose above the cliffs east of the Lempa River—the last hills of the Sierra de Jucuarán that meet the sea.

Dawn at La Periquera cliff.

It covered the advance of an official vehicle convoy transporting President Nayib Bukele, in the area to inaugurate the decades-long-promised coastal highway.

The official vehicle, a large Chevrolet SUV, allowed him to enjoy air conditioning until the last moment before stepping out, immaculate, dressed like a modern, urban, young man—donning aviator sunglasses—to inaugurate his Surf City II at sunset.

An official picture of the new road between El Cuco and El Bongo on its inauguration day. The image features the slope of La Ventana beach, leading up to the viewpoint, from where the view extends to the rest of the cliffs to the west.

Whether the venerable audience likes it or not, he is the one who brought the highway to El Salvador’s last paradise of pristine cliffs, which today is opening to progress. For better or for worse, this will be his vision’s legacy. In Surf City I, he built on what others had done after decades of disorderly development. This time, he saw the wave coming, chose it, and rode it.

“It’s the dream on which the entire industry is based,” says Nik Strong-Cvetich, CEO of Save The Waves Coalition, about a pristine paradise in which to surf. In November 2024, his organization named this area the thirteenth global surf reserve—a contemporary attempt at private action to conserve the public through a management plan. 

“Today, as we were flying in the helicopter looking at the beaches…we really have nothing to envy anywhere else in the world. It’s incredible. Seeing it from the air, you can appreciate everything at once. It’s incredible. The landscapes are beautiful,” said Bukele on the afternoon of the inauguration, personally surprised by the untouched beauty of his country’s east coast.

The inaccessible East

The road to the maritime jewel of the East preempts possibilities, for better or for worse.

The area’s inaccessibility constituted the guerrillas’ significant strength here. And the fact that the dry tropical forest has swallowed up the farmlands of those who emigrated to the United States during the civil war is what gives El Salvador its last unexploited mountainous coastal stretch.

This inaccessibility has allowed three kilometers of wild cliffs with intact watersheds to remain, just where the road ends today before El Bongo Beach and westward to the end of the slopes in the El Espino estuary. This is the heritage of those yet to be born.

The “Salvadoran Wilderness Society” seeks to preserve the last intact sea cliffs in El Salvador.

From the edge of the mountain to the waves, the entire watershed: no electricity, no deforestation, no trash. As it has always been. A paradise. In other countries, this would be a national park.

Rocky coastline on the sea cliffs of Jucuarán.

“The goal would be for 30% of the country’s coastline to be protected. I don’t think we even reach 10%. We don’t have any wild cliffs,” says Johanna Segovia, a Salvadoran marine ecologist. The plan is to continue with the road in the future, up to El Espino, and for the land to remain privately owned, as it is today, by a single owner. This is the next phase of Surf City II.

The “Salvadoran Wilderness Society” seeks to preserve the last intact sea cliffs in El Salvador.

“If there is a $106 million loan for Surf City II projects, why not buy the land, which would cost much less, and declare it a reserve?” asks Javier, coworker of biologist David Kramer, speaking in clear, plain old common sense. Together, they install camera traps to record monkeys and other wildlife in the Jucuará mountains—the cliffs’ upper basin. “What we can offer as a tourist attraction is the essence of what we have,” he says.

Volcanic rock from the sea cliffs of Jucuarán, seen up close.

“For the moment, this area is like a national park because while the lands are private, no one has developed them. But if we want to preserve them for the future they need protection before they build a highway straight through them,” says Kramer, a native of San Diego, California, who built himself a three-story house out of a simple structure of iron and conacaste wood. It is supplied with rainwater and offers a view of Nicaragua’s Cosigüina Volcano, framed by what is still dry forest in the Oriente.

However, its inaccessibility meant that the local people’s education levels remained low until today. Visiting the hospital in nearby Chirilagua in an emergency was difficult. The promise of prosperity was non-existent. Today, with a road financed by the Inter-American Development Bank, everything is changing. There is integration into the national system.

The highway brings modern life to a region that has been fairly isolated until now.

In the case of El Salvador, the Oriente is the most backward region. It is the land of the distant sibling, the birthplace of most migrants. Development has not yet arrived. That is why it is not only a natural paradise, but also the land of nostalgia for many who work in humble jobs on the other side of the Anglo-Hispanic border, with a Mesoamerican base, on our continent.

Taking photos for this series.

From that other side, one of the founders of the TPS (Temporal Protection Status) alliance, José Palma, asks himself: if El Salvador had to reintegrate TPS migrants, as it may soon occur in Honduras and Nicaragua, how prepared is the country? After nearly twenty-five years with temporary residence permits in the United States, the sword of Damocles has finally fallen on the emigrants, directed by President Donald J. Trump’s command. After decades settled in the north, these people are packing up their lives and returning to their country of origin, which remains the same.

José Palma, a Salvadoran born and raised in Usulután, is four years younger than Carmelo, the protagonist of the first article in this seven-part series on El Salvador. He was twelve when Carmelo, sixteen, was shot twice in his right leg during the takeover of Usulután.

“I came here to prosper. I didn’t have time to think about politics, only about survival. I made my life here. But with what’s happening in the United States, I wonder how things are there,” says this man with a strong community spirit. Before moving to his current Houston home, he lived in Boston for twenty-five years, where he learned about social organization.

The new momentum

As the lights dimmed at the inauguration and the sunglasses became unnecessary, Bukele, in his purest combative spirit, offered an overview of his project and plans for the East.

In his oratory, his critics are the reef pointbreak that make him rise. He seems to enjoy toppling them in foamy discussions—making them respond to his successes and the erroneous predictions they have made in the past, when the case and angle favor him.

“It would be useless to have the best beaches in the world if we didn’t have security. Because who is going to visit our beaches to be killed? Or to be mugged? Or to be extorted?” he asks. “If we hadn’t regained security, this country would still be unlivable. We are sure, and we all understand, that security is not everything. But without it, we can have nothing.” Unlivable is a common word in the region.

His achievements are myriad and unforeseen: from a public hospital for dogs in San Salvador—a sign of empathy in a country scarred by scuffle, which closed in 2025 due to negative social media comments that it was a service “for the rich”—to the rescue of public spaces and the execution of pending infrastructure projects with international loans.

A local dog, or “Mayan shepherd,” searches for food at low tide.

It’s a national awakening from neglect that he tirelessly repeats. He restored historic centers in San Vicente, San Miguel, and other towns. On the other hand, doubts about the state’s respect for human rights persist as ‘the state of exception’ has not evolved into a more institutional vehicle for reform. 

In 2025, before a coliseum full of teenagers, he announced a program of 15,000 scholarships. Earlier, he had given away laptops. “We are launching this scholarship program but at the same time announcing a scholarship program that benefits all young people in El Salvador, with the only requirement being to get good grades, complete the training process, and do community service,” he said.

“Beyond scholarships, renovations, and so on (which are not bad), the education system must provide the same opportunities to rural areas, where there is less access to secondary and higher education. There is an urgent need for territorialized education reform, covering curricula and teacher training,” says Salvadoran development economist Claudio Méndez.

“Currently, the education system has a logic of literacy for rural areas and ‘urban concentration’ for secondary and higher education. The labor market requires that workers have a high school diploma and/or pursue higher education. There is an urgent need to expand and diversify secondary education, with an emphasis on rural areas, around local potential and comparative advantages. And not just to train ‘office workers,’” he says.

In a recent conference in Honduras concerning the 10,7 trillion-dollar lawsuit filed against the Honduran State on behalf of the special development zone, Próspera, renowned development economist Jeffrey Sachs gave some advice that could be extended to its neighbors. “There is a fundamental need, without a doubt, for this country to achieve sustainable development. This is to improve education. The key to attracting the kind of investment they want is a higher level of education. This is the most important investment you can make.”

A tree washed up on the rocks in front of Punta Mango during a yesteryear storm.

“By the way, I think it might be useful for you, if I may say so, to compare Honduras with Costa Rica,” said Sachs, who knows this land between oceans well, where there is little dialogue between countries. In the 1990s, he directed INCAE in Costa Rica, where a ReVista columnist is currently dean. “The key is skilled labor.”

“Investing in skills and education comes first. Of course, sovereignty, peace, and security come second. Physical infrastructure comes third… The connection of your electrical grid, your digital network, your fiber optics, etc., throughout Central America is already a reality, but more can be done,” Sachs recommends to the small countries lagging in this region.

Of humans and crabs

Nothing symbolizes this government’s activation of loans for infrastructure development more than the construction of a $386 million airport for the East. It is located at the mouth of the Gulf of Fonseca, a few meters from the easternmost point facing the open ocean of El Salvador. It is the entrance to the gulf’s calm waters, a place rich in biodiversity. 

Punta Amapala, with the slope of Nicaragua’s Cosigüina volcano in the background, forming the entrance to the Gulf of Fonseca.

Between the runway and the waves lies Punta Amapala. As a model of development and conservation, it mayl set the new pace for El Salvador. It is home to the beaches of Jagüey, Piedras Negras, Macuelizo, Playas Blancas, and Las Mueludas, as well as El Embarcadero and El Tamarindo, inside the Gulf. That rocky point was declared a marine protected area at the beginning of 2025.   

These are not the best beaches for surfing, but they are great for appreciating the country’s significant biodiversity. There, in Punta Amapala, the story can invert itself. It can portent a change in the wind, like a change in the tide. 

Johanna Segovia studies the gorgonian gardens on the rocky seabed of El Salvador.

The East can stand at the forefront of sustainable progress, conserving nature and local authenticity —A better version of a society that matures and appreciates itself.

Parrotfish, caught by hand while sleeping by Toño Palacios, a crab fisherman from eastern El Salvador.

As in the world of infinite sunsets in The Little Prince, love is care. It’s about keeping balance while, keeping the dangers at bay, to allow what is precious to thrive. To save his world, Saint Exupéry’s Prince left our own, to take care of it again. His service is his government.

The cycle of life and death is not only inevitable, but a necessary condition of the human experience. Jack, a German pointer who was agile and vigorous in his youth, and reached the age of fourteen blind but beloved, days before leaving behind the the earthly ties of this world.

“El Salvador is much more coastal than we think. But the knowledge is held by the humble people who have lived in contact with it,” says Johanna Segovia, who collects the stories of fishermen, residents, and oyster farmers. Talking to them, she records the little-known marine wealth of El Salvador, such as whales.

“Over in Los Cóbanos, the boatmen tell us that now the whales flee from them. It’s not that they don’t come here, they do come to the Gulf of Fonseca! It’s just that they hadn’t been recorded before. If you talk to the fishermen of Punta Amapala, they are afraid of whales! They break their nets and sometimes drag them with their boats. They are terrified of them.”

Gillnets belonging to fishermen from El Embarcadero, Gulf of Fonseca, hanging from trees in the dry forest gallery.

Segovia tells this story, which is reminiscent of Jonah’s in the Bible. She understands that it is her generation’s scientific duty to record this intimate relationship between the coastal people and the sea.

In the El Tamarindo estuary’s entrance, beautiful beaches form when the tide changes from low to high. That’s when the fiddler crabs come out, for which commercial crab fishermen looking for mud and blue crabs—and the entire community—feel great sympathy. When you hear them talk about the crabs on the beaches, they smile.

“You can see in their eyes that their attitude changes. They say: those little creatures…who would think of going out to ‘dance’ in the ‘Solón’ (Great Sun), and there they are, with their violins and claws! It entertains and excites them. It makes them human. We definitely have an ocean culture. It’s them,” says Johanna, about the courtship ritual of this crustacean. It leaves a lesson for the spectators.

“When a predator sees the crab (usually birds) and lunges, they all seek shelter in the holes of their burrows on the beach. And the large male crab uses its claw to cover the burrow so that the bird cannot pull out the other crabs inside.” This Salvadoran crab is not a selfish one, but a protective one.

The sea as a teacher

Thus, the richness of Surf City and El Salvador lies in rediscovering its relationship with the sea, which is ultimately the best teacher. There are many ways to reevaluate it based on local human experience. Fishermen and oyster collectors have been, until now, the people of the sea. “They helped us identify a new species of barracuda in the territory. They know them,” says Segovia.

Toño the crabber, hands at work.

Toño the crabber, victorious with his prize, which he later released.

The seafood market in La Libertad, for example, which is unrivaled in the undeveloped East, is a showcase of the richness of El Salvador’s many marine ecosystems, including species of biological and commercial value. Here visitors can find eels, white-fleshed fish—such as babosa or curvina—or the country’s enormous wealth of mollusks.

Sea eels and a manta ray freshly arrived at the wharf or fish market in La Libertad.

Beyond the East, the coast turns south; the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean ends near Peru, where it runs into the Humboldt Current. There, a gastronomic revolution is taking place, partly due to the sea’s richness. And something similar has happened for centuries in the land of Gallo, the surfer.

Wild oysters from El Salvador’s East, grilled with olive oil and garlic.

In the Spanish Basque Country, a similar flounder fish to the one called ‘caite’ (sandal) in El Salvador, is called Rodaballo. It is highly prized. In addition to good waves, San Sebastián is the city with the most Michelin stars per capita in the world. Wealth is sometimes in the eye of the explorer. And El Salvador allows you to be one.

Parrotfish caught by Toño the crab-fisherman, grilled Orio-style (with an emulsion of olive oil, vinegar, garlic, dried chili, and the fish’s own juice).

The sea encourages you to live one day at a time.

A charcoal grill after surfing.

To rediscover yourself in the eternal exchange of energy between water, sky, and earth. “I always wanted a maritime life,” says Irene Reynolds, a restauranteur who sells what is perhaps the best hamburger in Central America, at Punta Mango Café, a new joint besides the new road. Irene moved here from California with her partner years ago.

Irene has set up Punta Mango Café, an open-air restaurant surrounded by plants and soft lighting.

Her partner surfs. They call him “the professional surfer,” even though he isn’t. They share golden years. She was born in Huntington Beach, the original Surf City. Her life is like Carmelo’s son, but in reverse. “I started this restaurant to give the girls who work with me a way of life,” she says.

Staff at Punta Mango Café.

The garden

At Punta Mango Café, Irene has found her right-hand woman in Flor Mejía. Flor has found in Irene a provider of stable work and a good companion. Flor was born in the makeshift refuge for people sympathetic to the insurgency in El Jobo, in the Sierra de Jucuarán. She was born a month before army planes bombed the site in 1985.

She came into the world during war. “I was born in El Jobo. And my misfortune began there. When my grandmother left, a bomb fell just days after. There you can see the hole where my grandmother’s little house used to be. As if by magic, without anyone planting them, native squash (pipián) grew where the bomb fell,” Flor recounts what she was told.

Since then, her childhood, youth, and early adulthood were bleak and blue. She left her coastal home at a very young age, heading to San Salvador to get away from her family, from blood ties broken by violence. On the streets of San Salvador, she experienced what any unprotected teenager might suffer. She took refuge in her first partner, with whom she had a child, while still being a minor.

Her son died. From San Salvador, she moved to San Miguel, where she raised three more children as a single mother for twenty years, until one day the Maras—gangs—claimed her eldest son for their ranks. Her instinct led her back to where only her grandmother had loved her. Where her first memories were forged. But in Agua Fría, her mother rejected her. She abandoned Flor and her children to their fate. 

The generosity of a neighbor allowed her to hang a canvas roof under mango trees. And little by little, Flor made her home. Her job at Punta Mango Café helped her pay the bills. She accumulated her belongings until a friend gave her the right to a plot of land, where she now has a small house next to her most precious earthly possession: a garden.

“I took a piece of land. A boy I grew up with, who lives in La Unión, told me, take it. That was super cool. That’s how I managed to build my house. I have two rows of cinder blocks and sheet metal. But the goal is not to stay there. Part of my garden is sacred. The chickens have the other half of the land. That’s theirs. I think it’s the only house that has a big garden,” says a forty-year-old Flor. She, who was a baby during the war, now finds peace in the place where she was born. 

“I love going camping. I love going to El Jobo to walk. It gives me peace, tranquility. I go to the pool where my grandmother used to fetch water, according to her stories. And it’s like I go to her world, to the moment she lived. I walk and think about her. I allow myself the luxury, I say, of bathing there. Of getting water to drink. My grandmother asks me for water from there. I bring her a gallon,” she says.

“They know very well that I walk around with a smile. I leave like that. I come back like that. I tell Irene and I tell them, I want it this way. If someone comes who wants to fight, they’re out. We want someone who wants peace and quiet.” This is what life is like in Flor’s garden, near the sea.

Flor Mejía tells her life’s story.

The sea as a cure

The sea, as we know today, promotes high levels of homeostasis in those who live near it. It is a natural catalyst. Surfing offers direct and intense contact with the water. It is as if El Salvador found the sport, and the perfect teacher, to heal and redefine its self-concept.

“Surfing is used as therapy for war veterans, women recovering from trauma, and marginalized youth who don’t receive enough services. The physical and mental benefits, the community that is created around this shared experience, and the connection that is generated with the surf spots is incredibly positive,” says Jess Pointing, who teaches a sixteen-week class on the subject at the University of San Diego, California.

But it’s not just people who enjoy the waves. In El Salvador, pelicans often fly alongside them as they break. “Pelicans are the souls of surfers when they die,” says Ulises Rosales, a first-generation Salvadoran surfer and owner of Pelícano Surf Camp II, next to Carmelo’s ranch on La Periquera cliff beach.

Unpublished watercolor by Antoine Saint Exupéry, in the original manuscripts of The Little Prince, property of The Morgan Library Museum.

Perhaps leading the formation of pelicans flying alongside the breaking waves, the soul of aviator Antoine Saint Exupery flies free of earthly ties, seeing the landscape he immortalized in his treatise on life, The Little Prince. Only new challenges await. THE END.

Sunset over El Salvador seen from the island of Amapala, Honduras. Photo: Tatiana Llorente de María.