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Friday, July 6, 2012

7.4.12 Reunited after Sixteen Years: Surfing the El Zonte Left w/ Marcos G.

I hadn't seen Marcos since 1996, when tenth grade let out at Escuela Americana.

The last time I was here in 2009, we tried to make arrangements to surf but his schedule wasn't allowing it.

After a little back-and-forth, we finally settled on today.

I broke the news to the crew that I wasn't going to be driving us to Punta Roca, so they paddled out at Sunzal.

Marcos arrived a little bit late, easy to do with the mostly two-lane road coming down from San Salvador.

After a brief check at La Bocana, he asked me if I wanted to surf the left at El Zonte.  I said I did, I'd always wanted to surf that wave.

About twenty minutes later, we were parking at Olas Permanentes, a hotel/bar compound on the beach on the west side of El Zonte.

We paddled out without incident.  I'd never surfed with Marcos, or anyone from my class at Escuela Americana before, so this would be really interesting.

We were out there by ourselves, but that didn't prevent me from taking my sweet time to catch my first wave.

It was a left, but it wasn't very steep.  I kicked out almost immediately.

My second wave, also a left, was a bit nicer.  I pumped twice, then did a snap right on the outside edge of the pocket.  I couldn't hang on. Too bad, considering the wave seemed to kick up down the line.

I caught a right towards the rocks and did a proper snap on it.  I got some speed and laid into a roundhouse cutty.  I recovered nicely then kicked out.

Less than two minutes later, the wave of the session came through.  It was one of those waves where a section of it is slightly in front of the other.  It was as though there was a narrow smaller wave in front of it.  I went up to hit it, but decided to cut down rather than get delayed by vertical(ish) trajectory any further.  I saw the section, slightly in front, rise up.  I was already about a quarter of the way up the section when I realized that would've been an amazing tube section...  No matta, I really leaned into the top of it and gouged some water out the back for a sweet pocket carve.  I was pretty far ahead of the curl thanks to the speed I'd garnered from the cheat section, so I laid into a cutty.  I quickly realized I was headed towards some shallow rocks thanks to the telltale boils and bailed out the back of the wave.

About fifteen minutes of catching up with Marcos later, I caught a right and did a pretty good snap on it.  I slid the tail out a bit toward the beach, but I couldn't hang on.

We went in and had breakfast at Olas Permanentes.  Marcos told me about his family's lot adjacent to Punta Mango in San Miguel.  We discussed ideas for maximizing revenue for it, while minimizing initial expenses.  It will be interesting to see what he does with it when the time comes.

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