Dawn Partol

I am not much of a morning person, especialy since I have been working shift work for the last three years.

However my new board demanded that I go out on dawn partol at least once before I head out of El Salvador. I joined the regular dawn patrol group, which on this day only included one other guy.

At 430 I jumped on my Sector 9 long board and headed off the meet Jake who I had meet durring the surf suffari. About 15 minutes later we had his car loaded up and headed off to the beach.

By 520 we were down at Kayu and ready to hit the water. It was a pretty big day, overhead, and really low tide. I got my ass kicked again. Every time I was almost out to the lineup, I would get smashed by the outside sets that would break all the way across the beach. My big 7-0 turned out to be a little to big to duck dive under all the white wash.

After getting pounded for an hour and not catching anything, I swapped boards with Jake. Now on his longboard I caught a little inside set and rode it into the shore. Unfortunatly I got caught up in the cross shore current and was carried a ways don the beach and had to walk the rocks much further than I would have planed.

On the way back we grabbed some breakfast and a frozen coco for our ride back.

Not a great day a surfing for me, but it was still nice to start the day out on the water.

Adventures in luxury at Decameron, El Salvador

I spent the weekend in El Salvador's only all inclusive resort, Decameron. Finally a chance to do nothing but relax. The resort has three giant pool, a small pool and a salt water pool that gets washed over every time the tide rolls in. The beach there is protected by a rock wall that stops most of the waves.

One of the giant pools

Salt water pool being refreshed at high tide

The whole week was spent relaxing in the pools and laying on the beach. They had nice Hobie kayaks that we paddled around their protected beach area.

Attack of the alligators

Sunset down the beach

Monkeys, Alligators and spinning sharks at Barillas, El Salvador

A great day at work, started with a two hour car ride crammed into a Suburban that wasn’t made to fit 8 six foot tall adults. Luckily this and the similar ride home were the worst part of the day. We arrived at Marina Club Barillas around 10am. After a quick lunch, and a few breakfast beers, it was time for the monkey tour.

You can see the arm of a baby on the mothers back

We hopped into a van and drove over to the little forest where the Monkeys were. There were about 20 Salvadorian red tailed spider monkeys. One that was rejected by the group was in a cage to protect him. Before the others arrived we were able to shake his hand. The local care taker called for the rest of the monkeys, and slowly they started to appear all around us. The first few were pretty slow, but once the bananas came out there was a swarm. Once we ran out of bananas we went back to the Marina Club.

They look funny on two legs

Back at the club, we boarded a boat and some jet skis. We took off through the mangroves out to a sand bar in the mouth of the bay. Along the way we spotted an alligator in the mangroves, a good reason to not fall off the Jet Ski.

Salvadorian Alligator

Trying to soak each-other

Once we got to the sand bar the wind was pretty strong. I was disappointed, that I hadn’t brought my Kite board. We messed around in the shallows, dodging jelly fish, before working our way out to the surf breaks. As soon as we entered the water, I saw spinning shark (or dolphin, there is still some debate) between us and the waves. Any six foot fish that can launch itself 10 feet out of the water, is a good reason not to body surf. Before heading back to the club, we had a Jet Ski relay race. My team won.

Sand Bar acrobatics

Los Cobanos, El Salvador

Just before my schedule got too crazy, I managed to spend the weekend out at Los Cobanos Village lodge, the only white sand beach in the El Salvador. As soon as we checked into our hotel, we decided to take out the complimentary kayaks. The kayaks were not great, but they did allow us to get out in the bath warm water and play in the surf. The tide was just starting to come back in. This made the perfect waves for riding in the kayaks. It reminded me of the many times I went kayak surfing back in Hawaii.

Picture of the fishing village

Carrying the days lunch

By the time we were done, the sun was going down, so we enjoyed some beer and good food at the hotel in-between games of UNO.

Hardcore Uno Match

In the morning, two of us decided to take a little hike. We started by scrambling over some rocks in order to get to the next beach. This beach was much nicer than the little beach near the hotel. Crossing the next set of rocks we got to an even nicer beach, it was smaller but completely empty. On the way back to the hotel, we found the first rock scramble to be completely unneeded, as the road was right there.

Rocks we had to scramble over

Private beach just over the rocks