n Nicaragua, Chasing The Unsurfed Wave - May 15th 2005

SURFERS are different from other travelers. Rattling down a dusty washboard road that connects the Nicaraguan towns of Rivas and Las Salinas in a rented microbus crowded with surfboards and duffel bags, dodging herds of goats and ox-drawn buggies loaded with bananas, the three of us weren't looking for cultural enrichment, boutique hotels or fine cuisine - we just wanted to get stoked.

We were in Nicaragua in early April, catching the tail end of the dry season, and the landscape was bleak, a brown savanna of dried grass and leafless trees. The wind was howling and we could smell brush fires burning in the hills. I was with my brother, Rich, and my friend John Kim, a Los Angeles County lifeguard and science teacher. Standing just 5 foot 4, John commanded attention when he leaped from the microbus to get directions - a shirtless Korean with Hawaiian board shorts dangling below his knees, handing out money and barking Spanish commands laced with Mexican slang. Small children rushed from a shanty to gawk at the exotic creature, shouting, "Jackie Chan! Jackie Chan!" John broke the ice by introducing himself as "el Chino loco" and within five minutes remounted the microbus with good instructions and cold beers all around.

"That's how I roll," he told us, popping the cap off a bottle and taking a long draw.

With the beaches of California and Hawaii overcrowded, surfers are constantly seeking new frontiers. Mexico has long since been discovered, and last decade's secret spots in Costa Rica now gather Malibu-size crowds. So surfers are spilling across the Central American isthmus, a place where death squads, narcotrafficos and years of various civil wars had, not too long ago, made it inaccessible to all but the most daring of travelers.

John had spent two weeks in Nicaragua the year before, and reported having had perfect waves pretty much to himself. So we bumped along toward the coast, chasing the unsurfed wave, about to discover that like all frontiers, this one is receding as quickly as you can reach it. A lot has changed in a year, and while stunning waves still roll onto the coast, the days of having the place to yourself are past. The great spots still exist, but finding them would take a bit of patience and a lot of looking.

Our first destination was Hotel Punta Teonoste, a few miles from Las Salinas, where the previous year John and a friend had shared a beachfront cabana for $60 a day and the only employee was a guard who walked circles around the place all night. This year the hotel had added mandatory meals and doubled the price. When we pulled up to the gate, a man with a shotgun emerged from the shade of a shack, looking as if he'd been dozing. He swung open the gate and welcomed us in Spanish.

"You can drive to the cabanas to unload your suitcases," he said, "but you must return the car here to park."

"I was here last year and I parked at the cabana," John said.

"Now this is the parking place." He shook his finger. "Here."

We drove over the brown grass to a pair of thatched-roof cabanas joined by a tile patio with bamboo chairs and a hammock swinging in the wind. Four eager staff members in matching khaki pants and white golf shirts approached us. A stout, friendly woman with a shimmering gold front tooth introduced herself as Luz, the manager. With the hotel insignia embroidered on her shirt and visor, she reminded me in a comforting way of a kindly matron of a women's jail.

The cabanas were exquisite, enclosed by a playpen of white sand and set back a hundred yards from a long beach with rough waves crashing down. The floors were of rustic brick, and the roof rafters were whole logs bound with cord. The bathroom was an ecological paradise, an outdoor nursery of leafy fauna shaded by palm fronds, where a totem pole held up the roof, and by spinning a carved wooden turtle you could trigger a warmish cascade and have your shower right there on the patio.

Despite the trappings, Hotel Punta Teonoste still maintains some rustic flavor. There is no telephone or hot water, and my brother captured a large frog in his bathroom. And - as we later found out - when you awake at dawn to find an armed man walking your hut's perimeter, it's comforting to know he's on your side.

Looking around, I realized that we were the only guests at this hotel, and were outnumbered by staff at a ratio of 5 to 3. I pulled aside one of the helpers and learned that we were indeed the very first clients since the hotel had refashioned itself as a full-service eco-resort. As we pulled our bags from the microbus, Luz repeated the imperative that we move the vehicle back to the guardhouse.

We changed quickly into surf trunks and headed out the gate to the surf spot. As we rolled past the security guard, John leaned out the window with a big smile.

"Señor," he said. "I just spoke with the manager, and she told us we could park our car by the cabana."

The man smiled and adjusted the sling on his shotgun. "Very good, señor," he said, unlatching the gate and waving us through.

Nicaragua's best-known wave is a reef break at Popoyo, a rocky beach at the end of a dirt road where, in the past three years, a shantytown of $5-a-night hotels has sprung up. John noted that the largest of these, La Tica, had doubled its capacity by adding a second building since he was last there.

We carried our boards around a tidal estuary, then waded across a creek to the beach, where the waves were breaking. Two young, shirtless Swedes were getting out of the water, and we asked how it was.

"A bit crowded," one them grumbled.

We paddled out in the howling wind. Unlike most surf spots in the world, the wind in southern Nicaragua almost always blows offshore, so even in the blustery season, the waves retain good shape. As I paddled over the cresting waves, the windblown spray exploded overhead in a fleeting rainbow that instantly dissolved and rained down on my head. As promised, the waves were good. But as we made a quick head count of the dozen surfers bunched together in the lineup, we realized with a bit of heartache that this "secret" spot was no longer secret.

We surfed Popoyo for the next few days, and sometimes found more than 20 surfers in the water. By California standards that's not a big crowd, but it was disheartening to cross the hemisphere, bounce down 30 miles of dirt road and then find a pack - most of them Americans - jockeying for position at a single break.

I had a feeling that I'd arrived at the height of the gold rush, and indeed, the culture incubating there at the end of the road to Popoyo felt like a Wild West frontier camp - but instead of gold nuggets or beaver pelts, the rapidly diminishing precious resource was empty waves. Like any good frontier town, Popoyo has its share of rootless drifters, guys carrying guns in broad daylight, and real estate swindles-a dozen or so houses are being built along the road, some under watch of armed guards as the ownership of the land is disputed in court. But most pervasive is the sensation that the place is changing at a head-spinning pace. Just about every conversation you have around Popoyo seems to begin with, "You should have seen this place the first time I came here ..."

Drinking beer on the concrete patio of an unfinished four-story hotel with a dangerous tilt, we met Travis, a Canadian with a handlebar moustache, a tattooed dragon spread across one shoulder and a Balinese dancer inked on his back. He had come to Popoyo 10 weeks earlier to help friends build a house and had stayed on as caretaker of the two-story husk, which still lacked running water and a floor for the balcony. Already, he told me, the place had changed: "The price of lobster has doubled since I've been here."

Perhaps the most influential person in the development of Popoyo is J. J. Yemma, a 28-year-old entrepreneur from Florida with the copper-streaked hair and languid movements of a longtime surfer. J. J. arrived here in 1996 and operates Popoyo Surf Lodge, one of several all-inclusive surf camps that have sprung up in Nicaragua in recent years. Over the winter he added a couple of bungalows and a swimming pool to his compound, and dozens of irrigated saplings are taking root in the brown earth.

As we piled into his Land Cruiser for a quick real estate tour, J. J. told us that before coming to Nicaragua he'd been living in Costa Rica, which visitors must leave every three months to renew their visas. On one such visa excursion he came across these perfect waves with out a single lodging or restaurant nearby, and decided to make it home.

Now he's married, has one child and another on the way, is host to hundreds of surfers every year and is buying up and parceling off land. He also recently founded a church, and sometimes has missionaries staying with him at the surf camp. "A few years back I had a radical experience with Jesus," he told us, smiling serenely behind wraparound sunglasses. "And that changes everything."

We bumped up a freshly cut road engineered through the brown countryside where fence posts and survey stakes poked up from the weeds, then climbed up a knoll whose top had been flattened by excavators. "After this one goes," he said, "there's only one more hilltop with an ocean view."

After two nights at Punta Teonoste, we moved over to La Tica. If Teonoste's bamboo ottomans and aquatic-theme plumbing fixtures are an idealization of third-world amenities, then La Tica has the real thing, down to the bare light bulbs dangling from exposed wires, corrugated tin roof and dirt-floor cantina opening onto a brackish ditch and mosquito hatchery. At night the bar was packed with bare-chested surfers from Europe, Australia and North America, Bob Marley wailed from the jukebox, and the serve-yourself beer fridge was rapidly depleted. A pair of teenage Nicaraguan girls served up platters of pinto gallo and fried meat for $5 a serving.

There were 15 men and 8 women, everyone in flip-flops, passing joints and hunched over travel books in the plastic lawn furniture. Nearly all had arrived by taxi, and once dropped off, miles from the nearest phone or store, there was nothing to do but surf, eat, sleep and wait to surf some more.

In the morning the waves were mediocre and the water crowded, and the vibe around La Tica became surly. So we headed north to the fishing village of Astillero, where we hired two fishermen to deliver us to a remote beach. Even there, though, we ran into another group of Americans from a surf camp. We had the captain take us to another spot, and we got an hour alone on a big, unpredictable reef break.

The next morning we went searching for an empty beach but were turned back by an armed guard and then by a dirt hill too steep for the microbus, and we settled instead for watching a cockfight in a small village we'd stumbled across.

On our final day, we returned to Popoyo. Some of the residents of La Tica had moved on toward El Salvador, and as we were waxing our boards we saw a dozen surfers get out of the water. We paddled out to find only three others in the lineup. For the first time since we'd been in Nicaragua, there was no wind. The waves bulged out of the ocean like blown glass, so clean and symmetrical that you stopped in midpaddle, not wanting to ride or disturb them, but just watch them collapse effortlessly into foam as the droplets of spray rose off their backs like bubbles in champagne.

John and Rich and I traded waves for an hour with the other three, dropping down the glassy faces and carving toward shore. It was the session you dream of when you set out for waves, where everything converges just right, and then, like a perfect wave or a mirage, dissipates the moment you catch it.

Before long, the guys over at La Tica saw what we were getting, and their surfboards glinted in the sun as they crossed the beach to join us. But that was all right because we had to get on the road and make it to the airport anyway. I took a wave to shore and headed home. I was happy to know that the wave is out there, somewhere, that the elusive and receding green light still shimmers across the water, and that though you can never possess it completely, if you're willing to chase it you might one day get close enough to touch it for a while.

If You Go

American Airlines connects from New York to Managua through Miami ($696 as of early May, for trips in late May) and Continental connects through Houston ($697), but cheaper flights routed through Central America can be found on Lacsa ($488). Las Salinas is about three hours from Managua; it's best to rent a car at the airport.

Hotel Punta Teonoste, (505) 267-3008, www.hotellosrobles.com/en/playa, is just north of Las Salinas. A cabana costs $130 a night for two people (rates on the Web site are for the Hotel Los Robles), with all meals included. Seven-night surf packages, including airport transfers and all meals, are available from Popoyo Surf Camp, www.surfnicaragua.com, from $960 to $1,770 a person.

 

Source: The New York Times    

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