Towards the black sand beaches of El Zonte

Left Suchitoto en route to the black-sand beach town of El Zonte, El Salvador at midmorning. It’s a mixed blessing most times when traveling, one has to learn to take the good as well as the more unsettling elements. The unfamiliar and rough environments hones one’s alertness, such that, despite the surface calm one must project, one should always have full awareness of one’s surroundings. On today’s particular bus ride, the good and the unsettling showed. Half way through the ride, a local sat down next to me – tall and tanned russet by the years in the sun, he projected quiet confidence. Speaking fluent English, we engaged in an interesting conversation ranging from economics, social order, politics, environmentalism, philosophy, to travels. He brimmed proud of his culture, but is one of the lucky few El Salvadorians to have had a chance to travel a bit of the world. He confessed that he lives part-time in California and that he farms marijuana to finance his livelihood. At the same time on the bust, seated a couple seats in front, a young kid was sniffing glue and smoking out of a make-shift crack pipe (to which the bus attendant eventually alerted a police officer at one of the stops to remove him from the bus). The interesting part was listening to the marijuana farmer castigate the kid for sniffing glue and smoking crack; it seems that that which is considered approbate or condemnable is subject to matters of gradation. I do empathize with the kid who probably started sniffing glue just to stave off hunger pangs; but, unfortunately, it’s far too easy to lose one’s way.

El Zonte is not so much even a town but merely a group of huts and cabanas erected on a stretch of beach between two cliffs. Nothing much happens here except the steady trickle of surfers coming from the world over to ride the waves; although, some party-goers venture to the adjacent town. Like all towns in these parts, roads are non-existent save for a few dirt paths. Everything shuts down by eight in the evening. The nights are balmy and lonesome with the waves lapping the shoreline accompanied by a steady drone of crickets chirping, punctuated by the occasional baying of hounds in the distance. Tonight, the half moon hangs attending my thoughts, peering intermittently from the clouds as palm fronds sway soughing in the sea breezes, lulling me to easy sleep.