El Salvador, May 2008, Señor Tortuga

Sometimes the best made plans go awry. Like this travel blog. Due to a number of external (and internal) forces, I have not been keeping up on this. Plenty of good old-fashioned pen-and-paper writing has occurred – it just needs to be translated into flying-photon format. Next week (when I´m back in the cold, coastal, far northern California climate), I´m going to start this travel article from the beginning. It will make sense when I get there. Until then, I´ll post a couple of pieces.

5:30 am. No alarm – tried to sleep in – awake anyways. Today is a day off from surfing. After five consecutive days of overhead-or-better surf, I need a break (and a chance for my shoulder injury to heal a bit).

I´m awake – and there´s something natural about checking the surf – so I walk.

The surf doesn´t look much smaller than yesterday – but it is a lot less consistent. Like yesterday – there is a huge pack in the water already.

La Bocana looks great. This may be the option for the remaining days of smaller swell (beside the fact that there are a lot less people surfing there).

There´s a small gathering of people crowded around something on the beach. It´s una tortuga – a sea turtle (Olive Ridley?). Señor tortuga esta muy infermo. Swollen neck, lots of red on the underside neck-skin, and general lethargy. Señor tortuga was trying to crawl up the beach to escape the shorepound and projectile cobble-stones.

Everyone has a different opinion on Señor Tortuga´s malady. The old pescador points out the red, swollen neck – and tells people that Señor Tortuga came up on the beach to die (since sea turtles lay eggs in the middle of the night).

Maybe he ate one too many urban jellyfish a few days ago?

Some of the group are insistent that we do something to try to save the turtle. The pescador tries to explain how sick and weak this turtle is – and the crowd eventually disperses.

Señor Tortuga is given peace (well deserved, because if this really is an Olive Ridley – it is huge – and old).

When I´m walking by again to get breakfast (and coffee), some people are walking Señor Tortuga through the waist-deep water – out to sea. Every time they let go of him – he slowly turns around and tries to make his way towards shore (very lethargically).

“It´s confused!”, they say. “Let´s help it get out to sea!”

And they kept turning Señor Tortuga away from the direction he wanted to go – and walking him farther out.

When I took my seat on the patio – I saw Señor Tortuga bouncing around the shorebreak, cobblestones bouncing off of him.

I saw a couple others – local surfers – swam him 40-50 meters off the beach.

Señor Tortuga, realizing that there would be no peace on this beach – disappeared.