La Tortuga Verde - Part One

29th Aug - 3rd Sept

'Worth a trip' is how the lonery planet described this place... I would say 'Worth selling off your kids and emigrating to'... I had six nights here but could have stayed forever!

On my first night, drenched and physically destroyed I took a beer at the bar and got roped into a four hour game of gin rumy with a pair of Americans, Nicole and Jenna, otherwise know as Grammy for makng us play such an old persons game and a strange but excellent dude from Paris called Erik (more about him later)... the girls were drunk and highly competative and Erik, like any good French man was trying his best to bed one or both of them... I think I ruined his fun but we all had an entertaining night and I went to bed still starving but merrily drunk and at peace with my mental journey.

The next day I ordered the biggest breakfast possible and sat at the bar overlooking the ocean and cleared my plate in seconds. As I handed my plate to the local waitress a guy called 'Anthony' walked by and said hello and took a seat over the way... I needed a light and noticing that Anthony was smoking asked if he minded me taking a seat next to him and we got chatting. For the next 3hrs we talked and he turned out to be one of the most interesting people I had met on my trip. 'Anthony' was stuck at La Tortuga Verde waiting for a replacement bank card which had already taken over two weeks and was currently being held by customs who were trying to charge him $160 import tax for some hair products that accompanied the package. He was a understandably a little strung out with the ordeal but this was just an introductory story...

Anthony was in his late forties (ish!), previously a master tailor, a stylish, black, dreadlocked man born 'on' the United States of America. He is currently working as a life coach as he travels using the medium of Skype and told me he has a special ability to see people's energies and spiritual disposition from just a brief meeting. We talked about his travels which led him to disclose very heavy personal details about his past and disturbing run ins with the US government which led to his exile under threat of death... I won't go into detail as I know he wouldn't appreciate it but it was full on. 'Anthony' was travelling without passport due to having no official country of residence and had managed to get from Canada to El Salvador with just a birth certificate and some unorthodox border crossing methods... the best involved a commando esque river crossing from Belize to Guatemala using blankets and a getaway driver on the other side of the river! Anyways something clicked and we swapped stories and took the piss out of each other for the entire morning until his repeated jokes about coming for the skinny little white boy in the night and stringing me up on the beach got a little concerning!

Soo... that afternoon I repaired my battered board, dropping the bike had put a 6" crack in the glass and taken a big chunk out the foam... the job I did was not pretty, putty is never pretty but by 4pm she was water tight and ready for a beautiful sunset surf straight out in front of the hostel... the backdrop to the beach looks incredible from the water, with jungle covered mountains dissapearing into the distant sunset and despite the waves being closey and small I had a fantastic end to the day!

During the next day I was introduced to another 'long termer' at the hostel. Rory was a tall, like 6'5" tall, dreadlocked Irish fella from Cork who had flown his BMW 1200GS from Ireland to Canada and ridden all the way down to Ushuia, the southern most point of Argentina and back up as far as La Tortuga Verde (TV) where he just stopped and had been renting an apartment from the owner of the hostel for the past year!

We chatted bikes for a few hours and he showed off his two custom built trailers on which he carried his 9ft longboards to beaches as far as three hours away (see photo)... his latest project was a heavy duty two wheeled, box steel beast which was destined for a trip down to Costa Rica as part of the required three monthly border jump to renew his visa.

That morning I had ridden the 5min blast to Las Flores, a sweet right hand point that breaks off a rock point and can deliver 200m + reeling walls of fun. Unfortunately that morning a big crowd of middle aged yanks were sat on the point  and with a small, inconsistant 2ft break it was hard to stay patient. I caught a couple on the inside which were fun but I had begun to think about heading North. I mentioned my dissolution to Rory who suggested that we take the bikes and check another spot, Punta Mango, 30mins further up the coast in the morning.

At 9:30am we rolled out of TV and slowly made our way out toward Punta Mango,  Rory's rig was a little squiffy on the dirt roads, the bmx wheel was leaning over to the left and skipping all over the road and whilst this kept his speed down it did the job. The coast out past Flores is stunning, vast cliff lined beaches with endless empty waves butt up against palm covered jungle for as far as the eye can see, the ride was awesome! After half an hour we pulled off the road and down a little dirt track to a cliff which had an unexpected building site at the end. After some friendly chat with the foreman and an inspection of the plans for the new hotel we decided the surf looked good and with friendly permission parked the bikes and started skidding down the cliff to the beach below. We paddled out to join a crew of ten or so guys, half of which were Brazilian on what was a lumpy, onshore shallow and fast right hand point break over boulder reef.

Self taught Rory who had only been surfing for a year lucked into a great first wave that came in wide and nailed the unsuspecting pack! He surfs damn good for such a newby. Conditions were tricky but I picked off a few quick, late drops some of which peeled and plenty that were just too quick. Mango has Cohones, when you get it wrong you know about it, the drillings are heavy with long sandy hold downs requiring a push off the rocky bottom to help you re-surface.

The Brazilian crew had been dropped at the break by boat, one of the guys was flagging and signalled for the driver to come pick him up... all too casually the boat made its way to the edge of the line up about 10m in front of where I was sat, the next thing I know there is some shouting and I look up to see the driver lifting the motor out the water with a leash wrapped around the prop! With no power and drifting further in toward the break the driver and another surfer frantically worked to unwrap the leash... it took only about 30s and they dropped the motor back into the water just as a set appeared on the horizon, 'that was close I thought' as I paddled out the way... Some what comically I watched as the driver yanked the pull cord once, twice, three times with no joy, seriously you just couldn't have written it... As the first wave of the set reared up it just clipped the nose of the boat spinning it round so that it was now side on for the next wave, the second wave picked the boat up and for a brief second they rode the crest before the wave broke and pitched the boat end over end throwing the driver, the Brazilian, all the bags and camera equipment etc... into the water.

Driver and surfer popped up next to the capsized boat shouting and screaming,   this boat was not small by the way, it held 8 -10 guys, (see the pic of the boat with Tortuga Verde on it) this was not funny... the next wave slammed into the upturned boat and pushed it in closer to the rocks, the guys board flailing and hitting against the side of the boat as he scrambled to hold on and keep his head above the water. The rest of the Brazilian pack paddled over and spent the next ten minutes in a frenzied cluster f**k trying to swim the boat away from the rocks and over to the beach, their boards smashing against each other and the boat whilst they all got repeatedly slammed by the relentless waves... it was full on...

I am slightly ashamed to say that Rory and I did nothing but stare in amazement and shout for another boat to come and help. To be fair there were about eight guys all getting worked and we would have only added to the carnage... and also what the douce were they thinking, the driver was an idiot for going into the break and the surfer a complete tool. Everyone knows you don't go near the back of a boat with an outboard especially leaving a leash dangling behind... bunch of muppets!

Anyway it was all highly dramatic and incredibly they managed to avoid getting washed onto the rocks and dragged the boat out onto the beach, motor shagged and a lot of expensive equipment ruined. On the plus side the line up was suddenly down to five guys and boy did that change my session! I killed it, I found my spot and had the pick of the waves, taking them right from the peak and racing down the line, hitting section after section... what a wave! Mango is a proper fast, challenging wave and a real good test of your ability... I would love to see it with an offshore wind and a bit more size... thing is there will always be boat loads of people there save for the days when things go wrong and I wouldn't want that to happen to often, someone would end up dead.

Too much writing... time for some photos!

TBC...