The Buddy System
The two American boys did not think a whole bunch about beautiful Nicaraguan girls. Neither did they yet know that the best way to get to the heart of a Nicaraguan beauty was to memorize a line or two from the Nicaraguan poet laureate Ruben Dario. They did not care about Nicaraguan politics or ruthless rise of the Sandanista General Danial Ortega. Maybe they did notice that machine gun armed guards sat at the gated entrance of more than one of the many gated homes they passed on their way from Spanish lessons to the surf.
Perhaps they also noticed that the streets were clean and that there were many fat chickens running free for San Juan Del Sur is a prosperous, clean, Catholic, town.
All the two boys could think about was getting through their Spanish lessons in the morning so they could surf all afternoon.
They were so excited to surf that they would stare at their teachers moving lips and hear nothing. They would skip lunch and jog with their surf boards from the rental shop down the cobblestone street to the long protected inlet of San Juan Del Sur.
They both were mature and tall for sixteen: one blond haired, blue eyed, burly and strong; the other brown haired, brown eyed, wiry and lithe. Scott was dark and Jake was light. They had grown up together in the Florida Keys. This was the summer going into their senior year at Coral Reef high. Scott’s mother was Nicaraguan and she had arranged to spend the summer renting an open air apartment on the main street in San Juan Del Sur in the hopes Scott would learn Spanish.
The boys were too young and curious to be held back or forced to focus for too long.
They did notice the fleet of fishing boats anchored on buoys across the mouth of the inlet. They also noted the fuel dock, fish mongers, and fish cleaning station on the South West lip of the harbor. These parts reminded them of home.
They also both felt the power of the tall stone Cross that stood guard over San Juan Del Sur and all its inhabitants from atop the highest barren hilltop on the North West lip of the inlet.
All they truly knew was the wind at their backs as they ran into the surf. In the back of their minds they knew they had to take care of each other by practicing the buddy system but neither could imagine how such a system could work with all that “radical” water.
For a long time they stood holding their boards, learning to read where the surf break waves began. The waves would lift them up and set them down, then turn them backwards. And they would pivot back and surge forth, always studying the water. It took them a while before they learned that they could better read the waves from the swell side of the break.
Sometimes the surf would turn them away, so that, in the distance, they could see the jungle side of the hills, partly denuded by the constant wind that put the good break into the constant Pacific swell.
The sun shone down through the surf, filtering through fine black volcanic sand that each new wave pulled off the bottom.
And then they were above the sand, surfing wave after wave, day after day, each wave awakening a new set of muscles, firing new paths through their young minds until there was no wave they could not ride.
In the classroom in the mornings they had begun to be able to hear their Spanish tutor’s words above the call of the surf. Their bodies grew strong from balancing and swimming into the surf and their minds grew strong from struggling with new language.
They caught rides on buses to many of the far away surf coves like Playa Maderas and Playa Hermosa. They met other surfers from Europe, and Australia. They met wide eyed tourists who had made pilgrimages to watch Olive and Kemp Ridley sea turtles lay their eggs.
One day at Playa Hermosa young manta rays appeared beneath their boards and traveled with them as if under the large wing of a mother manta into the shallows where they flopped around, darting back into deeper water.
Summer is the rainy season in Nicaragua. Mostly it rained in the morning but sometimes the rain storms woke them in the middle of the night.
The wind blew constantly off the land out of the east, firing their beloved surf.
Each evening at sunset they would stand in the surf, hoping to catch one last wave.
The sun drops fast into the Pacific and when it does the swells crest black against the silver sea.
The sky in the west turns brilliant red, then mauve, then purple with clear white sunlight piercing through keyholes in the clouds. The tall stone Cross at the mouth of the inlet turns black, backed by sky the color of Christ’s blood from top to bottom, reaching up into the heavens, glowing around the hills.
Their attempt to push off for one last run fails because they cannot see into the sea. The black waves repel them. They turn and their legs work hard through surf and sand that seems to try to pull them back, heavy footed now across the dry sand beach, up the cobblestone street to simple food, a good, hard mattress and sleep…another fine day, gone…but not wasted.
One day they chartered a small double ended fishing Panga owned by their Spanish tutor’s cousin to motor them to a secluded surf cove. The rough fiberglass shell had no flotation and ran by an ancient 25 hp carbureted Evenrude. The captain was an old scruff faced fisherman who would charter his boat to whoever paid him.
“Yo soy tu Capitan” he told them, grinning. He only had one crooked tooth left in the middle of his upper gum.
“Yes you are our captain, Jake agreed smiling
Their Captain hit the old Evenrude with a wooden fish mallet when it began to sputter. On the way to the far-away cove, the Captain trolled hand made lures from hand carved yo-yo’s. He lost a king fish at the boat but did not curse because the fish did not bite off his lure.
When they arrived at the surf cove it began to rain hard, pelting the ocean flat calm except for the waves at the break. They did not ask him to let them off inside the break but threw their boards overboard and dove in after them.
They sat on their boards on the rain-flat ocean and watched the sun come out under the clouds. The clouds were ominous and flat and they made the ocean seem kind.
They breathed the tang of ozone onto their tongues. Thunder growled off the land like a jaguar from his cave in the jungle.
When it rains In Nicaragua it rains harder than it does anyplace else. When the lightning and thunder comes with heavy rain you cannot find shelter, even in your own home. It had rained many times while they had been in San Juan Del Sur and they knew what to expect.
Their Spanish tutor’s cousin knew too, and he brought the small boat close to offer shelter. They waved him off. He pointed to the sky. They waved him off again. He shrugged then laughed.
“Si agarramos pescado el viaje es gratis.” He told them and made the sign of the cross. Then he went back to fishing.
Jake looked at Scott for help.
“If our captain catches fish while we are surfing then our trip is gratis,” said Scott.
“That would never happen in the Keys,” Jake said and smiled at the thought of a free ride to such an incredible place.
Legs dangling off their boards just beyond the break, the boys took turns catching waves. The lightning flashes stayed away at first then grew closer but seemed to be passing to the south where the captain would need to go in the boat if he wanted to take them back to San Juan Del Sur.
They felt the need to keep moving for it only stood to reason that lightning would have a hard time striking a moving object.
They began to surf in tandem. If one would fall the other would fall too, and begin the swim back for another wave.
The lightning never came to them and the center cell of the storm passed over the land and then moved out over the water to the south.
At the height of the storm they sat on their boards beyond the break and watched the charged air run behind sheets of rain across the water. They sensed it was the end of the storm.
They searched the water behind them for their captain and found him when the sky lit up, fishing beside a large stone pinnacle. He was hoisting up a large fish as if to tell them to keep surfing because fishing was good in the rain.
The storm cell moved away and now the rain came steady as it had when they first arrived and made the ocean seem gentle again. They lay out on their boards and swam for the small boat.
The captain took their boards and the boys pulled themselves up over the gunwale into the stern of the panga. The blond haired, blue eyed boys hand fell on the shoulder of a large rooster fish that lay on the deck.
“Agggh,” he muttered.
“La lluvia es buena para los pescado,” said their captain.
“I got that one,” Jake told Scott.
“The fish bite good in the rain,” said Scott.
“My father’s says the same thing,” said Jake.
Their captain laughed at them, scrunched low in the bow beneath the wind. They looked small and frail yet brave. They smiled back at him and gave him thumbs up and he smiled broadly and patted his fifty pound roosterfish on the head with his free hand. The boys felt big inside.
The boat took a wave that threw them together. They grabbed each other’s forearms to stop from rolling, reaching up to the bow rail with their free hands to stabilize.
The engine hiccupped and the captain hit it with his mallet. The small boat ran a little faster like a whipped horse, and then settled into a steady grind. The sun began to set, blacking out their captain’s face when they turned west below the cross at the northwest lip of the San Juan Del Sur inlet.
Back in San Juan Del Sur, they ate rice and beans and spit-roasted chicken, then fell into their beds and dreamed of climbing into the fishy bow of the old Panga that would take them for free to surf coves even farther away from town.
The end
