Special coverage presented by Surf City El Salvador  - Cover photo: Carlos Pena

I have started writing this article three times but for one reason or another, I couldn't get it done. I wanted to start another travel diary, to tell a little about the backstage of what happens on these pandemic trips. But, either life got busy at home in Montevideo or maybe the words I wanted to publish didn't come out.

One had a more romantic beginning, referring to the fact that I discovered the incredible waves of El Salvador through a book that made me dream: Alma Panamericana by the Brazilian former editor of Fluir, Adrián Kojin.

In his twenties, he got on a modified motorcycle with a rack to carry a board and traveled from California to Brazil, in the middle of the eighties, in the middle of the cold war, in the middle of dictatorships and guerrillas. His time in El Salvador made me dream about perfect right-handers.

I also remember an article from Inside magazine, also Brazilian, which portrayed Rodrigo “Pedra” Dornelles surfing endless right-handers.

I was able to travel to El Salvador for the first time in 2005, when ALAS magically hired me as the association's press officer. I loved El Salvador before I knew it, and when I arrived I only confirmed that my love was true.

Those perfect rights confirmed the saying: “One wave is worth 10 of the ones I can surf on any given day in Uruguay.”

The other diary I started was more structured, saying that I had been invited by the ISA to cover one of the most important events in the history of surfing, that I would try to fully respect the honesty of my days in El Salvador and that I am excited about the road ahead.

I mentioned that, as far as I could find out, only 13 international media outlets were invited to the tournament. DUKEsurf.com, a website that lives or survives on sheer grit, determination, rigor and passion, was one of them.

And I humbly pointed out that I hope to live up to it.

The third beginning, this one, now, when I am already on the plane on the final stopover from Panama City to San Salvador was going to be sad, or it simply is.

It is sad because it leaves me devastated to see the world sick once again, all its citizens sick or avoiding being sick. It always seems difficult to find things in common between all humans and in the end we managed it, the 7000 billion of us, we share this damn pandemic that, with a vaccine in between, seems to give no respite and as much as we innocently want to see a light at the end of the tunnel, the reality is that there is none.

And, as more than one scientist has said out there: We have to get used to living differently, the new normal is not over, that is why the term is clear and there is no need to explain it.

My country, Uruguay, has three and a half million inhabitants, and to date, almost a third have already received both doses of the vaccine. Has the bug let up? No! I have a nine-year-old son going to class via the damn Zoom, playing on Play and going to the square as an outdoor activity. A life he doesn't deserve, he has to see his friends, his girlfriends and his teachers.

The three-year-old, thank God, returned to class. But the pandemic that occupied almost half of his life surely hit him hard.

We cross airports and cities afraid of the person next to us coughing, afraid of being too close to each other, with two masks that are hurting my ears.

It's a very difficult life. I've said more than once that it's interesting to be contemporary with such a historical event, but the truth is that it really pisses me off.

Yesterday, an old Argentinian friend who has traveled all over the world, a streetwise madman, sent me an audio from Ezeiza airport, excited, his voice was shaking, he was nervous, he was and he didn't even know how he felt.

So, it is true that there are people who had to live through more complicated situations, it is true that I am lucky just for the fact that I am traveling for work, for having a job, but I make humble use of my freedom to reiterate that the pandemic has made me sad.

I want to hug my friends, greet them like I used to and stop the nonsense of fist bumping or elbow bumping. I want to kiss women without fearing that I'm putting my life at risk. I want more than anything for my children to be children like I was and like my parents and grandparents were. And I want many more things that are obvious and repetitive.

Having said all this, with this forgivable negativity and sadness, and in view of what matters, which is the most important ISA surfing championship in history, I must say that this is a miracle. Just as the world is exploding with Covid, face masks and the sea in cars... This event is a miracle.

There are 52 countries, 250 surfers, 15 of whom are members of the CT, several of the best in the world who are not part of the CT, an incredible event that had not taken place two years ago and surely at a global level, considering other sports, it must not have happened much.

Going back to the fact that we have to get used to living like this because life will be like this and the pandemic is not going anywhere, good for El Salvador for having the courage to organize something like this and for it to be done with masks and distance, so that the world moves forward.