Presents El Salvador Travel, #SurfCityElSalvador y Pure Surf 

Adding one more point to a list of “wonderful anomalies” that were detailed in an article published in this medium a few days agoIt should be noted that the Minister of Tourism, Morena Valdez, was elected to her position, among other things, because she was a surfer.

A practice that often cuts into working hours, adding unexpected sick leave just as epic storm surges hit, was a good thing to work for as a minister in El Salvador under President Nayib Bukele.

Despite this, Morena Valdez has been so busy that she has not been able to take the plunge since she took office five months ago.

He is 45 years old, has been surfing since he was 35, is a regular footer, wears a 5'6 and his mission is to make the tourism part of one of the government's flagship projects, Surf City El Salvador, a reality.

He is a very friendly, approachable and open person, he has clear ideas about what he wants and he goes all out to achieve it; he demonstrates this in the following paragraphs.

How did surfing start in your life?
Exactly 10 years ago, one of my best Argentinian friends gave me my first surf lesson with the following note on the card: "It can't be that you live in the best place in the world for surfing and you've never ridden a wave." I was scared to death because I had never been in the ocean. I've always loved the ocean, but I've always been very careful because here in El Salvador there is no surf culture. It's more about coming to eat, drinking on the beach, and then leaving.

People don't even go into the water because the waves are so strong, so everyone is afraid of it; they don't know that it's the best thing in the world that can exist.

And then what happened?
And there I couldn't get out of the water...

"I took one class, I took five more and then I went on my own and then I came to live by the sea"

Did you take a class?
I took one class, I took five more and then I went on my own and then I came to live by the sea, because I lived in San Salvador, so for 10 years I have lived in front of El Obispo beach and I don't regret it, it is 40 minutes from the city, I have to get up much earlier, every day I get up at 4 in the morning and I usually come back very late.

Now that I am a minister, the schedules are much more complicated, but I do not regret it. Unfortunately, I have not been able to get into the water because I do not have 24 hours, but I always surfed here in Sunzal and then I discovered other beaches. Other favorites of mine are those in the east: Las Flores and Punta Mango.

I learned the culture of surfing, every day I got up at 5:30 in the morning, surfed, went swimming and went to work, but I didn't have this schedule, so it was always something that I found a way to live in the sea, I grew up in a matriarchy, where my grandmother was the one who raised me and she was super conservative, she was a lady who was already 70 years old when I was born.

(For her) the sea was more dangerous, and I came to live alone, when this society, especially the Latin one, is very conservative with these things, so of course, for her it was a whole new world, but it also helped me to face life, because surfing is like life, you're on the wave and you can fall, but if you come back you'll surely catch yours and also to have patience, because I've been a very impatient woman since I was little, I wanted everything fast and here you have to wait for the wave to know which one you have to go on.

What board do you use?
I'm 5'6, small, I started with a longboard of course. I don't know why I haven't been in the water for about eight months, because before I was appointed minister I had broken my sacrococcygeus, a horrible fall, so I had stopped for about two months because the doctor, the physiotherapist, told me that I had to rest because any other blow could hurt the sacrum more.

Did you get injured while surfing?
No, a fall in the bathroom, one of those thousand ways to die, super weird.

What is your favorite wave in El Salvador?
Sunzal, because that's where I learned, and because I think it's super friendly, it's long, it gives you time, you can stay outside and wait for the wave. On the other hand, the others are much more pro, remember that I started at 35, I would have loved to be put in the water at 8 years old, so I would definitely like La Bocana, Punta Roca, Punta Mango.

Do you do maneuvers?
No, the usual.

Are you goofy or average?
Regular.

That's good for El Salvador...
Yes, yes. I'm not Goofy.

Who is your favorite local surfer?
Bryan Perez, obviously.

Your favorite international surfer?
Complicated, Kelly Slater, but among the youngsters I like John John Florence, although Gabriel Medina too. Gabriel has come here a lot.

Did you meet him?
No, I only saw him in the water, but I didn't have the opportunity. Besides, he came with Sister Sophia, because they have a whole clinic for juniors and there are several from here from El Salvador who have gone. Kevin Mejía is a super friend of Sophia.

"We have the history of the war that took place in the 80s and I think that was the milestone that marked surfing, all the surfers came  Here to the beaches, fleeing a little from all the war psychosis that we had"

How would you describe the spirit of the Salvadoran surfer? What is surfing like in El Salvador?
Look, what happens is that Salvadoran surfing has been around for years, since Jimmy Rotherham who was one of the precursors of surfing, I think it was something... Look, remember that an entire country has history and we have the history of the war that took place in the 80s and I think that was the milestone that marked surfing, all the surfers came  Here to the beaches, fleeing a little from all the war psychosis we had.

So I think it was a kind of escape valve, the populations and inhabitants of a city when it is in crisis or at war, look for escape valves, it's not that you had nothing to do, it's that you lived in repression, so surfing, which is total freedom, and they did it like that.

What we want with this management is to remove that stereotype of the surfer. If you look at the roots here, all the kids who surf here have great humility, you can see it in Bryan Pérez, great humility, a great desire to live, the only thing they are interested in is surfing and doing it well, so I think that has helped us a lot to be able to get them out of violence, to get them out of the context that we also have of poverty, of injustice.

For me, since I discovered surfing at 35, look, I have worked all my life on issues of poverty, economic growth with the United Nations, I said this, this is what El Salvador needs to get out not only of poverty in the economic issue, but also in the poverty that you can have in mental health, because surfing gives you mental health and for young people, surfing is instilled in their DNA, it's like saying that if I can do this, I can do whatever I want in my life, maybe you don't have to dedicate yourself to surfing, you can do something else.

What music do you think is ideal for you to listen to before going into the water to motivate you?
To motivate me, music from the 80s.

Oldies type?
(Laughs) Yes! I'm old, remember. Queen. I don't know when surfers became reggaeton artists. I used to play music that I thought was more surfer-like and everyone played reggaeton, I can't believe it.

Why is El Salvador the best place in the world to come and surf? It's the best place?
Yes, because we have waves 365 days a year, we have a pleasant climate 365 days a year and more than 50 spots to surf around 300km of coastal area, you are done, warm water and we do not have sharks.

Why is it better to come here than to go to neighboring countries?
Because you will always have a constant wave, not in neighboring countries, you have more spots here and you also have a great advantage, in one hour you can easily cover five spots, in one morning you can change from a left to a right, from a point break to a beach break, you don't need to travel three hours to be at each beach, I think that is the most competitive advantage we have in the region because in all countries you have to travel two to three hours and also the connectivity we have is better than in other countries.

With all the efforts the president is making to promote the growth of surfing and surfing tourism, aren't you afraid that the Salvadoran sea will become a bit saturated with surfers?
Well, that’s exactly what you asked the president, and that’s why we want to have a specific group in the different spots so that we can disperse them throughout the national territory. That’s why Surf City is a beach circuit and it’s not concentrated on a single beach so that what has happened to other countries in the region doesn’t happen again. So, we want to do it in an orderly manner. Surfing, as you said during the interview, has grown, El Salvador is already known, so what we want to do in an orderly manner, specific campaigns for a specific target, each beach is different, so that’s what will give us, if we do market research, market intelligence, which is what we’re doing right now.

So, we are going to the beach that is suitable for that target group and we are going to invite them, so we are trying to put our own house in order first, always with environmental care, we are going to make a law so that this growth of private infrastructure is not disorderly because the worst that can happen to us is that a mega hotel comes and then they will invade us, we will not be able to do anything, so we are going to put our own house in order little by little.

"We are going to make a law so that this growth of private infrastructure is not disorderly because the worst thing that can happen to us is that a mega hotel comes and then they will invade us, we will not be able to do anything, so we will start putting our house in order little by little"

Do you have plans to do a WSL event, a professional tour event?
Yes, yes, this year we didn't have time to do it because we started in June, we were just talking to the organizers, we wanted to do one in October, but we couldn't find the time, so we were left with an ALAS and an ISA, as you know we are going to have the ISA at the end of November and for next year we have agreed with them that if we want to do one and specifically we want to bet on a junior.

Is it a fact or are you looking at the possibility?
We are looking into the possibility, but most likely, it will also depend on the other championships we have from the ISA and ALAS that we are looking into to see if we can make a five-year agreement for the duration of the management to ensure the closing here in El Salvador.

They plan to have an ALAS every year for five years...
The closure.

Is that signed?
No, we are meeting with President ALAS.

Are you considering holding the 2020 World Surfing Games next year?
Yes, we are applying. Remember that this is a whole process. We have already sent the application, they are conducting consultations and we are seeing if the president also makes the decision.

When do you think we will see an impact from Surf City in El Salvador, that we will start to see these infrastructure works, have they already started or are they going to start?
I'll tell you, we have a strategic plan that we are consolidating, we are about to launch the national tourism policy focused on surfing, we will launch that at the end of this year and the national tourism strategy focused on surfing next year and the plan that we have until 2030, this in accordance with the sustainable development objectives.

What does the plan up to 2030 mean?
It's a strategic plan that takes 10 years, you're not going to do all this in five years.

So when will we start to see a change?
2020, we began to lay the first stones of infrastructure, but remember that Surf City is not just infrastructure, we are training human talent with other institutions, we are working with a regulatory framework for the entire environmental issue, we want to see how we protect the wave, which is what the president was telling you, in other words, Surf City is more than infrastructure, you know that to serve a surfer or a tourist you need trained people, people who speak English, people who know about hotels and tourism, people who know about surfing, that is one of the main things we require, sewage treatment, also introduction to drinking water in the coastal marine area, that is the basics, I am going to send you a presentation of Surf City where we are doing the stages, so we have it planned to 2030, currently we have 2,5 million visitors a year.

"It's a strategic plan that has been in place for 10 years, you're not going to do all this in five years"

How many of them are surfers?
Like 80.000, remember that we have a lot of Salvadorans abroad, they come on vacation for nostalgia, we have them in the US, what we want is to increase the number of American surfers and from other parts of the world, that is what we are betting on because they come with their families afterwards.

After the market study, have you identified which market is best for you to work with?
At this time with the closest one, the United States and in certain states, because not all states in the United States have surfers, for example in California you have several targets and you already know what you can capture, that is why we are doing an exchange with Visit California, they are not giving tips.

Who are they feeding on, who is advising them?
We are working with the United States Embassy, ​​they are accompanying us and advising us on the topic of how surfing grew in the United States.

And surfing, everything the president demonstrated and what do you know... Do they have advisors who teach them what surfers like?
One of the main reasons why I was appointed Minister of Tourism is because I was a surfer. In the interview with the president, he told me that I had a great advantage, because I was a surfer, I understood tourism. Before being a minister, I was the director of the country brand, so I had to study for about five years to find out what was the differentiating value of El Salvador and everything told me that it was surfing, but not all governments dared to bet on surfing, so precisely with this national surfing policy that we are doing with the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) fund, we are going to have a strategy and we are going to hire surfing experts who made strategies in successful countries like Peru, like Nicaragua, because Nicaragua did make a national surfing strategy policy, they are going to come and they are going to tell us where the path is. I think that in El Salvador you also have a lot of people who know about surfing, who have worked and grown organically, businessmen are our greatest reference.

In any case, there are already many super successful specialized tourism development processes and they are doing very well.
In Las Flores, for example, they already know who their target is, they are already specialized. The perfect formula, I am a surfer and I know what they like, I even know which photo is good, I pay attention to everything, I am with the team, the surfers are extremely exquisite within their world, they respect you if you know about surfing, if not I am not going to respect you, so the president and the president's team are not afraid of specializing and taking risks. They said that if they were going to specialize in surfing, they needed someone who knows about surfing.

I always tell everyone in the tourism sector, don't be afraid to specialize in something, because what happens to us Latin Americans is that we want to be good at everything, so the president decided to be good at this, and if we are good at this and we have the potential, then we will be perfect and that will make people come.

Do you plan to develop or open routes where there is no easy access today?
Sure.

For example, in the Las Flores area there are a couple of points that are completely unexplored. Are you going to open roads to those places?
We are going to open it, but always respecting its habitat and its natural condition. We have already spoken with the people of Las Flores who already have a strategic plan, they are extremely committed, there is a succession of communal development, we have worked hand in hand, they have done studies, they have analyzed very well the target that comes there, among the results they said that the surfer who goes to Las Flores and Punta Mango, does not return once a year, he returns six times a year, especially Americans, there you have clients like the vice president of Google, he arrives in his helicopter, parks at the heliport and stays for two weeks.

"The surfer who goes to Las Flores and Punta Mango doesn't come back once a year, he comes back six times a year, especially the Americans, there you have clients like the vice president of Google, he arrives in his helicopter, parks on the helipad and stays for two weeks."

Also coming up quickly is the man who, according to polls, is going to be the president of Uruguay...
I didn't know that... (Thinks) Wasn't he the president of Congress? He was a deputy... I attended to him once! And then he said to me: "But I want to go surfing," and we followed him and he said no.

When he arrived at the congress for the meetings he was all red, surfed, and dressed in white, so of course, people looked at him and knew that he went surfing first. I know who he is, I met him.

Aren't you afraid of criticism from people who surf these secret spots, that you're going to break their spell? Don't you think you're going to get negative feedback from some purists?
I'm going to answer you like the person from the Colombian country brand once answered me, you're always going to have criticism, especially from tourists and especially from those who only want their spot for themselves, you have to work on it too and raise awareness first, that's why we're going to do all the social management work in this regard, in this case, we're going to open those spots as you introduce all the infrastructure and that's not going to happen overnight, it's going to be a whole process, without repression and even less so in the surf culture.