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They call him Chuck Norris. I’m known only as Chinita. Maybe you’ve heard about La Libertad. El Salvador’s coast faces straight south. Punta Roca reaches half a mile into the sea. It’s a perfect point break—long, hollow, without sections. Only local beach kids, a few wealthy sons from the capital, and a handful of adventurous travelers surf here. It’s the sort of thing Ben and I grew up dreaming of.

Libertad is a Spanish word that means “freedom.” Puerto La Libertad is the largest coastal city in the country, and not far from the capital. Poor campesinos buy fish off the pier, while rich San Salvadorans eat seafood in the oceanfront restaurants. In the mid-nineties, a local drug syndicate set up shop in a house a few blocks from the point and began to refine cocaine into crack rock. It took the locals by storm, especially the young men. La Lib cornered the market on three commodities: fish, crack cocaine, and perfect waves.

Ben’s handle is based on his beard and hair. Chuck Norris is a fairly common name for pets in this country. The aging action hero seems to be more famous here than in the States. Mine is even less creative. “Chinita” says only that I’m small, Asian, and female—qualities that are, I suppose, rare among La Lib’s visitors.

Our nicknames were given to us by a local crackhead named Peseta. Peseta’s own moniker refers to the Salvadoran twenty-five-cent piece. At one time, he’d been the best surfer in La Lib. Now, he begs quarters from tourists in exchange for nicknames.

A cemetery occupies the last piece of land on the point, before it becomes a pile of rocks. A sewage canal runs through town and empties on one side of the graveyard. It carries La Lib’s runoff and gray waters like a sick river and expels them onto the town’s greatest resource. They dump their shit and bury their dead on the one thing that rich Californians would sell their souls for.

La Posada is a horseshoe of a hotel wrapped around a dirt courtyard. One wing holds expensive rooms with air conditioning and private baths. We sleep in the cheaper wing, with ceiling fans and shared toilets. The third wing consists of the kitchen, office, and dining room. A wonderful Salvadoran woman named Kristy looks after our boards and runs the place whenever the owners aren’t around.

Ben and I spend most weekends and holidays here—and any other time the surf is up. It’s our second home, in a sense; we both have our own project sites, our own actual houses in two different inland villages. But in another sense, La Lib has always been the primary residence for us together, for our relationship. While Ben and Malia may live in distant villages in the campo, Chuck Norris and La Chinita live here, together, in La Libertad, full-time.