ESQUIRE MAGAZINE | sep 01 '05

The Restless Man
(Real Adventures for Regular Guys)

by Bucky McMahon

THIS MONTH: Surfing in Nicaragua
WHERE: Three hours from Managua
DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: Absolutely hassle-free surfing—right up to the moment you wipe out.
COST OF SEVEN-DAY ADVENTURE: $1,050
DEGREE OF FUN: Barrels

"DUDE, YOU WOULDN'T believe the day I've had," Jack Ucciferri tells me, steering the mud-splattered Land Cruiser through the airport queue of dilapidated taxis and onto the highway leading out of Managua. The road is cloaked in an eerie orange smoke, out of which suddenly appear ancient, creeping oxcarts and buggy rigs drawn by some of the world's scrawniest horses, and I'm thinking, Dude, I would. Poor Nicaragua, the sprawling capital still— still! —reeling from the 1972 earthquake. It's a place where word-of-mouth directions often begin with " donde fue "—"where something used to be"—as in before the quake.

But we're headed for the southern Pacific coast, where a breeze of optimism—I gotta believe—blows offshore all day, sucking in that most coveted demographic: affluent males aged eighteen to forty-five. The surfers are coming in a kind of recreational manifest destiny, drawn by that reliable all-day offshore wind—a wave-sculpting freak grace of massive Lake Nicaragua—plus the long swell season and the rock-bottom prices for real estate, a primo morsel of which is the Giant's Foot Surf camp in the tiny village of Gigante.

Sometime after midnight, after lurching in and out of mud bogs on a long, sketchy dirt road to Gigante, we roll into the pitch-black, seemingly deserted village, just a humble assemblage of shacks along the waterfront, and on to the end of the road and the surf camp, where suddenly there's light, music, surfers. Everybody's still up but winding down, sprawled in hammocks or kicked back in deck chairs with the last beer of the night, puffing on stogies. The nightly poker game has just broken up, they say. I'm bombarded by introductions and instructions on how to make myself at home.

"And how are the waves?" I ask one of the campers.
"Dude, the waves are excellent," he says.

FELIPE, THE CAMP ROOSTER, awakes around four-thirty. Everybody else sleeps in until just before dawn. When everybody's good and ready, Chapin Kreuter, the full-time surfing guide, paddles out to "Vale la Pena" and fires her up. We motor south around the dramatic crag known as El Pie de Gigante (the eponymous "Giant's Foot") and then cross to another rocky point about a mile distant, where Chapin steers in toward the cove. He cuts the engine and we wait, our suspense palpable in the sudden silence, to see what the swell will bring.

Water splashes sonorously against the fiberglass hull; the tide surges and burbles in the rocks at the base of the cliff, darkly glistening in the early-morning mist. And then: "Here comes something!" one of my surfmates says. I all but wolf whistle as we watch the set peel off perfectly from the point to the deeper water of the channel. These are just the sort of mellow puppies I can ease into after a year's layoff.

"You want to give it a try?" Chapin asks us, scratching at his mariner's beard. My campmates, five seasoned twenty-something Californians, decline. This point break, known as Manzanillo, can be world-class and, of course, a whole lot bigger, Cap'n Chapin assures us. "Swell's missing it," he says, and guns it back north. In about ten minutes we're in front of the dependable beach break, Rio Colorado. Here the swell is hitting straight on. About a half dozen earlier-bird surfers share a couple of takeoff spots, dropping in and disappearing behind muscular walls.

We play in the semiserious stuff (it isn't really big enough to hurt you . . . much . . .probably) for hours till hunger and thirst drive us back to the boat and the shade of its canopy, where a cold drink from the cooler really hits the spot. My first session in Nicaragua and frankly I've been outclassed by the surf. It doesn't matter (okay, it stings a little in the adolescent pride); I can already tell I'm going to love surf camp.

THE WHOLE experience takes me back to age fourteen, when I all but moved into the Burns brothers' beachfront garage/rec room. All I wanted that summer was a convenient place to stash my board, play a couple hours of Ping-Pong, leaf through old surf magazines, and raid the fridge at will. Was that asking too much? It was, in fact, for Mr. Burns. And though at Giant's Foot I'm paying for the privilege of surfing, loafing, eating, loafing, surfing, playing Ping-Pong, loafing, surfing, leafing through old surf mags, the camp somehow re-creates that golden age of boyhood indolence and camaraderie with stunning authenticity.

Credit the gregarious Jack Ucciferri, who stumbled upon the fishing village at the end of a 2002 surf trip through Central America. Enchanted by the coast's untapped potential, Jack called his friend Zach (a rock climber and sailor with some mechanical knack) with a business proposal. Zach invited Carol, his 7 month girlfriend in NYC and Jack meanwhile, had married a beautiful, multilingual Nicaraguan woman from the nearby town of Rivas. Enter Chapin Kreuter, a childhood friend of Jacks who ran into him by chance in a california lineup and thus the camp was staffed: two dynamic couples in their twenties, plus the burly and stoic Chapin who represents the Rowdy Gaines of the outfit, together creating a business in the middle of nowhere that one day may be at the epicenter of everything in Nicaragua's surging surf industry.

Along with a ton of fun, it was grueling work. Advice from the locals was mostly about holding on to their stuff: wood pile next to the fence? Very bad. Passing bandidos would help themselves. Chickens running loose? Very bad. Bandidos would pick them off one at a time. Chickens in a coop? Ah, no, bandidos would steal them all at once. After college Jack had represented U. S. A. Youth at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa, where he met Nelson Mandela, became inspired. But Gigante has been frustrating, the community all but impenetrable. His idealism has been . . . adjusted.

For us campers, though, there's not even a whiff of trouble. We leave our boards in the boat that first day and swim the short distance to shore, wolf down lunch, and chill on the patio, where we watch Jack's Lab pup chase a pig from the premises. We have Bob Marley on CD, Jack Johnson's surf flick Thicker Than Water on DVD, and the weeklong Ping-Pong tournament is under way. There'll be another surf session in the afternoon and dinner that night at the Griffs', the little cantina just up the beach run by a colorful expat, Keith Griff, and his Nicaraguan wife, Maria, who did a stint in Paris at the Cordon Bleu. Giant's Foot has a deal with the Griffs so that our meals will be Maria's Franco-Nicaraguan haute cuisine. We're not exactly roughing it.