Riding the wave to riches

From feral surfers to tourism operators; Michael Fordham charts surfing's success stories Surfing in El Salvador ... where Michael Fordham set out on a surf adventure in the '80s. Photograph: Roberto Escobar/epa/Corbis Summer 1986, in Oaxaca, on the Pacific coast of Mexico. Huge, barrelling waves were pounding the beaches of Puerto Escondido. I was a teenage surfer on my first foreign surf trip, and I had befriended a 30-year-old kneeboarder from Llantwit Major who was obsessed with these heavy, tubular beach breaks. I, on the other hand, was obsessed with a piece I'd read in an old Aussie surf magazine on La Libertad in El Salvador. The story told of empty, mellow, tropical point breaks. La Libertad. The name means freedom. I convinced my Welsh friend to make the trip south with me. The only problem was, a civil war was... [read full story]