“After that day I was like: man, I have to start a YouTube channel. Those moments are insane.”
The bus
Six in the morning, somewhere in El Salvador, a bus pulls out with thirty or forty skaters on board, headed across the country to a contest. Someone has brought a rail. By the time the bus is on the highway, people are grinding it in the aisle, beers in hand, at seven a.m. Mike Boisvert was on that bus, about five months into a trip that had started next door in Guatemala. He won the contest, took home a medal, and spent two hours bombing hills afterwards. He filmed almost none of it, and that is exactly the point. “I regret not having an episode of this day, because that day was insane. After that day I was like: I have to start a YouTube channel.” He was scared to start one. El Salvador is where he ran out of excuses.
A more mature scene than its neighbours
Compared with Guatemala, where Mike had just spent his first month on the road, El Salvador skates more, and skates better organised. It is a smaller country with more skaters, more parks, more shops, more everything. “I would say El Salvador is a way more mature scene. And the guys are really friendly there, man. Super, super friendly. They like having foreign skaters around.” Surfing is still the bigger sport, but the skate community is real, and it is plugged into the rest of the region: skaters from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica move between each other's countries easily and run contests that are open only to Central America. Mike won one of those in Nicaragua on the same trip, as the lone outsider in the field.
The shops took care of him before anyone knew who he was. Gravity Board Shop gave him a fingerboard rail, the first one he ever owned; he still travels with a fingerboard, now rides for Blackriver, and won a contest in Helsinki this year. Addikt, a local brand with its own shop, gave him a T-shirt. Rebel Skateshop is the other stop. “They were helping me a lot, and back then I was just a random skater. They didn't do it because I had a following. They're just really nice people.” For filming and photos, the crew is The Nice Guys, who shoot street on real cameras, and the pages El Salvador Skateboarding and KR Multimedia SV keep the footage moving.
Where to skate
The heart of the scene is a monument. The plaza around the Monumento al Divino Salvador del Mundo in San Salvador, probably the most important monument in the country, has been skated for at least thirty years and is still the meeting point. “This is the spot where it all began. And they skate pretty good, too.” It is Mike's number one place to skate in the country. For a park, Zacamil is the one: free, covered in art, with every kind of obstacle packed together. “There's everything. It's like the middle of the chaos.” There is a second good park in the capital as well, the one with the big concrete hip in the photos below. Street spots come with the usual rules about knowing when to leave; his own one-line summary, from the notes he sent us: “I was trying a switch noseslide on a 20-stair and got kicked out with a shotgun.”
On the coast, El Zonte has a skatepark and bowl set right in front of the surf break, a couple of minutes from the water. The bowl is on the mellow side, it gets repainted every few months, and the view forgives everything. La Libertad, the next town over, has its own scene. Since Mike's visit a new spot called Shred Plaza has gone up in El Zonte, which he has not seen; the surf-and-skate corner of the coast keeps building.
El Salvador has pulled in other JACKALOPE athletes too. Chad Caruso, who skated solo across the United States in 2023 and rolled into JACKALOPE Virginia Beach at the end of it, went looking for the biggest quarter pipe in the country. His video is below.
Skaters to know
Kel Rivera (@kel_rivera00) is the one Mike calls a friend and the leader of the community: skater and photographer, the man behind The Nice Guys, and the one he was filming with at the Monument. Josimar Perez (@josimarperezz) is the new generation. “Those guys are really talented. There's a good level in El Salvador.” Cesar Zelaya (@ca_zelaya420) rounds out the three. And one more name Mike forgot to put on the list: Rhinna (@rhinnableu), a skater who does kickflips and 50-50s, travelled with him for part of the trip, and ran a YouTube channel on which she gave Mike his first interview in English, ever. “I was so scared. Shaking, man.” They had lost touch for three years and reconnected the week we recorded this.
Poutine tourism
Five or six months out of Québec, Mike was in what he now calls his poutine tourism phase, trying to find one in every country. He found one in San Salvador. He gave it a 6.5, for the effort and the fresh ingredients, and would like the record to show that it was not a poutine. “It was disgusting. But I was out of Québec for five months, so.”
If you go
El Zonte is the town, especially if you surf: beach, waves, the bowl by the break, and something you will not find on many other beaches, ice cream you can pay for in Bitcoin. Locals call it Bitcoin Beach, there is a Bitcoin school, and Mike, who does not care about crypto, went to a Bitcoin party out of curiosity. Inland, this is volcano country as much as Guatemala is: the Santa Ana volcano has a crater lake at the top, El Boquerón national park puts you on the rim of another one, and the area around Santa Ana has hot springs and a lagoon. Food is good and the country was very cheap when Mike was there. Its reputation has changed completely in a few years, and his read from the ground is simple: it is a safe place to travel now, and the skaters will look after you either way.
Mike Boisvert: “Super nice people, man. El Salvador on top.”
Photos: Mike Boisvert / The Skate Nomad. Video: Chad Caruso. Part of the JACKALOPE Skate Atlas, one country at a time, with the skaters who live there. See every country on the map.
