In October 2025, Kai Lenny flew to El Salvador on a mission as team leader to surf a new wave.
He was accompanied by his brother, Ridge Lenny, and friends Natxo Gonzalez and Angelina Decesare.
Before he posted his videos on his YouTube channel, Punta Roca and Punta Mango were considered the best waves in the country.
Furthermore, it shattered the misconception that only point breaks could offer big and hollow waves in the country.
Kai Lenny did not discover this new wave.
In fact, several local Salvadoran surfers like Ezequiel and Bryan Perez already knew about it, but they did not have the big wave experience and the right equipment.
For these waves, a brand-new jet ski was needed; they cost around $18k, which most Salvadoran surfers cannot afford.
Kai Lenny's exploits in El Salvador are excellent news for the government, which has invested heavily in promoting the country as a surfing destination for the rest of the world.
Before Kai's arrival, the appeal of the country was to be viewed as the land of super consistent small and medium-sized waves at its right-hand point breaks.
Most Salvadoran surfers have a particular disdain for beach breaks in the country that only offer a few seconds of rides compared to the longer and way more photogenic point-break waves.
Here's the breakdown of the main characteristics of these waves.
Rivermouth Sandbar Breaks or Offshore Outer Banks?
These waves are not reef breaks because there is no fixed rocky or coral bottom.
They are not point breaks because they do not wrap around a headland or fixed point. And they are not the typical beach break.
While beach breaks also occur over sandbars, they are most often close to shore and directly in front of a sandy beach.
If we need to categorize these waves, we can call them rivermouth sandbar breaks or offshore outer banks, which are shaped by the interaction of river outflow and ocean swell.
These outer bank mangrove waves that break far away from the beach are typically found a significant distance offshore, separated from the main beach by a deep water channel.
A-Frame Dreams
Kai Lenny and friends surfed a right-hand wave, but there are also lefts.
It's pretty easy to know this fact because they have A frames with peaks that break both left and right, which is common on sandbars.
And they don't just happen in the coordinates they surfed this time.
There is a very good chance that they happen all along the mangrove forest, which has about 61 kilometers of coastal perimeter.
They can happen in the rivermouths of Estero de Jaltepeque, Rio Lempa, and Bahia de Jiquilisco.
Consistent or Fickle?
They can be more consistent than random beach break sandbars close to shore because the river provides a continuous sediment source.
But still, they are fickle compared to the point breaks that El Salvador is famous for.
They will never come close to matching the number of surfable days that El Sunzal offers, which will have waves every month of the year in the range of one to three meters.
Dynamic and unpredictable, these sandbars can shift after storms or seasonal changes, making these spots fickle but sometimes world-class when aligned.
Great Quality
The outflowing river current can groom the incoming swells, making the waves cleaner, faster, and more hollow than Punta Roca or Punta Mango.
And they can handle massive and open ocean swells that would close out on a beach, producing perfectly peeling waves.
Require a Boat or a Jet Ski
Because of their distance from shore, they are often accessed by boat or personal watercraft used in tow-in surfing.
These waves are highly tide- and swell-dependent. These rivermouth waves often have strong rip currents.
When the tides are dropping to low tide, it is relatively easy to reach the waves, but at the same time, with the added wind and rain, you can be swept to the ocean, never to be seen again.
And when the tide is increasing and going to high tide, it will become very difficult to beat the shore break, and you can get carried to the sides of the mangrove forest, where it will take forever to be rescued.
The New Big Waves: La Chupacabra and Bull Sharks
Most likely, Kai Lenny has surfed the biggest waves ever in El Salvador.
By doing so, he has changed the paradigm of what it means to surf big waves in this nation.
Besides having the guts to surf these new waves, Kai Lenny named two of these spots: La Chupacabra and Bull Sharks.
In the 1960s and 1970s, El Sunzal, El Salvador's most popular and consistent wave, was considered a big wave spot because people compared it to Sunset Beach in Hawaii.
From the hills, both waves looked similar.
However, people who have surfed both waves have found that El Sunzal is a very mellow and soft wave compared to Sunset Beach, which is at least twice as powerful.
El Sunzal reaches four meters on very rare occasions, and compared to the offshore outer banks waves, it feels like a wave for beginners with no major consequences if you screw up.
For more than three decades, the crown jewels in El Salvador have been Punta Roca and Punta Mango, which close out at five meters, but have way more hollow waves than El Sunzal.
They have been the domain of advanced local surfers.
But compared to these offshore outer banks, they now feel they are more for intermediate surfers because they don't offer the size and hollowness of these offshore outer banks.
Furthermore, Punta Roca and Punta Mango do not need any jet ski-assisted tow surfing because they do not have the hazards of rip currents that are found in offshore outer banks.
La Chupacabra and Bull Sharks offer the government of El Salvador new growth opportunities to create more revenue and jobs in the country.
Surf Cities and Deforestation
It would not be surprising that these offshore outer banks get the designation of "surf cities."
However, economic development here cannot follow the same path as the surf cities of La Libertad, which allowed for most of the green zones to become cement infrastructure.
These offshore outer banks are, for the most part, located in Bahia de Jiquilisco and Estero de Jaltepeque. These areas contain the last mangrove forests the country has before they will become deserts.
El Salvador and Haiti are the two most deforested countries in Latin America.
Bahia de Jiquilisco is a protected area in El Salvador due to its rich and diverse biodiversity. It is recognized as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and a Ramsar site.
It faces threats from issues like land being cleared for sugarcane cultivation, overfishing, and plastic pollution.
Words by Jorge Dominguez
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