Bro Flex Goes Family Style

In Central America, the sun does not slide slowly from the sky. It drops like a stone into the sea. Twilight barely lingers as long as the ripples of a splash. No fade to black here. Day is done. Jump cut. Night is dark.

Though I remember that the sun crosses the horizon at a steeper angle the closer you move to the equator, I’m still surprised by the abruptness of the day’s end. This will turn out to be one of the more minor surprises of the trip, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  

So far, this place has exuded a simple charm. Cool characters in a beautiful setting, but I’m not getting lulled into a false sense of security. I’ve been around enough skier/skater/extreme sport types to know what’s coming next: the bro flex. 

After some late-afternoon liquid lubrication, the plumage rises, and the strutting starts. Soon, we’ll know who’s ruling this roost. Every group activity has its own version of this sorting ritual. The excluding, the picking of teams. We are here to surf, after all, and surfing is a highly competitive individual sport. If this were the ski world, you’d quickly learn who has the house in T-Ride, or just returned from a heli trip to AK. Scored JapPow.

The bro flex features big claims, boasted in an initiate’s buzzword bingo. The more inside-baseball, the better. 

Got G-land before it was crowded. Cloudbreak at six to eight. Firing in Indo. 

I don’t pretend to speak surf. I snatched those little gems from surf movies. A casual collector of expressions that I will never use, I delight in the curation of big claims, even as I understand that the boorish bro flex has its purpose: This is where pecking orders get established, and newbies like me get summarily slapped down. Which way to kook’s corner?

Which is to say, as much as I understand the opening night ritual, I’m not stoked on it. I coach myself to just accept my fate at the bottom of the barrel, but then again, that’s not the vibe I got from Rob. Maybe this place could turn out to be different?

A curving set of square stones leads across a dirt courtyard from Casa Blanca to Amaru’s main palapa. A thatched roof high enough to shelter a herd of giraffes spreads over a tiled expanse set with picnic tables, rattan couches forming a sitting area, and one long teak table with a dozen high-backed wooden chairs on each side.

Scanning for testosterone-oozing surf bros, I pause at the edge of the great room. The table is set for twenty, and while I can’t yet find the alpha dogs in the little pack that’s lingering by the bar, I can see that at this table is where the separation will occur. Big-wave bad asses on one end, foamies on the other. Foamies was another term I picked up from the surf flicks. Foamies describe those who ride foam-topped learning boards and are generally relegated to the messy, inside white water at waist-high beach breaks.

A foamie is not yet a surfer, and likely never will become one. I don’t suppose I’m a foamie, but I’m a lot closer to that than big-wave bro.

A dark-haired woman of thirty or so, lovely and composed in a simple sundress, notices me hanging on the edge of the scene and steps into frame. Sabrina from Switzerland introduces herself, and I instantly know who keeps Amaru running on time. Though trim and agile, Sabrina doesn’t immediately strike me as a surfer, but just wait. Like the rest of Amaru, she’ll prove to be full of stealth surprises.

You’re just in time, she says, as several servers carry plates of steaming fluke to the table. Signal sent, the gaggle by the bar, which turns out to include Rob and Fred, moves toward the table. Now comes that awkward moment where we quickly scan the room and try to figure out where we belong. 

All our meals are family style, Sabrina says. Just find the plate with your name on it. 

It takes me a minute to understand, but as she and I move toward the table, I see the system. On the side of every plate, a name is written in black marker. Scanning for Spicoli, Bodhi, or Johnny Utah, none of whom seem to have made the scene, I find mine in the middle of the table. The first to greet me is a pale brown hound who nuzzles my knee and proffers his snout for pats. As I oblige, Rob and Fred sit down across from me. Fred plunks a fresh bottle of Tona Light in front of me as Sabrina sits to my right. Tim Bisso, a pro surfer turned cinematographer from French Polynesia, reads his name on the plate to my left and sits. Willow of the welcoming committee sits next to Fred, and Rob is joined by beautiful Elle from San Diego, who will turn out to be Tim’s new wife. With the names-on-plates system, not only is there no bro-down, no separation of killers and kooks, even the married couples are split and forced to meet others.

Gerritt sits between two young women visiting from Florida and Christopher from Maryland, heavily tattooed yet clean-cut and impressively articulate. At the far end of the table, a muscled man who looks like he knows his way around the waves is Sam from San Diego, who will turn out to be a private surf coach hired by Carlos from Colombia, 46, fit and keen, and Lucy from Massachusetts, who’s young and blonde and strong. A couple of college kids making a documentary on conservation in Central America round out the group.

As the fluke gives way to flan, I notice another thing: the gathering includes as many Amaru staff members as it does guests. This simple system, whether by design or happenstance, has disarmed the bro flex, changed the entire tenor of the evening, and will prove the keystone that binds an overarching camaraderie. 

It’s one of the things that guests always comment about, Sabrina tells me when I ask about the seating plan. Many say it feels like a great big family.

The last stone to be fitted in any arch is the keystone. Essential to the structure, without it the arch is incomplete and crumbles, and yet without the support of the surrounding stones, the keystone fails. It’s a close relationship of mutual friction.

Here at Amaru, where I’d expected to find division and strife in the bro flex, I find disparate pieces fitting together to support the whole. Hence my over-burdened keystone metaphor.

But am I reading too much into this?

The question gnaws at me until later that night, when I plug in the external hard drive with all the footage we’ve shot and scroll through an interview we did with Rob back in Park City.

I really like it at Amaru, he says. It's comfortable, and I feel safe.

Safe. The word settles in. It’s not the word I would’ve expected to use to describe a remote outpost in a Central American country that the US Government says is plagued by crime, wrongful detention, and arbitrary enforcement of laws. But it does fit what I feel in this place.

Still pondering this confounding visit to Amaru, I shut down the computer and take off my headphones. That’s when I hear a scratching sound, followed by a hollow rubbing. Someone is scraping and waxing a surfboard.

A quick check outside reveals that it’s Rob, whose own surfboard the airline refused to take in Salt Lake. Apparently he ’s selected a stick from the Amaru quiver and is busy making it his own.

I don’t know it at the moment, but soon the fast-rising sun will have something to say about that.