On my first day in El Salvador, I decided to go surfing at a beach called El Tunco. The waves were mellow, so I paddled out without hesitation. I had a decent session in the warm water, but as I headed back to shore, I stepped on some sharp rocks. A wave knocked me down, and I ended up with a deep cut on my foot—so deep it went right through the flesh. To make matters worse, the sand got packed into the wound as I walked off the beach, and I couldn’t rinse it out completely no matter how hard I tried.
I knew I needed medical help before the cut got infected, but the nearest clinic was about 30 minutes away. After failing to find a bus, I managed to get an Uber Moto (basically an Uber on a motorcycle), so I rode there with my injured foot dangling off to the side. The clinic itself was tiny—looked more like an abandoned convenience store—and my high school Spanish wasn’t quite cutting it. Luckily, the staff understood my situation and used a metal scoop to dig out the sand. They bandaged me up and warned me not to get my foot wet or put too much pressure on it. For the rest of my trip, I had to keep changing the bandages and wear flip-flops so my foot could air out. The doctor told me I shouldn’t hike for two weeks, so I went hiking a week later.