EL SALVADOR TRIP RECAP - FEBRUARY 2026
- 6 days ago
- 15 min read
NAVIGATION: HOW IT STARTED | SEEKING DISCOMFORT | EL SALVADOR | BUCKETS | THE SURF COMP & FILTERS | A REFLECTION | WHAT'S NEXT | CLOSING
Water Filters, Fishing, Surf and Seeking Discomfort
Written by Cyrus Maroofian
Setting the Stage
Last year, it started with 2 filters, 3 strangers, and 2 families who said "yes".
No Plan. No roadmap. No “program launch.” Only a drive into La Perla with 3 strangers, installing 2 filters in plastic buckets on the side of the road, and sitting afterward wondering how this would in the larger W.A.T.A. story. I mean, this was supposed to be a vacation, a surf trip with my brother. On the drive out of La Perla, Sandy mentioned that they were hosting a surf competition for the local kids in February and said
“You should come back and bring filters for the whole community.”
Of course I said yes, but I didn’t really know how it would happen. I didn't have any funding, I didn’t know where the buckets would come from, and I definitely didn't have more filters.
But, I did have time, and sometimes that’s enough to get started...
The Commitment & Seeking Discomfort
When I got back in mid-December, I had about a month to figure this all out. The weeks leading up to the trip were hectic. I was trying to figure out how to raise money, who we could partner with, and how this was even going to be possible. Was it even worth it to push something like this?
Then something unexpected happened. Seek Discomfort, a brand I’ve followed for years, one that genuinely shaped how I think about travel and experiences, reached out and said they wanted to collaborate. I guess now I knew my answer to if this was worth the push...
`
I had my first call with Kabir, from the Seek Discomfort Team, and he asked me what I had going on and told him about El Salvador. After hearing my story and my goal, he said "Let's do it, I'm in"....
I was still a little in disbelief, but I was stoked we started planning! However, when he found out I hadn’t bought my flights or filters, he said something that hit me hard:
“We can’t commit and launch this collab until you commit.”
At that moment, I had zero dollars raised, but asked him to give me 1 week to figure it out and by our next meeting we we're either doing this or waiting for the next trip.
That week might’ve been the real Seek Discomfort moment. It wasn’t about booking the flight or committing to the trip. It was about figuring out how to raise the money, and also knowing the only way I was going to do it was by asking for help.
Up until this trip, if there was ever a funding gap, I had quietly covered it myself. I was employed, and I could step in when needed. Even with generous donations coming in, I always knew I had that safety net. This time was different.
After being laid off, this was the first project where I couldn’t fall back on that. If it was going to happen, it had to happen through community support alone. That shift felt unfamiliar. So I started reaching out. Texting and calling friends. Reaching out to family. Sitting down with people and explaining what we were trying to build and why it mattered. Having conversations with new connections. Following up. Putting the story into words again and again.
There were conversations that didn’t go anywhere. There were messages that sat unanswered. That was part of it. But there were also people, some close to me, some I had recently met, who stepped up in ways I didn’t expect. And that was the real lesson. If W.A.T.A. is going to grow beyond me, it has to be built that way.
Not because I can personally fund it, but because people believe in it enough to carry it forward together. That week forced that shift. And I’m grateful it did.
During my next meeting with Kabir, I told him I had purchased the filters and was ready to book flights. He paused for a second and said he was honestly surprised I pulled it off, and proud of me that I did. That meant more than I expected. Not because I needed approval, but because this wasn’t just talk anymore. It wasn’t a “maybe.” It was happening.
Seek Discomfort officially came on board, not just as a travel partner, but as a creative partner. Kabir told me the team wanted to collaborate on a shirt to help raise funds for the trip. That felt next level.
I had designed clothes for fun before, for Sodium, but never alongside a brand I genuinely admired. Now, on top of organizing logistics and finishing the fundraising, I was designing a collab tee.
There’s something powerful about crossing that line where doubt turns into action. Before that meeting, this was a possibility. After that meeting, it was real. It was happening.
Flights were booked. Filters were ordered. The collab tee was in production. But there was still more to figure out. If we were going to tie this into the surf competition, we needed to show up fully, not only with water filters, but with something for the kids. Wax, leashes, merch, gear.
So I started reaching out again. A few surf brands stepped up, and the day before my flight I drove down to LA to pick everything up. Bags of donated merch. Wax. Gear. And two copies of the collab tee we were bringing down to photograph for the launch. Holding the shirt in my hands for the first time felt surreal. A week earlier it was just an idea. Now it was real. I packed everything into two large duffle bags, one filled with filters, the other with donations, and headed to the airport.
To El Salvador
I landed in El Salvador with 70 filters, a rental car booked, a hotel confirmed, and still no buckets.
For some reason, buckets are always the piece I can’t quite solve ahead of time. And without buckets, 70 filters don’t mean much. The first day was spent meeting up with Sandy, sitting in on a community meeting about the surf competition, listening to everyone talk through logistics while I quietly kept doing the math in my head. Seventy filters. Zero buckets. I figured I’d end up driving around to hardware stores or trying to piece something together last minute. It wouldn’t have been the first time. (In Thailand Austin and I walked hours in Bangkok looking for buckets)
That night, back at the hotel, I was scrolling through my phone and opened my Instagram messages, which I honestly almost never check. Buried in there was a message from someone asking if we needed help with anything for the trip. I wrote back simply: “Yeah any chance you know how I can get buckets?"
A couple days later, they were ordered and paid for, by supporters of this mission. My task was to go into San Salvador and pick them up. This was another reminder that this trip wasn’t moving forward because I had everything figured out. It was moving forward because people kept stepping in at the exact moment they were needed. Some were close friends. Some were brands I admired. Some were followers I’d never met. But each time there was a gap, someone helped close it.
And that’s starting to feel like the real foundation of this work.
70 Bright Red Buckets & Pupusas
The next day, Kabir and I met up. We looked at the finished shirt in person for the first time, holding this real product that came out of a FaceTime conversation a week earlier. It was surreal in the most grounded way. Clea, Kabir’s girlfriend, joined us, and the three of us headed into San Salvador with two cars to pick up the donated buckets.
We pulled up to a Vidri, basically El Salvador’s version of a bright red Home Depot, and walked in trying to explain that we were there to pick up seventy buckets. Not seven. Seventy.... The employee looked at us, disappeared into the back, and then one by one these bright red plastic buckets started appearing. They stacked them near the front while we figured out how this was actually going to work logistically.
We filled my car first. Back seats down. Trunk packed. Buckets nested inside buckets, sliding around as we tried to maximize space. When my car was full, we looked at each other and realized we weren’t even close. So we started filling Kabir’s car.
At some point we just started laughing. Two cars. Seventy red buckets. No turning back now. After loading them up, we went and sat down for pupusas and let it sink in. A couple weeks ago I had no money and no plan. Now we were in-country, with 70 buckets, a collab tee, a surf competition waiting, and a filter distribution.
That’s when it really hit me.
We headed back to their hostel and decided to do a quick photo shoot for the shirt. Nothing fancy. Just figuring it out in real time. Shooting content on the beach, slightly uncomfortable, very aware of everyone watching us. It felt very on-brand to be promoting a “Seek Discomfort” collaboration while standing there actually living it, pretending to be a model. I did, however, end up getting some rad BTS shots on my film camera.
As we were shooting, a few other people staying at the hostel came up and asked what we were doing. That turned into a conversation. Which turned into explaining the surf competition. Which turned into talking about the filters, the mission, and why we were there. By the end of it, a handful of them wanted to come help the next day. And just like that, the circle got a little bigger.
The surf competition was a couple days away, so it was time to start prepping!
The Community Invites
The next morning, Sandy and I drove back to La Perla with the buckets stacked in the car and started unloading them near the space where we’d host the filter distribution. We spent the morning drilling holes and walking around inviting families to come the next day during the surf competition.
That’s when we met a woman who showed us how she was disinfecting her water. She was using chlorine.
She explained how much she was buying each month, and when she told us she was spending close to $100 on it, it stopped me for a second. That’s not convenience spending. That’s survival spending. It was one of those quiet confirmations that these filters weren’t just a nice add-on to the event. They were needed.
Later that afternoon, in one of those small-world moments that doesn’t make sense until it does, we met someone who was originally from Southern California but from La Perla, (someone who actually works near my area back home). He offered to let us use his place to finish assembling the buckets. So we spread everything out and drilled the rest of the holes there, red plastic shavings covering the floor while we worked through the stack. We finished drilling all the holes, locked up and headed back El Sunzal, where both Sandy and I were staying.
The next morning would be the surf competition and Water Filter day so it was time to get some rest.
The Water We Share
I woke up early, picked up Sandy, and drove to La Perla while the sun was still low. By the time we arrived, the beach was already in motion. Kids waxing boards. Parents staking out patches of shade with plastic chairs. Someone testing the speakers for later. The stage half-built, half-improvised. It felt like the whole town had decided to show up. As Sandy and the team set up the comp, I slipped away to the buckets. Oh how I love 5-gallon buckets.
Slide the adapter into the drilled hole. Washers. Nut. Tighten. Attach the hose. Connect it to the filter. Screw it in. Screw on the white cap. Hook the filter to the bucket. Sticker. Another sticker. Lid lock off. Set the system to the side. Repeat. There’s something meditative about it.
The rhythm came back quickly. A few local guys jumped in again without much conversation, hands working together. We got about 35 filters prepped before the heats really started drawing a crowd. Then I wiped the plastic dust off my hands and walked back toward the shoreline.
For a while, I played photographer, and it was honestly really fun. I was using my grandpa’s old camera, still learning it, and there was something grounding about focusing on waves and faces instead of logistics. No other photographers. No rush. I could move wherever I wanted and catch whatever moments felt right. Kids dropping into waves. Parents yelling from shore. A giant inflatable red Electrolit bottle sitting on the beach.
Out past the lineup, the fishermen were finishing their own competition. When they came back in with their catch, the energy shifted. The competitive edge softened into something communal. Soon soup was being poured into bowls and passed around. People gathered closer.
That’s when Kabir and the Seek volunteers arrived from the hostel. They stepped right into it, celebrating the finalists and handing out merch and gear donated by brands that had stepped up: hoodies, wax, reusable bottles. We handed out shirts and small gifts to families who had come to support the comp. The kids were fired up. You could feel it.
It didn’t feel like an “event.” It felt local. It felt real. And then, almost without announcement, we shifted again. From surf comp… to Water Filter Day.
We set up two tables. Buckets and filters laid out. Volunteers ready. They handed me a microphone, and with help from Sandy and David, who I’d met on that first December trip, we shared why we were there and how the filters worked.
Families rotated through the stations. Surveys filled out. Demonstrations. Questions. Explanations. Volunteers translating and helping wherever they could. One by one, families walked up, completed a survey, and received a filter. Smiles. Thank you's. You could feel the energy around that moment.
And then, just like that, 35 families had clean water, with a plan to come back tomorrow to finish setting up the rest of the filters.
Mario, the guy who had let us use his house to store the filters, invited us to swim at his pool overlooking the beach. A few of us went for a quick, well-earned reset before everyone started saying their goodbyes and heading back to their cars. We were tired. Sandy and I looked at each other and agreed we’d come back the next morning to finish the rest. We walked back toward my car and started packing up the tools.
That’s when a few more families approached us.
Into the Sunset
We were packing up when the first family walked over. “Are there still filters?” We told them we were coming back in the morning.
Then another family approached. Then another. Word had spread. Sandy looked at me. I looked at the buckets still sitting in the back of the car. We were both tired. Sunburned. Ready to call it a day.
Instead, we opened the trunk again. Right there, next to my car, we started drilling. No tables. No microphone. No organized stations. Just the two of us explaining the system again and again.
Slide the adapter in. Tighten. This is how you clean it. Backflush it like this. Don’t let the filter end touch dirty water. Keep the white cap on. Let Sandy know if you have questions. He’ll be back to follow up.
Each family listened carefully. Some nodded. Some asked questions. Some watched closely and held the bucket like it was something fragile. There were little kids standing next to older siblings, moms and dads, abuelas who had been drinking the same contaminated water for years.
The sun kept dropping. The light turned orange. Then softer. Then almost gone. We kept going. By the time it was too dark to comfortably drill, we had installed 64 filters. Only six were left, sitting back in my hotel room since my car could only fit 64 filters plus Sandy.
As the last families walked away from the car, we stood there for a second in the fading light. A few months earlier we had installed two filters together, not knowing if we’d ever come back. Now we had just set up 64 in a single day.
We closed the trunk, finally, and walked over to his sister’s food stall to have a beer and let it all sink in.
The drive back was reflective and motivating. It was amazing to hear Sandy’s perspective on the whole day and his vision for training surfers to continue this work. It felt like he understood exactly what I had been envisioning without me even saying it.
We were on the same wave. But he needed support. A phone. Help with logistics, Sandy only has a motorbike. So as we drove home in the dark, stoked on the future, I quietly started thinking: how do I really make this happen?
The Last 6 Filters
The next morning, we woke up early and headed back to La Perla to finish what we started. Six filters left.
Finding those last families turned into its own little adventure. At one point I found myself driving up, and then very carefully back down, one of the sketchiest roads I’ve ever been on. The kind of narrow, uneven, no-guardrail situation that makes you question your life choices in real time. Hopefully I can show it in a video one day because it doesn’t quite translate on paper.
But eventually, we found them. One by one, we set up the final filters. One of them went to Sandy’s dad. That one felt full circle.
By the time we installed the sixth and final filter, we just stood there for a second. Seventy filters. Done. What started as a “yeah, let’s do it” in December had turned into something real.
We had set out to support the whole community, and we did.
The rest of the trip slowed down in the best way. Kabir, Clea, and I drove out to check out a volcano. Sandy took them out for a sunset surf lesson while I body surfed nearby, soaking in the last few days of warm water before heading back to wetsuit life. It felt earned. It felt balanced. Work and ocean in the same breath.
A Little Reflection
On the flight home, I kept thinking about that drive in the dark after the 64th filter. About Sandy’s vision. About what this could become if we build it right.
But I also kept thinking about the strangers. About Kabir stepping in when he didn’t have to. About Clea helping load buckets in a city she didn’t know. About hostel guests walking up during a random t-shirt shoot and deciding to spend their day helping families get clean water. About Mario letting us use his house to store the buckets. About local guys jumping in to drill without being asked. About someone from Instagram solving our bucket problem. About brands saying yes. About families waiting patiently next to my car at sunset.
None of those people were required to be there. They chose to be.
And that part stuck with me. This wasn’t just about installing filters. It was about watching strangers become teammates for a shared mission. It was about creating a space where a surf competition becomes more than surfing, it becomes a gathering point for clean water, for leadership, for ownership.
That’s something I want to lean into more on future trips. Not only flying in to “deliver” something, but inviting people in. Creating moments where travelers, locals, brands, volunteers, and families all end up working side by side. Where the line between “us helping” and “community leading” starts to blur.
Sandy needs tools. He needs support. He needs structure. But what he also needs is people around him who believe in what he’s building. If we do this well, La Perla won’t be the only community along that coastline we work with.
This trip felt like a turning point, not because of the number 70, but because it showed what’s possible when people show up for each other. And now we build.
What's Next for W.A.T.A.?
La Perla & El Salvador
La Perla isn’t finished just because the installs are done. Over the next few weeks, Sandy will begin structured follow-ups with families, checking in, answering questions, making sure the filters are being used properly, and collecting real feedback. That part matters just as much as distribution. If we’re going to build something sustainable, it has to be owned locally.
We’re also strengthening the ambassador model so this work doesn’t depend on me flying in every time. The goal is simple: equip leaders like Sandy with the tools, support, and structure they need to run with it.
At the same time, we’re looking at how this surf competition + water filter model can expand to other coastal communities in El Salvador. The gathering point is already there. The trust is already there. We just need to build around it thoughtfully. If you want to help support Sandy and the El Salvador program, you can donate here.
Colombia
Next up, we’re heading to Colombia to partner with One Thread Collective for our first foundation-backed trip. It’s a big step for us, not only in scale, but in structure. We’ll be installing 150 filters for 150 families and continuing to refine how we train and support local leaders. You can donate to that program here
Backyard Bowls
And locally, we’re currently running a fundraiser with Backyard Bowls in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. If you order the Blue Dream Bowl or Blue Moon Smoothie this month, you’re directly supporting clean water projects like La Perla. It’s a small action that moves real work forward. (More on that coming soon!)
Water Access To All - 2026
We’re growing, and intentionally. Not bigger for the sake of bigger, but for the sake of building stronger systems. Stronger partnerships. Stronger local leadership.
If you want to be part of what comes next, whether that’s grabbing a bowl, donating monthly, supporting a trip, or simply sharing these stories, it truly matters. And as this story hopefully showed, no amount of help is too small.
This work moves because people move with it, but like you
Closing & Gratitude
And if this trip showed me anything, it’s that when people decide to step in, even in small ways, momentum builds fast. Two filters turned into seventy. A message turned into buckets. A surf competition turned into a clean water network.
We’re still early in this story. But we’re building it the right way and I am stoked to have you all come along this journey.
With gratitude,
Cyrus Maroofian
Founder | Water Access To All
Comments