It's hard to imagine looking at the barefoot surfers who fill El Tunco today, but these green mountains that fall to the Pacific yielded one of the most coveted products of colonial America: balsam. The coastal strip where the town is located is known as Costa del Bálsamo (Balsam Coast), and the name is no coincidence: it comes from the Bálsamo range, the mountains that border the coastline of La Libertad and Sonsonate, where the balsam tree (Myroxylon balsamum) grows, from which an aromatic resin of medicinal uses is extracted.
That resin has a curious story of mistaken identity. As early as 1493, the Spanish physician and botanist Nicolás Monardes documented its properties, and during the colonial period Salvadoran balsam became so valuable that it was exported to Europe. Since it left through the port of Acajutla and traveled in the trade circuits that passed through the Viceroyalty of Peru, it ended up known in the world as 'balsam of Peru', despite coming from these Central American slopes. Balsam was so important to the region that in 1939 it was declared the national tree of El Salvador, along with the maquilíshuat.
The historical reference point of this coast is the city of La Libertad, very close to El Tunco. La Libertad functioned during the 19th century and much of the 20th as one of the main ports of El Salvador, especially for exporting coffee, the great product of the Salvadoran economy. Its pier, from which goods were loaded and unloaded and fishing activity took place, is a historical landmark of the region and remains today an emblematic place, with its seafood market.
In that context of balsam, coffee, port and fishing, the beaches of the area —among them El Tunco— were small fishing villages, still unaware of the tourist fame that would come much later. Life revolved around the sea as a source of livelihood, not as an attraction for visitors.
Before becoming the surf capital of El Salvador, El Tunco was a small fishing village on the Costa del Bálsamo, one more of the beaches of this coastline traditionally dedicated to fishing. Daily life revolved around the sea, with families that lived off artisanal fishing and the activities of the coastal environment.
The place's name has a picturesque origin, tied to the geography. According to local tradition, 'El Tunco' derives from a rock formation that emerges from the sea in front of the beach and that, seen from a certain angle, resembles the silhouette of a lying 'tunco' —'tunco' is the Salvadoran word (and of other areas of Central America) for pig or hog—. That pig-shaped rock gave the town its name and became, over time, its most recognizable symbol, present in all the sunset photographs.
For a long time, El Tunco was a quiet place, little known outside the region. The transformation that would bring it international fame as a surf destination would only come in recent decades, driven by the quality of its waves and the growth of tourism on the Salvadoran coast.
El Tunco's great transformation came with surfing. It was above all in the 1990s that traveling surfers began to spread the word about this coast: consistent, long-riding breaks that break over rocky bottoms —the famous La Bocana point break, in front of El Tunco, and the long, gentler wave of neighboring El Sunzal—. Those waves, often compared to those of top-tier destinations, put El Salvador on the world surf map and quickly gained fame among the international community.
Word of mouth among surfers, together with the proximity of the area to San Salvador and the international airport (less than an hour away), meant that more and more visitors came to El Tunco in search of waves. The old fishing village gradually filled with hostels, surfcamps, surf schools, restaurants and bars, developing a backpacker, young and international atmosphere that became part of its appeal. The sunset by the El Tunco rock, the nightlife and the surf culture forged the identity of the place, where today surfers are the vast majority of visitors.
Thus, El Tunco went from being an unknown village to becoming the most famous beach destination in El Salvador and a surf reference in Central America, drawing travelers from all over the world. Together with neighboring beaches like El Sunzal and El Zonte, it consolidated the La Libertad coast as a first-order tourist hub.
In recent years, El Salvador made a decisive bet on surf tourism along its whole Pacific coast under the brand 'Surf City', a strategy of promotion and investment in infrastructure (coastal highway, La Libertad boardwalk, services) that sought to position the country as a world surf destination. This coastal strip of La Libertad —with El Tunco, El Sunzal and El Zonte as star spots— was at the center of that bet.
The most visible move was bringing top-level competitions. In May-June 2021, the beaches of El Sunzal and La Bocana, in El Tunco, hosted the ISA World Surfing Games, with hundreds of surfers from more than 50 nations, an event that also served as an Olympic qualifier. El Salvador repeated as host in 2023, again with a qualifying stage toward the Paris 2024 Games, and continued organizing ISA world championships in the following years. All that media exposure reinforced the country's image as a surf paradise, and El Tunco, thanks to its prior fame and its atmosphere, established itself as one of the hearts of that movement.
In parallel, the nearby El Zonte beach gained global renown as 'Bitcoin Beach', for a pioneering community experience of using bitcoin as a means of payment, prior to the national adoption of bitcoin as legal tender in 2021. That adoption, however, was reversed in January 2025: by agreement with the IMF, El Salvador reformed its Bitcoin Law and the cryptocurrency ceased to be mandatory legal tender, with its use remaining voluntary and the dollar as the reference currency. Even so, the nickname and part of the crypto dynamic survive in El Zonte. All of this made this coast a point of international attention, combining surf, tourism and innovation. Today, El Tunco embodies that new tourist face of the country: an old fishing village turned into a showcase of the Salvadoran Pacific.