San Salvador

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Spent a fantastic last few days at El Tunco on the coast of El Salvador. La Guitarra resort proved to be the perfect balance of the friendliness and chilled atmosphere of a hostel but with lovely little cabins, swimming pool (although the smallest worldwide!) giving it a resort feel. Probably one of the most relaxing places ever often we would sit outside our little cabin and someone would be singing and strumming a guitar while others took part in an impromptu yoga class as one of the girls staying was a professional teacher. The waves just became huge too and the last day we were watching continuous sets of 12 to 15 feet, even the locals were commenting it was big.

We had a early flight to Nicuragua so even though the taxi is just 45 minutes we did not want to risk the local taxi man not picking us up at 5am so opted for a night in San Salvador the capital to be much closer. Our taxi only took 30 mins to the hotel in San Salvador and we have learnt now that everyone here is training as a racing driver so grabbed our seat belts and held on as he took delight in overtaking 5 cars at a time. Anyway lucky for us we had a reward night with Holiday Inn to use by Xmas so we used this for the Real San Salvador Intercontinental. Yep luxury for the night!

Well there is nothing like arriving at a nice hotel as a backpacker. We just looked so out of place in our combats, volcano damaged trainers and dusty packs that we just laughed. But my oh my after 7 weeks away from my own bed I have never appreciated a luxury room so much in my life, the pillows, sheets, fab products in the bathroom and hot water and the first bath I had seen I actually wanted to get into so everything was just great. Right in town so we wandered across to the shopping centre to bimble around and it reminded us of the Whitgift 20 years ago but without big brand shops. I said to Neil we blended in quite well with our tans but he just laughed and said we would if I was not the only blond in a massively packed shopping centre full of dark haired locals doing their Xmas shopping! BTW I can confirm that Santa Claus here wears exactly the same outfit as my dad does when he does his turn for Rotary at Xmas, beard and full red and white suit so he must have been boiling!

Had a fab meal in Tony Romas and it was great to escape rice and beans for a night before a lazy evening flicking channels on our unlimited cable at the hotel. Easy peasy flight to Nicuragua at just 35 minutes and for the first time the staff really checked our passports to check our days and which countries we had visited while in the Central American Alliance.

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Photos

El Tunco
Some of the big surf on our last day in El Salvador

La Guitarra
Called mum and dad from my hammock!

Real San Salvador
Our luxury home for the night

San Salvador
The strip central San Salvador