Blogs from San Salvador, Central, El Salvador, Central America Caribbean

We arrived to San Salvador on Thursday, late afternoon. Arnold (our personal taxi driver we kept calling when we needed someone) dropped us off at the hotel (Hotel Tazumal House) just for enough time to check in, drop off our stuff, and then drove us to a nearby mall called Metro Centro. Driving through San Salvador, we kept mentioning how much better it seemed than Tegucigalpa (or "Tegucighetto" as we started calling it). The streets were lit, lines were painted on the roads, the roads were straight and neighbourhoods seemed organized. There was a difference between residential and commercial sections. The whole city just seemed planned and though-out, whereas Tegus is a sloppy mess of stuff just splattered everywhere. We were blown away by the mall too. It was SOOOOO big, there was no way we ... read more

We have now passed the halfway point of our one month visit to El Salvador as well as our halfway point of our 3 countries in 3 month part of our travels. Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador have an agreement where you can get a visa to pass between the countries for 90 days. We can only have the car in one country for 30 days, so we decided to try to cover 3 countries in the 90 days. After visiting Guatemala for 1 month and now in El Salvador for 2 weeks, we have 2 weeks left in El Salvador and then 30 days in Nicaragua. Halfway through and we’re about pooped out. We spent the first few days in San Salvador visiting malls, fast food and local tourist attractions. After getting our fill ... read more

January 20th, 2012 El Salvador We left the Ticabus terminal a little late and arrived at the El Salvador border around 5 in the afternoon. It took well over an hour to clear the border, with us simply following along and doing what our fellow passengers were doing. We also converted our remaining Guatemalan quetzals for US dollars, the currency in use in El Salvador. Of course, the money changers try to take advantage of ignorant tourists and offered us only $21 US for our 300 quetzals. They used fancy math on their calculators to justify their offer. They were using a simple trick, but I had checked the rates on the net the night before and knew what we should get, and we finally settled for $36. Quite an experience! We arrived in San Salvador ... read more