El Salvador:We like to help!

Ok. Well now im in Danli Honduras working as a voluntary physio. the last 2 weeks have been mad entering El Salvador and Honduras has introduced me to another level of weirdness.

El Salvador what can i say, was there 6 days, never seen anything like it. This country does not have tourists, in 6 days i think i saw 5 tourists. for this reason your mere presence attracts attention like you cant imagine i was starting to think i had 2 heads the amount people stared. I entered the country via Guatemala, the weirdest border you could imagine or at least it was until i left the country for honduras but more of that later. I crossed the border, talk about quiet not one other person crossing and i was told to wake up the policeman who was asleep and meant to be stamping my passport. Reluctantly woke him didnt want to pee him off to much. I soon realised the first problem i was going to have in El Salvador, it was Easter week the buses were packed and the only place to put my rucksack was inside the bus. nightmare you try lugging 20 kg on your back in the tinyest of buses makes you public enemy number 1 pretty fast or at least i thought it would! but no we are in El Salvador and they LOVE to help! Can i hold your bag? can i put it on my lap? can i carry it for you? i was totally confused what the hell was going on was it some elaborate plan to steal my bag? no people just wanted to help. amazing.

Got to Santa Ana, my book describes it as one of the most amazing towns in el salvador! well if that was one of the most amazing towns id hate to see the worst. There is nothing there a cathedral and thats it. However i must mention that the best thing about this town was the had some british food i was able to eat a box of coco pops in one day!

So what did i do there well i met the only 2 other tourists in the town and went to a lake one day and a volcano the next. The volcano was amazing it was like a sauna with steam rising out of it! The journey to the volcano typifies El Salvador perfectly. We went to the bus station i asked 3 different people where the bus for the volcano leaves, one doesnt know despite working there all their life, and two point to the same place, a freak starts hassling me for me money and can feel my blood pressure starting to go off the scale when i realise that these two people have told me the wrong place and that the bus has left from another station. seriously peeved only here to see the volcano theres nothing else and then this freak starts wanting to talk about chelsea beating liverpool and John Terry this is becoming my worst nightmare.

Me and my friend decide to see if we can somehow get to the volcano, we take another bus that stops about 1 hour from the volcano and then the plan is for me to find someone to take pity on us and give us a lift. Guess what the first person i talk to asks his friend who is going in the direction to give us a lift and we make it before the bus! This is El Salvador nobody knows anything bus times, the price of things, anything but they have this weird desire to help even when sometimes its a hinderance.

After Santa Ana i had to make my way to the honduran border to be honest i was dreading it the capital San Salvador where i would have to change buses sounds like hell on earth. so anyways get on the bus its a nightmare people sitting 3 to a seat my bloody rucksack seemed to be growing by the second, sit by this woman who insists that she take the weight of my bag on her lap, she then refuses to let me continue my journey without her, makes me get off the bus and shares a taxi to the bus station, even though she wasnt going there? I get there the helpful taxi driver shows me which bus i want but guess what he tries to put me on the wrong bus, destination the other side of the country, i knew he was wrong but he insisted he was right! Get off the bus surrounded by 4 guys fighting over me like piranhas trying to make me get on their bus, tugging at my arm and my bag. just exploded 5 days of people trying to help me id had enough, i honestly didnt realise i could be that scary and they ran off.

So i continue my journey to San Miguel, again want to spend as little time there as possible. straight off the bus onto another but the guy tells me that today its not going to the town i want to go to only half way no particular reason given except that he didnt feel like driving too far today! I thought he was joking but he was been serious. So i get on the bus, woman sits beside me i ask her what i should do, she immediately invites me to stay at her house! im thinking is this safe? Then she starts saying ive an american boy living in my house hes a volunteer like you. I just have this vision of this woman collecting foreigners on buses and then feeding them up to eat or something.

Anways decide to go with it, spent the afternoon sleeping in a hammock in her garden while she made my dinner. Eventually met the american guy it wasnt a lie. I also met Don Julio, who lived in one of the rooms he was the local bean seller had 4 girlfriends and came equipped with machette and cowboy hat, a 14 year old boy who has quit school to sell mangos and his 31 year old dad who at first i thought had a mental illness but he was actually pissed out his skull at 10am on easter sunday. Don Julio came in very useful i soon realised that i had not really researched the border crossing, first of all i had no honduran money lempiras and there is no bank or money exchangers at this border because its in the mountains and the town in honduras i was going to arrive in also has no bank. so anyways god bless the bean seller he gives me some lempiras at a very favourable exchange rate.

The next day i leave my new friends and spend the night in a town of only 3000 people, the helpful landlady tells me the wrong time and place to catch my bus but by now im clued up on El Salvador so i ignore her advice and go to a differrent bus stop earlier. Yes they love to help here.

The journey was i amazing i wondered why it was supposed to take 3 hours to do 35 miles, it soon became apparent, a mountanious road with potholes worse than cuba and thats saying something with the added obstacle of cows and horses in the way! What a weird border no passport check just a honduran policeman getting on and saying welcome to my country please look after your children?!

Anyways the journey was intresting, this girl gets on with a massive pan of soup to transfer to the next village and the high level of intelligence that is demonstrated everyday in latin america puts it on the floor well you know what happens next. The driver and the guy behind him are covered in chicken soup! it was everywhere and the girl just sits there like a tool.

Then she gets of with half a bowl and everyone else gets off i wonder what they are going to do? share the food? change buses? No in what is known as doing it Guatemalan style they all start peeing in the middle of the village! I felt so left out but it just didnt seem right. There was a European Union sign there as suposedly the EU funds this road! well the funds must be in somebodies pocket and people were peeing on that! thats gratitude for you!

When i arrived in Marcala, honduras, this woman asked me to get her box down off the roof (another latin American dwarf!) i didnt really think what i was doing put my hand in the box next thing i knew i was been pecked by this rooster.

Eventually arrived in Danli after 12 hours of a journey i could never forget. So El Salvador they just love to help. If you think those stories were weird Honduras has already hit new levels. The further down you get the crazier Central America seems.

Bye.

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