El Salvador

---

---

Dear Blog Readers,

So with Volcan Fuego fuming behind us and a ridiculously uncomfortable shuttle ride that ended up lasting 7 hours instead of the advertised 4 hours due to the main road being blocked off - bloody volcano! First impressions of El Salvador from the window view of the shuttle bus (once I got my bunched up knees out of the way of my face) were that it was very quiet as we wound through some small villages. The lack of tourist infrastructure was obvious and there were very few buses, signposts or obvious tourist spots en route. The two hour drive from the border took us along the beautiful Pacific coastline until we stopped at our destination - El Zonte.

We stepped out onto black sand outside small locally run restaurants. The nearest hostel seemed pleasant enough and we got ourselves a nice little room and dumped our things before jumping straight into the pool! It was a bit late for the surf so this seemed like a good alternative! We chatted the night away with three South Africans, Laura, Camilla and Pete, who were great fun, and depressingly, reminded us of Leonard and Michelle - I think one of them even said, "Oh my hat!" at one point *tears*. We were later joined by two Brits, Harry and Charlie. Charlie is from Easingwold and Harry's Mum went to Nelson Thom secondary school - madness! We ended the night heading down to the beach in the pitch black where a cool party was going on with a little bonfire on the beach!

After a hearty breakfast we hired some surfboards (which took a lot longer than expected!) and headed out to the famous "break" to check out some "gnarley" waves. Laura refused to let me go out in my goggles because it wasn't "rad" enough. The weather was perfect and the sea was heaving with surfers. As I was only surfing "whitewater" rather than "greenies", the surf was perfect for me and I was standing up in no time. Laura wasn't having as good a time since the waves weren't suitable for her really. The better waves were around the other side on a "point break" but nobody else was going there because it was too rocky. So once again, the non-surfer ended up enjoying the surf more than the surfer. Ungnarley. We spent the rest of the day relaxing in the hammocks and enjoying the beautiful sunset in the evening before settling down to a movie which took a decision-making session of astronomical proportions before arriving at watching "Stone".

Dark clouds loomed overhead the day after but we headed out for a surf anyway - you're going to get wet anyway, right?! The now deserted beach was rattled by a huge thunderstorm which was spectacular and the surfing wasn't bad either. Laura hired a bodyboard which was great fun but much more difficult to catch the waves - a new found respect! In the afternoon we managed to get to El Tunco, a more famous surfing beach along the coast. The dirty river water from the rain caused the sea near the beach to turn a horrible brown colour and a lot of the rubbish ended up on the beach. I saw the biggest rat I've ever seen too so we certainly didn't feel like we'd missed out by going to El Zonte!

We'd checked online for how to get to Nicaragua from San Salvador and we knew we'd miss the early Tica Buses but found a King Quality bus that left at 11:30am and would cost $32. When we'd travelled on two buses to get from El Tunco to San Salvador and a taxi to the King Quality office we were then greeted by this bloke saying it would cost $53 and it wouldn't leave until 2:30pm!! We debated whether we would spend more by staying overnight and getting the Tica Bus in the morning or if we could get across to Nicaragua on "chicken buses" - we decided to give it a go!

So we got a taxi to the other bus station and literally ran onto a moving bus to Santa Rosa De Lima ($6) which actually turned out to be a proper nice coach. About three hours later we jumped onto another bus which took us to the border for $1. We got our exit stamps out of El Salvador and our entry stamps into Honduras to cross the small piece of land that needs crossing to get to Nicaragua. After a quick lunch we pushed on to Choluteca for $1.50 and because we had missed the last bus to the border, we were dropped off at a barely passable hotel which put us up for $5 each. Amazingly we didn't wake up riddled with bed bugs and ran to catch a bus to San Marcos de Colon for $2 where we had to get a collectivo taxi as there were no buses to the border for $1. We were then able to get a bus from the border (which was much quieter and no extra $3 for "city tax", "metropolitan tax" or "bullshit tourist tax") to Esteli for $3.

Consequently, although our journey took on 7 different buses, it saved us over $40 but much more than that, we were able to see a lot more El Salvador and Honduras that we otherwise wouldn't have seen. Furthermore, the generosity of the people in helping us catch the buses, get our bags on and off the buses and make sure that we were heading in the right direction meant that getting from A to B was much more easier than we were anticipating. Admittedly, we were incredibly lucky that almost every bus we caught was either just leaving (meaning we had to run and catch it as it was moving!) or we only had to wait a few minutes before we got on the move again.

So if you're ever in the same situation as we were in - you can do it on the chicken buses and you'll probably have more fun doing it than being freezing cold on an air conditioned Tica Bus!

Tink and Laura

---

Photos

El Zonte
Sunset in El Zonte

Cards
Learning new card games from Charlie and Harry.

Loser
Laura losing sensationally at the new game.

Interesting Drink!
Charlie supping on an interesting drink...

Breakfast
Harry and Laura getting some breakfast in.

Bridge Over Troubled Water
Nice gardens in a cafe near Esteli.