"Surfing" around El Salvador

Hola amigos ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Since I know that most of you don't know much about El Salvador I will make a short introduction about the smallest Central America's country.

Actually it's a bit similar to my Slovenia. It's small - almost the same size as Slovenia, but with a population of 7 million people it's "a bit" more populated.

El Salvador emerged from a decade-long civil war not so long ago and on a top of that various natural disasters (like earthquakes, hurricanes, ...) are still (tooooo) often. Beside natural disasters Salvadorans have huge problems with violence. Gangs tend to hang in the tough neighborhoods and police control most of the tourist areas.

Everything in El Salvador is patrolled by guards holding big guns...and with everything I really mean everything! They are not guarding only banks and hotels but even bakerys, pharmacies, food stores, boutiques and even food stalls on the street. Everything.
Poverty and unemployment are atill a big problem here and with 30% of the population below the poverty line El Salvador enjoys the highest minimum wage in Central America.

One of the best parts in El Salvador are extremly helpful and almost universally friendly Salvadorans...when we asked one person on the bus for help or direction immidiately 1/2 of the people on the bus responded and tried to help us (or someone even went with us).


OK


We started in the 2nd largest city - Santa Ana - where first we had to deal with big climate dhange. We were sweating even if we were just sitting and doing nothing. We spent there a couple of days, soaking up the bustling atmosphere, eating pupusas (round cornmeal dough stuffed with a combination of cheese, beans, pork or smt else) and watching movies in home feel Casa Frolaz guest house.

From there we made a move through the hearth of coffee country along the "Ruta de las Flores" (flower road) to a relaxed colonial small town - Juayua. Every weekend they have food fair where we tried some of region's cuisine. Chillin' , hiking to the nearby waterfalls
and crater lakes...days were passing by and it was about time for our first beach after 2 months (!!!!!!!).
El Salvador is a steadily growing surf destination with kilometeres of world-class breaks and virtually no one on them. First we decided to go to less developed El Zonte beach where it's all just about surfing. Since strong ripcurrents proliferate throughout the whole coast it's immpossible and tooo dangerous to swim!

Saso wanted to learn how to surf, but waves were way to high for learning. After a couple of days he just gave up and we moved to another beach El Tunco where we met nice Canadians - Marie, Sebastian and Jay. Basically we were eating sea food all the time...celebrating Saso's big 30, chillin' and having a really good time.
Saso even managed to spent a couple of hours on a surf board, but then he realized that it's much harder then it looks (and he said that now he has an "old body", cause he is over 30). but it's true...waves were really too high.

Rainy season started. We experianced first rain, moved to El Salvador's highest town - Alegria - with cooler temperatures. Quiet Alegria with it's flower lined porches, crater lake and coffee plantations really is El Salvador's unsung gem.
Here we met again with Daniel from Sweden (we met at Lake Atitlan in Guatemala) and traveled together to huge and busy San Salvador (the capital with app. 2 million people) with fast food chains on every corner. No wonder that most of the people here are overweighted.
A nice change was Suchitoto with it's lake Suchitlan (the main provider of water and hydroelectric power for El Salvador) and waterfall Los Terceros (with its magma rock formation). Even without water it was really interesting.

That's it.

Friendly people, tastefull coffee, surfing, guns, delicious sea food, crater lakes and much, much more... El Salvador is simply great!!!!!!


JANA


ps> right now we are already in Utila, Honduras...tomorrow I start with my advance dive course...Saso is doing his dive master, so we will stay here for a while and then...who knows...

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