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Published: January 16th 2009
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Tim Version:
* Returned to San Salvador for my last stint in El Salvador and to check out some sights close to it.
* Said a very sad goodbye to both Eve and El Salvador - long term travel´s huge downside of having to leave all you´ve fallen in love with over and over again.
The version mixed with happiness, sadness, excitement, and a whole other soup of emotions:
The return to San Miguel ended up being quite a luxurious bus ride, at 6:30am I might add which I thought was fairly impressive as yes I get up early but not much need or want exists when you have a beautiful girl beside you.
Here in San Miguel we copped one of the worst sights of the trip while eating breakfast... a guy next to where we just bought the paper serving all sorts of sweets and stuff promptly turned towards our window on the other side of the street, unzipped his pants, and proceeded to pee with normal life continuing all around him. I won´t go into detail but his apparatus, which neither of us avoided seeing, was somehow half a dozen shades darker than
Roadside Coffee!
Why don't we have this! the rest of him. *shiver*. After done he happily zipped himself up, looking like quite a bit had been left on his extremely grubby hands, then he continued serving people all the food and stuff again. I´m glad I already ate as that would have been a real appetite killer!
We hopped a normal bus to San Salvador and my anti malaria meds were making me feel deadly crook so I ended up head on Eve´s lap sleeping for much of the ride. San Salvador, now feeling like home, was a wicked sight to arrive at when feeling sick as I knew it pretty well by now. We headed to La Estancia once again. It had a kitchen and Eve and I were both itching to cook up something, anything, just so long as it was what we made! First, however, we both had a craving for good Thai food, so our mission, before we had to leave each other, was to find a restaurant that Dizzy told us about. It turned out to be Mai Thai at Multiplaza. Tonight though it would be a bit of a waste so insetad we cooked up some awesome food in the
hostel and left it at dinner, movies and wine in house. Whether this were at a hostel, or a house together, wouldn´t of made any difference in how comfortable and normal it felt. Doesn´t sound like much, but to have that after solo traveling for a while, it becomes just as exciting as climbing a volcano =)
The next day it was Multiplaza and Thai food time! First however I wanted to find a dicatafone to help me with my Spanish. I´ve found that its fine learning the language from other travellers and from tutors, but with the more regional areas and lower levels of education, and often therefore much more hurried slurred speech and slang words, the Spanish I´ve learnt is only useful for when I am the one asking questions and know what the conversation is about. Hopefully a dictaphone and some recorded local conversations will remedy that. Maybe not... who knows, its a new toy anyway! I found what I wanted, and afterwards I visited Joya de Ceren, an archaelogical site not too far away. There I got to both see some raw excavation work going on, some impressive buildings despite the site being tiny, and
got to workout my dictafone with a tonne of info from the tour guide about stuff. Perfect! The museum was closed for construction though so my time was cut a bit short there!
Now Multiplaza... before reading this, you´ve gotta understand that I´ve been around tin shed and basic one or 2 room concrete houses a lot, staying usually in the cheapest places I can find... this sounds ridiculus but this place blew me away. Bussing through the richer parts of El Salvador on the way to it I discovered that really if you wanted to live here but not give up the more organised kinda living at home, its all here. Footpaths (wider than one person, and with grass on either side!!!), houses with letterboxes, areas with houses and no shops, no blaring Utes with speakers, landscaped gardens, it was all there! It all comes at a price, but I guiltily have to admit I loved it. Then there was MultiPlaza, huge! Well, not really... but the entrance is pretty massive and looks damn good I reckon. Clean, well lit, even the carpark entrance and exit looked like they should be taking your keys and parking your car
for you, clothing stores and restaurants that I couldn´t afford even at home, its all there. The money money money shopping part of town. Mai Thai had a good little spot with compfy chairs, and a good little private chilled area for us with some tranquil music giong in the background. The food - awesome! Real thai food, real hot thai green curry, it was bliss! I got some odd funky drink with beer, coffee, and some licors I think and it turned out to be incredible too. To top it all off we followed with a dessert of brownies and icecream. Heh the cost? About 2 days worth of cheap eating for me, if not more, but damn it was worth it! Eve had the most incredible looking tasting place of all sorts of meats with various dipping sauces, some camomile tea, and we both ended with big greedy smiles. We enjoyed it enough to totally forget about the time and so missed the last bus, so we hadda taxi it back, a little more costly than we wanted, but still a wicked finish to a beautiful night.
Then on my second last day came the worst part
- saying goodbye to Eve. This hurt like hell to be honest and I didn't wanna leave her, and we both delayed it as much as possible by having a good breakfast together then chilling in the park (private as the park was all locked up so we jumped the fence). No more elaboration as the rest is in my head and heart but this is the biggest down side of this travel. BUT thats what I wanna do, the travelling, and I don't want to stop it for anything until I´m done so its the way its gotta be and the way I knew it would be when I started.
After that stuff I went to Immigration, got another 90 days on my passport, posted some parcels home for Christmas, and bussed my way to Metapan. There I had my last typical El Salvadorian meal, and loved every minute of it! Pupusas con queso y frijoles, and a licuados con banano y papaya con leche. Heh not the greatest looking meal, and I'm sure the fat levels have got to be pretty damn high, but damn it tasted good! Metapan is a basic place, and I stayed there
Slum Cities again
and one hell of a dirty waterway the night then hopped the border at about 6:30am the next morning, a good early start for Guatemala...
El Salvador run down? Incredible, awesome, friendly, sunny and tropical, my favourite Central American country, on par world wide with Australia and Portugal all for different things. It is so underrated it is not funny, and the advice in lonely planet is next to useless (it may have been correct at time of writing but El Salvador has changed much), especially all the worries about security. The cities are nicer, the buses work better, the food is good, the people are friendly and helpful, and all at equally as cheap as Nicaragua most of the time. What more could you want?
As for my quest of where I might want to live next (what country at least), El Salvador is now up there with Portugal for sure =) I wonder how many more I'll add to that list before the trip is over!
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