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Published: November 19th 2009
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I changed my plans slightly today. Instead of headng to San Miguel, I took a detour to little place in the mountains called Alegria. My guide book raved about it, and at the very least it would be so much cooler up there in the mountains at 1,200m. The ride out of San Salvador was pretty straight forward, and traffic dissipated at the 11km mark. Ever since my ride over the Andes in 2005, I have had a new appreciation for mountains (I know Shauna will not like this comment). While they are a lot of work to climb, the scenary more than makes up for the hard work. Vale la pena as they say spanish. As well, unless you hit a plateau, you are always rewarded on the downside. :-)
My funny story for the day happened near Alegeria. I had heard what I thought was gun fire for a couple of kilometers, but it sounded like it was off in the distance. However, after a lull, it sounded VERY close. It actually sounded like it was coming just around the corner. So, faced with this interesting dilema what do I do?
a) Turn around and give up
the 1,200 meters I had climed to this point -- not a chance
b) Stop and ensure it was first safe to proceed -- this would be the right thing to do
c) Ring my bell profusely as I round the bend
I picked ¨C¨. When I cycled around the bend, there were three police officers target practising with their pistols into the side of the mountain. As I rode by, I put my arms up in the air, as to indicate that I was being held up by them. They all laughed. :-)
As I walked around Alegria, I was not to be disappointed. There were no formal accomodations, but people were renting out rooms in their homes. It was apparent that this is a bit of a tourist town for Salvadoreans, as I could tell by the number of restaurants and little speciality stores. The streets were also so clean. I even found a nice little restaurant to try my first steak dinner, and again I wasn´t disappointed. It reminded my very much of what I had in Argentina and Chile.
As I keep on passing through town after town, I continue to see a
lack of anything older than a 100 years. While earthquakes have taken their toll on the buildings of this country, each city or town seems to have rebuilt something. It is usually the church, but in many El Salvadorean towns the chuch has been replaced with something modern, but not all that attractive. This is very different from Guatemala, where nearly every town has preserved its colonial church.
Another thing that seems to be very Salvadorean is the women, many of them overweight, wearing very tight clothing. Do they not realize that tight fitting clothes on overweight women is not all that flattering...
I decided to change my title to the volcano tour from the gun tour. While guns are quite prevalent here, I must admit it is really no different than in Guatemala. However, throughout my trip so far, there has always been at least one volcano in site while I was riding. I have come to love volcanoes. They are so grand and majestic, but still always unique. Tomorrow will be no different, as San Miguel (third largest city in El Salvador) has an active one outside of it.
It is back down to the
heat and humidity tomorrow... I have a day off in San Miguel before heading to Honduras.
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