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Published: April 11th 2012
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Eldorado Surf Resort
This is where we stayed in El Zonte for 5 nights. BEAUTIFUL hotel! For Semana Santa this year, I decided I wanted to head to El Salvador since it's one of the only Central American countries I have left to travel before I leave to head back to Canada in June. I do still have Panama and Belize as well, but I figure I can do those some time in the future as a trip from Canada.
Paule had also never seen El Salvador and Bridgette decided to come along as well, so the 3 of us girls were off on Saturday, March 31st around 5am - heading to the Ticabus station to catch our 6am bus. I think it cost us about $30 round trip for our ticket! AMAZING! (Fairly comfortable bus too with a bathroom that isn't the nicest but functions for emergencies).
It was about an 8 hour journey from Tegucigalpa to San Salvador, including the stop at the border and a gas station stop for bathrooms and food. The border was NUTS! The bus driver tells us to get off the bus and line up at the window to get our passport stamped. Everyone was pushing and some local men were making money by taking people's passports and
Eldorado Hotel
View of the grounds from our room's private balcony pushing their way to the front (guess you pay them to make it go faster?) and so it was chaos. We finally pushed our way through and handed in our passports all at once so that they'd be processed together. I think we were at the border for about 1.5 hours. When we got to the El Salvador side, they send officials onto the bus to check the documents - our first sign that things in El Salvador are much more organized than Honduras!
Around 2:30pm, we finally arrived at the bus station in San Salvador where we had set up a driver through our hotel in El Zonte. Trouble was, the bus was late and the hotel apparently did not read Paule's 6am email saying that we'd be arriving later than originally thought. We called the hotel and the owner said the driver had waited and that he left. The whole thing was a mix up and the owner was very rude to Paule on the phone. We had purposely chosen
Eldorado Surf Resort because it's owned by French Canadians from Quebec. We were imediately turned off by the owner's attitude but since we had already pre-paid online, we had
Our room upstairs at the hotel
Room on 2nd floor... sleeping part on right, bathroom behind concrete wall and patio to get to that hotel. We ended up hiring a local taxi driver that the bus station called for us, which ended up being a blessing in disguise. The driver's name is Arnold and ended up being our personal driver multiple times during the trip.
Anyways, we arrived at the hotel and Oliver (the owner) tried to make up for his rudeness on the phone, saying that he was sorry for the confusion and that he just meant we'd have to cover some of the charges, etc. He seemed cool and our opinions changed for the better.
The hotel is BEAUTIFUL! The set up of the hotel is gorgeous and feels like a little piece of paradise. There's a pool, a bar poolside, a ping pong table, several hammocks and beach chairs, a bamboo beach bed, and a nice eating area. Our room was a small walk up a set up stairs to our own private balcony/patio. The room had a double bed hanging from ropes and then a ladder climbing to a loft bed. The bathroom was outside on the patio but accessible through a door in the room and surrounded by a concrete wall, so it
Beach Patio
This is the hotel's patio right on the beach felt like you were outside. The whole bathroom/patio area was covered by a thatched roof. There was SO much vegetation that you really felt you were in the middle of a garden. The hotel was also RIGHT on the beach, with a few steps from the patio to the sand. The sand is volcanic sand so there were some parts that were very black and felt more like mud!
We spent 5 nights at the hotel and hanging out on the beach. It was SO chill and the beach never felt crowded or busy. There were so many hammocks, beach chairs, or chill places to relax in, so it was easy to spend entire afternoons with a book or soaking up the sun.
One day we took a local bus (school bus referred to as a "chicken bus") for 50 cents from El Zonte into La Libertad. OH YA! The currency of El Salvador used to be the Colon, but they switched to the American Dollar in the 90s I believe. Apparently 40% of the economy of El Salv are remittances from family members that have gone to the States and send the money back to El Salvador.
El Zonte Beach
a beautiful beach on the Pacific Coast of El Salvador! Anyways, the bus was easy and even walking around La Libertad, we kept commenting on how organized, clean, and safe we felt. We got some lunch (fried chicken, rice, and salad) for about $2 from a small roadside stand, picked up some things from the grocery store and walked around town.
Unfortunately, our opinion of "Oli" the hotel owner continued to change back and forth. On our 3rd or 4th night, we discovered yet another cockroach in our room. These are common and typical in Central America so we weren't thinking the hotel was gross, we just were freaking out trying to kill it. Well, Oli comes up to our room and knocks on the door asking if there was a problem. We said there was a cockroach and he made us feel belittled by asking "Well where do YOU live? We're in the middle of a garden." We felt like little girls getting in trouble from Dad. He gave us spray and left. The next night we had a bat in our room, (injured, so it was crawling around on the floor) and we were scared to even go and get the owner but had no other
Black Volcanic Sand
Felt more like mud! choice. This one he handled much better and even made a joke that we were the lucky ones to have things in our room two nights in a row! We couldn't figure him out.... hot and cold. Then we saw him smoking pot out in the open, at the bar, in the middle of the afternoon and thought maybe drugs could explain the changes in mood????
Well, besides the unprofessionalness of the owner, the hotel was amazing. The set-up is great and the scenary and location: beautiful! They also have a woman from England who works as the head chef in the kitchen, who makes AMAZING and delicious meals with great presentation too - like eating in a fancy restaurant back home. Would I stay there again? Hard to say.
We met some Americans who are also teachers in Honduras, and were staying at our hotel. On our last day in El Zonte, they drove us into El Tunco (a nearby town that's a little more touristy) in the back of their truck. It's a cute little town with cute shops. I bought a new sarong since my other has started ripping. We enjoyed lunch on the beach
La Libertad
local woman drying her fish in the sun on the beach of La Libertad! and then head back to the hotel to meet Arnold, our personal taxi who had driven us to El Zonte in the first place. He met us at the hotel and we were off for 3 nights in San Salvador!
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