Blogs from Western, El Salvador, Central America Caribbean - page 3

Having nice friends is good but it makes departure hard, but somehow I got away THE TRIP was not waiting , it sat in the back of my mind telling me to get a move on. Yesterday I did, it didn't start to good , woke up with the old friend Montezuma and his revenge taking it out on me. What a miserable feeling that is when you wake up and you know that is no some pretty girl kissing you but just Montezuma laughing at you. The early start was a goner but modern medicine works wonders so by 11 am I had my shit together, started up my old pal The mighty KTM. Of course I fucked up royally , not having checked out the settings on the GPS, it did what i was ... read more

Probably like most people in the world, El Salvador hadn't really entered into my general consciousness, apart perhaps as the title of a song by Athlete back in 2003! (http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858505487/) In my time travelling through South and Central America I had met a grand total of one person that had been there, and so this, combined with the fact it would continue my trip's “achievement” of having visited every South and Central American country (admittedly I have to exclude the isolated Guayane, French Guyana and Suriname from that though!) it seemed just the ticket for a few days of my time! The journey from Honduras took a day and a half, but I arrived in Suchitoto, a small colonial town located on a lake, with seemingly every house painted a different colour, in good spi... read more

So, much time has past since my last entry on Christmas Eve, since then I have left the Akazul turtle project and continued on my travels. All of the Akazul crew minus 1 person left the village together on 8th January at 6am on the first bus out of the village, a chicken bus (old American School bus) we all held tightly onto our seats and held our breath as we went over the sideways tipping, rickety bridge, with the sound of splitting wood beneath,over the fast flowing river below. It took an hour to the border of El Salvador and once through we negotiated the bus to the town of Cara Sucia (which is Spanish for dirty face). They use US dollars in El Salvador and the local buses are normally a few cents each. ... read more

July 29 - I woke up at 6am again today. There seems to be no way around it. I skyped with Jeroen and called my grandma. I repacked, which didn't take long. I really spread out more when I have a private room. I tried to get a bus to the station like yesterday, but there weren't many buses coming on a Sunday morning. So different from yesterday. I decided to just get a cab to the station instead, though it hurts to pay $3 instead of 25 cents. From there I found the 201 bus to Santa Ana. I sat on it for 15 minutes or so before we left, but I think we only got 5-10 minutes away before the bus broke down. They roared the engine a bit and looked around and then ... read more

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 ... read more