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Published: April 22nd 2010
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lake suchitoto
View from our balcony!! Leaving Livingston and all the lovely people at La Iguanas behind I caught a boat and then a bus back to the City. Crossing the city on your own is always a slightly scary experience but once I was settled into a new hostel I was ready to leave all my valuables behind and go out and explore! Having bought my bus ticket to El Salvador for silly o'clock in the morning and still being a bit sick I took the sensible option of an early night (sorry Javier!)
I crossed into El Salvador early the next day and despite it's bad press it was soon to be one of my favourite countries. I really love it, it's got a gritty kind of something to it -it's hard to explain but I think it's due to the fact that the war only finished 30 years ago and so still has a lot of affect on peoples lives. Ask someone who's not been here and they'll probably tell you that it's a really dangerous country and not to spend any more time there than is necessary to cross it. Ask someone who's travelled there though and it'l l probably be a
totally different story.
Without a shadow of a doubt one thing which makes the country so great is the people. El Salvadorians seem really happy people who are always ready to have a laugh. They also speak really slowly and seem to understand all my spanish which is always a bonus! Another noticiable factor is that they are always ready to help you even if it takes them totally out of their way.
Having caught a camioneta from San Salvador to Suchitoto, and just about managed to get off in time not to end up back in the city!I'd just finished being lost when I bumped into Tony and Seyche (my favourite stalkers) randomly on a hill. The 3 of us and a couple of swedes booked into an amazing hostel (see the photo for the view from our balcony) before i got to sample my first (of many) legendary poposas. They are a kind of tortilla stuffed with cheese and other stuff (a little pocket of goodness as they were soon to be known) which are cooked on the street and enable you to eat out for a dollar!
Suchitoto is a great little colonial city which will make you think you have stepped back in time. Indeed other than the five of us there really weren't any tourists to be seen. Many of the houses had little paintings from templates depicting which had been affected by the war. One day we took a walk down to the lake, finding a zip wire halfway down was a novel way to cut short the walk, and a swim in the pool at the bottom provided a much needed respite from the heat of the midday sun.
The next day I fell off a horse that looked like a cow! In retrospect I'm not sure it was totally my fault since I lent to one side and the saddle slid off and I was technically still sitting on the saddle just upside down! The rest of the horse ride however was slightly less eventful (barr a couple of incidents of the other horses trying to buck off their riders!) and we got to visit bomb holes from the war and other scenic ruins, the views from some of the lookout points were fabulous.
Leaving the beautiful town of Suchitoto behind we headed back to the bright lights of San Salvador. Hoping to visit the museum of words and images and with the lonely planet's map worse than useless I used my best Spanish to ask a well dressed man for help. What we didn't expect was for him to go out of his way to walk us to where he thought it was, find out it was wrong, order us a taxi, get in the taxi with us, drive around getting lost- both him and the taxi driver get out numerous times to ask for directions, me to tell him thanks for his help but it really didn't matter if we couldn't find it, eventually find the place, and now that he's a good 15 minute walk from where he'd missed his bus, him then to pay for the taxi and not let us give him any money, instead just said it was good to have a chat with me. What a nice man and a good example of how lovely most El Salvadorians are! The museum of palabras and imagens was amazing. Fantastic black and white photographs of the war and the sharing of an incredible historical story, a place that any visitor to El Salvador should see.
I was really sad to leave El Salvador behind the next day as we caught our incredibly late leaving bus to Nicuragua! However I know that there is plenty more to see there and am pleased I'll have the opportunity to explore it a bit more on the way back up.
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