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Published: December 31st 2007
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So I´m currently in the city of San Salvador in El Salvador, on my way to Guatemala. I have a few days backlog to update on, so I´ll get to that now.
So I mostly just hung around town on the 26th, I signed up for a surf lesson for the 27th and was looking forward to it. I´d finally get to try the sport that makes the beaches of Central America so famous. So I got up bright and early on the 27th, ready to hit the water and try my luck. However, my instructor was sick. And I was too lazy to look around town to organize another lesson, so I settled for booking one for the next day.
While staying in the hostel I´d heard that there was a local bar that played hockey games, so as the Canucks were going to play the Flames that evening I walked around town until I found the place. It´s called Republik, and is owned by 2 former bartenders from the Caymen Islands, one of them originally from Canada. They´ve got the satellite rigged up to get most hockey games. So I sat at the bar, ordered a beer,
and chatted a bit while I waited for the game to start. I also noticed that they had Bombay Sapphire behind the bar, so from then on I was ordering gin and tonics until they ran out of gin, then vodka and cokes. They mix their drinks strong, and I don´t even remember the 3rd period of the game. One of the guys sitting at the bar beside me was from the Yukon, which was cool. Don´t meet people from their usually, not even in Canada.
Anyways, fastforward to the next day. I awaken to the receptionist poking me, telling me it was time to get up for my surf lesson. I slowly stumbled out of bed, downed a bottle of water, and got in the shuttle bus to Playa Madera, a local surf spot with decent waves for begginers. When I got out of the shuttle I was told to meet Oliver, and a fellow travaller named Eugene offered to show me where he was. Eugene is from Spain, and has been travelling since October. He´d originally had a lesson with Oliver and was now renting a board from him. He informed me that Oliver was a pretty
damn good surfer. He had represented Nicaragua in the surfing world cup and made it to the semi-finals. Later on I got to see a magazine spread of Oliver, nice to know that I was in capable hands. We walked down to the water, and Oliver came out to meet us. He was a happy looking guy, always smiling, with tightly curled hair. He hooked me up with a long board for my first day, and then we went onto the sand and he showed me how to push off the board from the paddling position to the standing position. It seemed easy enough, though in the water it would prove a bit more difficult doing it in one fluid motion. Once we got into the water he showed me how to paddle and how to position myself on the board. Then we got ready to try and catch a wave. Since he´s a nice guy and wanted to make it easy for my first day, Oliver would tell me when to paddle, and as the wave approached he would push my board to give me a burst of speed. This made the whole process quite easy, and on my
first try I was able to get up and ride the wave. It went on like this for most of lesson, with only a few hiccups. One time I was riding the wave pretty far into the beach and it was getting shallow. There were some younger kids out there and I thought I was going to hit them. So I bailed off the board. Unfortunately the board wedged into the sand and the back end of it slammed into the left side of the chest. That hurt a lot, a hell of a lot. Though it would be more apparent later on. After the lesson Oliver gave us a ride back to town so we wouldn´t have to wait for the shuttle, and I went to take a nap. When I woke up it felt like someone had kicked the shit out of me. I have a nice big black bruise on the left side of my body, under my arm. It hurts to inhale all the way, and it hurts to lay on my stomach, or lift my left arm. Woo! Nevertheless I went surfing the next morning.
The next day I headed out with Eugene and Oliver, and two others who were taking a lesson with him. We got to the beach really early, around 8:30, and it was still pretty busy. This time I wouldn´t be using a long board, I´d be using a shorter one about 7 feet long I´d guess. The rest of the day I struggled to keep my balance while just paddling, let alone catching waves. And in the 3 or 4 hours I was out there I caught maybe one wave, and half caught another couple. It´s harder then it looks, but I did feel myself improving by the end of the day. I would have loved to stay in San Juan some more and done some more surfing, but after the second day, my chest hurt too much for me to think I´d get anything out of trying again. The previous evening I was talking with Eugene and a girl from Isreal, and they both expressed how much they liked Guatemala, so after I got back from surfing the second day I checked out of my hostel, and caught a cramped bus to Managua with hopes of catching a bus heading towards Guatemala the next day. I got to Managua around 6 pm, the sun was pretty much set and I had no clue where I was. I thought I was close to some hostels, so I walked around a bit, but realized I was lost. It was dark, and the city doesn´t feel safe at all. So I went back to the bus depot and caught a cab to a hostel near the Tica Bus station that I´d need to catch the next day. While the taxi driver was driving me around I felt nervous and unsafe the whole time. We were going all thoughout the city, down seedy looking roads, and I hoped this guy wasn´t going to dump me in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully he didn´t, and I arrived at the hostel I specified. The relief I felt was enourmous. In very broken Spanish I said to the lady who ran the hostel. "Tommorrow, Guatemala, Bus, No reservation, Possible?" She told me to go and book the ticked now, and since the place was half a block away I did just that.
So that brings me to now, the first leg of the bus trip took me to San Salvador, with the second leg leaving tomorrow morning to Guatemala City. I plan on heading to Anigua as soon as I get to Guatemala City tomorrow afternoon. And after that I have no idea. I have no guide book to the country, don´t know it´s official currency, and am not sure of much. Now that I´m almost there, it seems kind of stupid to just head there on a whim. But such is the way of the traveller. I´ll try to update more often so that I don´t forget half of the stuff I want to say. Adios.
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