Rats, we made it to El Salvador

After Chichi, we decided we needed some time to relax, so we headed to the beach. A few chicken buses later, we arrived in the city of Sipacate. Somehow, in spite of our pretty awful Spanish and confusion over where we were supposed to exit the bus (when half say gringo stay and half say gringo go, it´s confusing), we took a tuk tuk (say that five times fast) to a boat, rode the boat through a beautiful canal full of wildlife, and arrived at a tiny dozy town we still don´t know that name of (we think it may be an extension of Sipacate separated by a canal).

Once arriving at the canal, the villagers helpfully pointed us to where we could stay. It seems that all the gringos are hearded to one part of the island, though there is one other place to stay further down the beach. We ended up staying at El Paredon. It was fantastic. We were right next to the Pacific Ocean, we had our tasty food cooked there, there was a super cute puppy, and we stayed in our own little thatch roof hut where we could hear the ocean all night. The only snag was spotting two (forgive our language) FUCKING HUGE SPIDERS. Now when we say fucking huge, we don´t mean one or two inches, we mean pretty close to the size of a waterbottle, and, as Abe discovered, they don´t get slow when they get big (we also discovered that Abe has quite the verticle leap and soprano voice). Raphael, the owner of the property assured us that they were harmless while we were talking during lunch the next day, however, that didn´t prevent Heather from sleeping completely clothed and under a mosquito net (Abe says, so much for honeymoon action at the beach).

While there, we got to enjoy sunsets and amazing views of the stars at night. We also got to swim in warm ocean water, which seems weird considering what the coast is like in Washington. We tried our hands at surfing, and even managed to stand up once or twice, though Heather spent most of the time hitting herself with the surfboard and coughing up saltwater. Regardless, it was still pretty fun.

The next day we both woke up with pretty bad sunburns in spite of SPF 55 preventative measures. We decided to travel rather then burn more, so we began our treck towards El Salvador (fyi, backpacks plus sunburns egual sucky).

We figured the trip would not take us too long considering how close to the border we already were, but, unfortunately, we were wrong. You know that your trip is going to take a while when your almost empty bus fills with highschoolers and they each get dropped off every 100 meters or so.

We finally made it to the border at about 8 o´clock. Unfortunately, in a lot of central america, it seems that everything stops around 6 or 7. That meant no more buses into El Salvador, which left us at the border, which was basically a truckstop, which meant that the hotels were, well, truckstop hotels. At 5 dollars, the room we got was a bargain...but we also soon discovered that you get what you pay for. The room was fairly bare minus two beds and a fan. The roof was made of corrugated metal, and there was a sandstorm going on. Sand blowing onto metal is surprisingly loud. There were some bars in the almost ceiling before the roof. It looked sort of like they had meant to put in a false ceiling, but had never really got around to it. We figured that we would attempt to get a little sleep and then catch the early morning bus at 6. The wind was loud that night, but there was also another strange noise that sounded like wind, but not quite. Abe decided to shine his flashlight at the ceiling at one point only to discover...rats running across the metal bars in the ceiling. So...we left the light on for the rest of the night, but the rats got over that soon enough, and still used our ceiling as a byway, occassionally seeming to almost fall on top of us. Needless to say, we didn´t get much sleep last night. Luckily, the rats had decent balance and none fell on us.

We got out of there as soon as possible and took the bus into El Salvador on the Ruta de Las Flores. This was a beautiful windy road with abundant coffee plantations, plantlife, and volcano views. We are now in Juayua, a beautiful town with abundant artwork all over the walls. We definitely get a lot of stares here, we seem to be the only tourists at the moment, but people are extremely friendly and seem to care for their town. When we were in Guatamala, people would just throw trash onto the streets and out the bus windows, here it seems that people try to take care of the environment and people also seem to be employed to care for the scenery.

The place we are staying is fantastic. It is 15 dollars a night, the people are very friendly, and we have free internet and free phone calls to the US (and hot water!) We will probably stay here another day or so, maybe go on a guided tour (there are some waterfalls, vocanoes, and hotsprings nearby to visit).

We hope everyone is well. Take care!

A and H