El Salvador- Pacific Coast. Avoiding Hurricans and Landslides.

Oct 11:

There is a world class surfing competition going on this week in El Salvador so looking forward to watching that! Doesn't look like I will be learning to surf there though! We heard that there are at least five feet waves. Sounds a bit intense for a beginner!

Beautiful bus ride. Very green here in El Salvador. A lot of waterfalls on the way here too! Border took awhile but all went well. Eventually made it to the little town El Tunco and checked into our hostel, La Sombra. 

The Hostel

La Sombra

Walked around the little surf town of El Tunco. Little cafes, restaurants and hotels.

One of the funniest things! Organic trash can with no bottom... What the point of the can then? Just put it anywhere if it's organic!

One of our favorite Cafes here!

Lots of "restaurants" like this in the town.

Oct 12:

Another full day of rain. It is rainy season!

Infinity pool

Had an avocado banana milk smoothie! Sounds weird, so delicious! 

Pacific Ocean

A bit brown and too intense for us!

River flowing into the pacific!

We eventually decided that if were were here we had to swim in the ocean! Let's just say it was very scary! Mainly because of all the debris from the flooding that had been flowing into the ocean. Giant logs everywhere even! I felt something against the back of my legs and it kept pushing! Was a rather heavy log! That was enough for me!

Decided to go relax at some coffee shops. And guess what? The only espresso machine in town was broken!

Then the highlight of our trip happened. We met this CRAZY, let me say it again, CRAZY lady named Shannon! We had seen her walking through town. She came into the coffee shop earlier that morning and made some random comment when leaving the shop. Then we were looking up transportation later that day and she came in and said she needed a ride to the airport that night. She was going to be boarding Jason's flight that he just got off of! She was heading back to Chicago so we  agreed to take taxi with her. 

Had dinner with everyone at the nice hotel there. They had iguana, quail, rabbit, and lobster! You should have seen the iguana, looked as gross as it sounds. They said it didn't taste that good either. No, I didn't try it! 

Then eventually went to the airport to pick up JASON!!! Shannon and Clara went with me.
That taxi ride was the most memorable taxi ride you could ever imagine. We talked about everything you could imagine. Aliens, how messed up the world is, literally everything.The things she said and how she saw this world was so fascinating. One of her friends apparently got abducted by aliens even. That's the level of crazy talk that was happening! She was also quite drunk during all this time. Told us how she was in jail in San Salvador. I could go on and on about the crazy things that happened. Felt sorry for her because her life was definitely quite hectic and scary. We helped her out, got her to the gate, and managed to get her to throw away her beer before walking into the terminal. That's how crazy it was. She had plenty of time to get on her flight though. Hope she is doing okay though!

Jason's flight was a bit delayed but he made it there safely! We rode home, caught up a bit and then decided we would show him the tiny little town since we would be leaving at 6 am in the morning to Honduras since it had been raining so much. We walked down when it was sprinkling, only for it to DOWNPOUR like no other after being in the town. DRENCHED. Came back to find out what...? That we lost our key during our adventure at 2 am!!! We went back to look with no luck. Beyond beyond drenched. After no luck in finding the key, we just broke into our window and got some rest! Fun adventure off the bat.

Oct 13th.

Thursday, 2011.

Woke up, shuttle arrived and what did the man have to tell us? That there was a landslide that made the roads impassible and going to Honduras would not be happening today. Looks like we are here for another rainy day! Hope the espresso machine works today!

Very early in the morning after finding out no shuttle. Why not look on couchsurfing!

Who is that napping over there?

Had a fun day none the less. Went to Coyote Cojo restaurant and had chai for the first time in town that day- Who was their first Chai Tea Latte customer? Me of course. Was it delicious- of course. They just added it to their menu and that day. Had a scrambled egg bagel with a bowl of fruit for 3 dollars, so ridiculous.

We decided to move out of our hostel even though we were staying another night- there was a disgusting smell because of all the flooding. We found another place for 7 dollars per person which was even better. Three story, wifi, kitchen, private bathroom. We did yoga on the top balcony which was great. We could even hear the massive waves of the ocean. 

Clara and I moving down the road

Our new hostel!

Very vibrant

Making travel plans!

Excited to be in a new place!

Yoga time!

We ended up having a great relaxing day with an incredible nap in there as well. 

After yoga we went to Soya Restaurant which we wanted to eat all all week but was never open!

The grocery store driving through town, not kidding.

Flower face?

At Soya restaurant!

Excited that Jason is here!

Not creepy at all?

Very very good lunch!!

Went to the back to the other hotel restaurant in the town which had a lot of art! 

Love this

The great pool!

Love this so much.

More art!

We went out to dinner for burritos on our last night.

Oct 14th:

Up and ready for the bus- only an hour late- or should I say 25 hours late. Thankfully we were able to leave that day!

License Plate of our van

Such travelers we are!

Rode in our bus for awhile, had to go back through a little part of Guatemala so had to go through borders again. After all of that, we had a bit of a problem. FLAT TIRE!

I love that they still use bottles!

So we stopped after the border and fixed our tire- cost the driver $5 dollars!

Fixing our flat tire

Then guess what happened? The adventure definitely continued!! Landslide that delayed traffic right before the Honduras border! Thankfully they were working on it only delayed us about a half hour.

Landslide!!

Trucks backed up!

Next stop: Copan Honduras!

El Salvador was great, just a shame it rained quite a bit while we were there. A lot of people pass it, but I'm glad we stopped for a few days!