What I Really Did in San Salvador

Jen and I knew the bus left from the Mariott Hotel at 6:15, and yet we thought that yeah, we could leave at 5:30, even though we usually take 45 minutes to get there, and yet
we still had to check in, check our passports, and get in the bus. So we sit out in front of the gates, after waking up at 4:30 a.m., waiting for our friend to pick us up to take us down the mountain since no buses or taxis can be found anywhere near us at that time(By the way, this is what we look like at daybreak.)Our friend is 15 minutes late. We are definitely feeling the stress, but somehow we managed to get there in 15 minutes, which was amazing. There was no traffic, no cows in the road, and needless to say we were pretty much flying down the mountain. I probably would have been more nervous about driving, but our driver grew up here and so I just went with it.

We got on the bus with time to spare, and about 4 hours later we arrived at the border. One of the excitements about this trip was the thought of getting another stamp on my passport, but when the immigration official just barely glanced at my passport, I asked him why I didn't get a stamp. For some reason, you don't receive a stamp between Honduras and El Salvador, but you do if you're from Guatemala, Belize, Nicaragua, or any other country for that matter. I think its because where we crossed over the residents are given dual-citizenship that resulted from a land settlement in a peace agreement. El Salvador gave over part of its land to Honduras, so it means that I don't have another stamp. What I do have though, is a stamp that says "Please sign here" that's used for letters to parents, which is now in my passport with the name El Salvador on the line.

Through the drive I could tell we were descending in height because it began to get more and more humid as well as more and more tropical. After checking into our AMAZING hotel (hard life I live, right?) Jen and I walked to a restaurant and had a great little meal, and were able to pay for it in dollars. About 4 years ago, El Salvador adopted the dollar as their national currency, probably to increase tourism and money from the U.S., so I felt like I was reacquainted with old friends, George and Lincoln.

Part of the nervousness and excitement in this trip had to deal with the fact that I was doing it on my own. I feel like I have done quite a bit so far in my life, but up until this point I feel like this trip was probably my most adventurous. Since I have been in Honduras, I have done quite a bit with my roommate, who has been here for awhile and is fluent. True, I can do quite a bit myself, but I've pretty much had her as a crutch. When people speak too fast, she can translate. When we're walking around and I have no idea where I am, she knows. But on this trip, it was only my friend Jen and I going, and we both have about the same language skills. So, I suppose it could have been a really bad idea, but fortunately we were given the names of several people who were related to friends we have here, so if we got into a bind we could always call them. I must say though, that I am feeling so great about the skills and my ability to make it on my own.

After being in Tegus for awhile now, Jen and I couldn't help but notice the lack of people and cars out on the street. In fact, it was almost eerily empty, so Jen and I figured that all the people must be in El Centro with some kind of big Dia de Independencia celebration. So we whipped out our map, found out which street we were on (which is also a new concept because none of the streets in Tegus are named) and started walking. We were quite a distance from El Centro, but the area of town we were in was pretty snazzy, and since we were white we did not want to catch a taxi there because we would be ripped off. We saw a park not too far away, and figured we could catch one there. We got to the park, and thought that we should keep walking because not too far away there was a really cool looking cathedral. We got to the cathedral and kept on walking, and 6 miles later we arrived in El Centro.

So, I was feeling pretty good about that, not getting lost and all. Then, Jen and I bought hammocks after haggling with street vendors in Spanish (major proud moment), and we managed to ask someone in spanish where to catch a taxi back to our hotel (once again, in Spanish). We found out that you can't just hop into a taxi and tell the driver where to go like you can in Honduras, because supposedly there are a lot of "fake" taxis in San Salvador. We then asked where to catch a bus, and we found that without any hang-ups, got on the right one, and made our way back to the hotel. By ourselves. Without a bi-lingual crutch. I was so stinkin' proud of myself.

The next day we laid out by this pool (amazing) and had lunch at this really cute taco place. We then got ready for the beach, and hired a driver to take us to Costa del Sol, this really pretty beach about 45 minutes away from our hotel. You can see all the pictures from that on the posts below, so I will spare the repetition. But I will say though that I was also impressed by my Spanish abilities when I was able to have conversations with our driver about such things as government, political parties, the far-left contra party that hosted the civil war during the 80's, and topics like that. A long way from my spanish when I first got here, which consisted of "Where is the bathroom" and "Today is Monday." Now granted, a lot of our conversation was him talking and me understanding enough to utter back a few grammatically incorrect comments and questions to keep the conversation going, but this is still a huge accomplishment for me. I think it was because I got to sleep in that day until 8:00, since my body is now incapable of sleeping any longer than that.

The next day we met up with Jen's friend Juan, who lives in San Salvador. Juan was totally amazing, and fluent in English, and he took us to Lago de Coatepeque, which you can also see in the posts below. Between the bus ride, the car ride to the beach, and the car ride with Juan, we were able to see probably 80% of the country. Not too shabby for a 3 day weekend.

Summary of this post: El Salvador is amazing, I love traveling, and I need to keep practicing my Spanish so that next time I can talk about things like philosophy and other deep thoughts to whoever I hire to chauffeur me around.