Vagabond and Beyond: "Hold on a second, this isn't going to be our room,.......is it?"

It was January 24^th and Sarah and I had a big problem; it was nearly a whole three weeks since we had last seen the ocean and lazed about on a beach!! We needed to take drastic action, so the morning after the Juayua food festival we hopped on three consecutive chicken buses to make it to Playa El Tunco on the Pacific coast. I forgot to mention in my previous blog but the buses are subsidised by the government so you usually never pay more than a $1 (USD is the currency of El Salvador) to get from A to B. The pacific stretch and especially Playa El Tunco is probably the one place that you will be guaranteed to see a good few tourists, most of them wanting to surf or improve their tan while taking in a fiesta or two.

The majority of beaches along the coast have black sand as a result of the many lava flows that hit the sea from nearby volcanoes so it’s not your typical postcard beach but the black sand and rocky outcrop just off El Tunco beach makes for a beautiful sunset as you can see from our photos below.

Amazing Sunset at Playa El Tunco

One of the highlights of our time in El Tunco was watching ‘El Classico’ between Real Madrid and Barcelona. Our hostel/bar appeared to be a popular hang-out for the locals and San Salvadorians so come game time the place was buzzing. Along with about 50 spectators there were about 6/7 police officers, pretty much the entire El Tunco police force! I’m sure they justified their presence there to a crowd control issue but I didn’t see any of them take their eyes off the game :-)

El Classico, police in the back keeping an eye out for some crime!

Aside from eating some great seafood in many of the ocean side restaurants we spent the majority of our time there relaxing on the beach or lounging in the hostel pool. We left Playa El Tunco having made some new El Salvadorian friends at El Classico and with the terrifying knowledge that it would be almost another three weeks before we would experience the beach life again, this time in the tranquil San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua.

The night after El Classico it was time again for another 3 consecutive chicken buses working our way south towards the Honduran border. Our next stop was to be the mountain town of Alegria, the highest town in El Salvador. Unfortunately none of two hostels had any space so we stayed in the nearby town of Berlin for the first night and got the early bus the next morning.

El Mirador (view) from Alegria town

There was a bit of a lost in translation moment in the nicer of the two hostels in Alegria and we thought the owner said a few people had decided to stay longer so there would be no spare rooms till tomorrow but what he actually said was that they were taking long to check out and would be out later in the day. However, we didn’t realise this until later when we went there for lunch and saw the ‘Swiss United Church of Christ’ group checking out. This holy group of Americans were building a house for the poor nearby and we had the usual American with Irish ancestor’s meets Irish person conversation which goes something like this (I’m sure everyone has had this before but just in case you forgot how the conversation goes here is a short recap);

Loud American from the Northeast or Chicago (LAFTNOC): Oh my god you’re Irish! That’s awesome!!!!

Sarah and I (SAI): Yes we are (Deep sigh knowing the inevitable conversation that is coming as we have had it about a 100 times in the last six months)

(LAFTNOC): I’m Irish!!

(SAI): Oh really : )

(LAFTNOC): Yeah my great grandmother is from Ireland.

(SAI): (Pretending to appear interested) Oh that’s great, what part?

(LAFTNOC): Cork (Note: It’s always somewhere in the West)

(SAI): What’s their surname?

(LAFTNOC): Oh, I think it was O’ Shannon(han) or something like that

(SAI): Oh sorry don’t know anyone by that name.

(LAFTNOC): I always wanted to visit Ireland!!!

(SAI): Yeah it’s beautiful, you really should (Sarah and I look to each other for help out of this Groundhog Day moment)

(LAFTNOC): I really like Guinness and Jameson, what’s the name of that other Whiskey?

(SAI): Yeah we need to go now, nice meeting you (Sarah and I throw money at the waiter and run out of the only place in town to relax and hide back in our hostel room listening cautiously for someone saying “Awesome!!!” nearby)

In the meantime we checked into the less well reviewed La Palma for the night while awaiting the clearly better Entrepiedras hostel. Full of quirky antiques (see the photo below for their collection of 20^th century electronics) and statues of animals it seemed like a pleasant enough place. She led us upstairs to two rooms and after opening the doors a flood of smoke came flying out with an odd smell. She casually says “we are fumigating the rooms”. I’m thinking is this one off her rocker or what! “Yeah but this isn’t our room is it?!” I say hopefully… “Oh yeah it’s fine” she says in the casual way that any crazy would put it. “Is it safe?” “Of course” she says. Seeing as these were the only rooms in town we took the room and left the doors and windows open and headed for a long walk about town to let the fumigation take its course. What they were fumigating, we were afraid to ask but in the end we lived and it was a good night’s sleep (we were probably high on some kind of fumes!!). Also, whenever I told her that the internet wasn’t working, she would point at the router and say “it’s good internet” while walking away. In the end I just had to connect everything up again myself knowing that some nephew must have put it in for her and that’s as far as she knew about the internet.

The La Palma Time Machine. Such a random pile of electronics, ya gotta love it!

A couple of days in we took the advice of the hostel owner and did the Laguna de Alegria hike and crater swim, a hot spring fed Sulphur Lake. For an all day hike with one the best guides (Walter) ever, the $5 price was cracking value. The previous day we had read another blog about the hike taken by another couple. It didn’t give us a great sense of security as they had gotten lost for 7 hours with a guide also from our hostel. If you want you can read about their over dramatic adventure here. The first 30 minutes of the uphill hike was Walter filling the two of us in on what animals were deadly that we might meet on the hike; scorpions, snakes, spiders etc. Once at the top we took in the surrounding view and started the real hike which was along the ridge of the mountain that eventually led down to the Laguna itself.

At the top, but it was only the start of the hike. (I think I wear this blue shirt for every hike, it's in every photo!)

At some points there were sheer drops all around us and the only way forward was to jump to the next boulder and keep faith that Walter knew what he was doing. Fortunately it was only the three of us as a lot of the jumps/navigation were a bit, shall we say, above Sarah’s height ability so she needed Walter below to catch her :-) Walter told us one time that he had to carry a girl half the way as she had injured her foot. After I asked how big she was he said with a massive grin “she was tiny thank god.”

Walter helping Sarah navigate the tricky mountain ridge, note the drop to the lake just behind Walter

About halfway we took a break at an overhanging rock point and Walter started telling us about his love of country music and started to sing some of his favourite country songs, I only wish I had the video on for it. He gave a few local bands to find on YouTube when we got back to the hostel as well.

View from top of Alegria mountain ridge

We also took the some time out to give the machete a go, after months of seeing kids to grandparents carying them around it was time to see what all the fuss was about! Practicality or not, it's fun to hack a tree to death, mwah ha ha ha (evil laugh)

Sarah giving the machete a go

The ridge finally started to descend so we took a swim in the freezing (we thought it would have been warm) sulphur lake that we had all to ourselves. It was another 2km walk back to town where the three of us celebrated a good day with a round of Golden beers! We told Walter about the backpackers that had gotten lost on the same hike recently and he said that the guy serving our drinks (Tulio, the hostel owner’s son) was the guide that day and he isn’t the greatest navigator. When we showed him the video they put up on their blog he laughed knowing that Tulio had made a few major accidental detours into the jungle.

The crater lake we swam in, no extra limbs growing yet. Success!

One of the nights we had dinner in a deserted restaurant and a mariachi band started to walk towards us (well we were the only people there!) so I took the opportunity to pay the bill and abandon Sarah : ) This time in Alegria we ended up staying an extra night than planned as Sarah was sick (maybe from the Sulphur Lake) before starting the marathon journey to Nicaragua.

The journey was to start at 6am and end about 13 hours later after about 7/8 chicken buses and 3 rickshaws. After a couple of buses in El Salvador and an hour of trying to find a working ATM (we only realised the night before that Nicaragua’s entry fee was about $15 each, the heftiest in Central America) our bus arrived at the Honduran border. About 15 guys started jumping on before the bus had even stopped and tried to grab our bags so we would go on their rickshaws. Among the confusion they also tried to pick pocket us but knowing how crazy border towns were we had everything hidden so no harm done. At the Nicaraguan border the tip-only rickshaw guy tried to charge us $26 for the ride because he had to wait for immigration (something he knew he had to do) and because $26 isn’t much in Nicaragua! (Bullshit) By the way, $26 was more than what the entire days travel across 3 countries was costing us! I left $2 on the rickshaw and promptly told him to fuck off along with a few other choice words (Screw politeness this guy was trying to rip us off so much it wasn’t funny and after attempted robberies, several long chicken buses and corrupt immigration officials it was not good timing for him to try his luck).

Anyway……2 buses and 1 rickshaw later we were in Leon, Nicaragua, home to the only place in the world where you can board down a volcano at speeds of up to 90km/h!!! But that and other activities will have to wait for the next blog which I hope to get out before we board Fritz the Cat, a catamaran, for a five day trip from Panama to Colombia which we will be getting in 2 weeks (22^nd March). El Salvador is on a par with Guatemala for our favourite country, there is so much to do and see and the people are funny, friendly and are eager to show you the best of their great country.

Just thought I'd mention, as I write this blog in the garden of our hostel in Panama a hilarious old New York couple (in their 70's) are telling us about how they recently tried smoking opium in a Thai jungle. As they have being drinking all day at the pool and the wife is right now threatning to beat up some other guy staying here because he's "an asshole" I'm sure they will feature in a future blog post with a few more stories.