WEEKS 4-5

WEEK 4 - Playa El Tunco, El Salvador
- we spend a week cold-recovering, relaxing, and enjoying El Tunco
- the days would typically play out something like this ... wake up mid-morning, hit a hammock at the hostel and do some reading (and/or possibly go to La Libertad to buy something essential), hit the beach and lie in the sun and play with the waves in the water, get afternoon drinks at a beach bar (usually big yummy micheladas), head back to the hostel around sunset, head out to Mopelia´s for dinner, head home and crash, ready to repeat the process all over again the next day
- the coolest thing about El Tunco is that the water was not cold, even though it was the Pacific ocean
- there were always surfers to watch ... some learning, others experienced
- Isaac rented a board for a day ... maybe not completely ¨successful¨, he definitely enjoyed himself
- we met a fun American couple ... Evan (or Eban) and Ally (or Holly) ... and wound up hanging out with them for a few days ... in particual dinners at Mopelia
- the food at Mopelia rarely disappointed ... every day there was a special ... usually quite tasty ... pasta, or beef and mashed potatoes, etc. ... they also had an oven for making pizzas ... which I quite enjoyed (Isaac wasn´t a pizza fan there) ... and the food was all fairly cheap
- Mopelia also made their own tobasco sauce ... yum! I wanted a t-shirt with their hot sauce logo on it, but they never arrived in time (they had just been ordered when we first showed up) ... Gil (the owner) was wishing the shirts would show up because I wore the same t-shirt to his place for seven straight days ... he claimed I was starting to smell :)
- we had heard that a yummy local food was ¨pupusas¨... so I was on a bit of a mission to find out what all the fuss was about ... one day in La Libertad, I made the mistake of trying a shrimp pupusa ... the tortilla was stuffed full of shrimps with shell, legs and tail on!!! Ick ... I forced myself to eat it all, crunching through all the nasty bits ... Isaac pulled all his shrimp out, leaving a rather bland tortilla lunch ... overall, we failed miserably at finding a good pupusa
- our last night there, El Salvador hosted a World Cup (soccer) qualifier against the U.S. ... apparently, El Salvador hasn´t won in like 16 years ... or maybe they haven´t even scored a goal against the U.S. in 16 years ... something crazy ... point being, the entire country shuts down for big games like this, even though they fully expect to lose ... they´d be super happy if they at least scored one goal ... well, on this night, El Salvador jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first half! (you´d know whenever a goal was scored, because all of El Tunco could be heard cheering) ... we watched the second half with the locals at Papaya ... we were definitely pulling for the historic upset ... but the U.S. got two late goals to tie the game ... the locals seemed deflated ... but if you had asked them before the game began how they´d feel about a 2-2 tie, they would have been estatic! ... so hopefully they all wound up happy in retrospect
- we left El Tunco the next day, feeling refreshed, relaxed, and ready for the next leg
- EoW

WEEK 5 - San Salvador
- we spent a couple days in San Salvador ... we stayed in a very nice (yet rather inexpensive) hotel right downtown ... it even had a mini tv that I was able to use to watch UNC beat Oklahoma to make it into the Final Four
- both days, we walked up to the area of ¨Avenue de los Heroes¨, where we would cruise the mall ... kinda fun really ... and we discovered that San Salvador was the first place on our trip that we saw people dressing westernized, and current ... and for the first time, we noticed a lot of ATTRACTIVE locals!
- the mall has a cineplex, so we saw a movie each day ... first we saw Watchmen (interesting, but not what we expected ... also, way too much penis it in) ... then we saw Sex Drive (hilarious, but again, too much penis and other male genetalia in it)
- we also ate at the mall ... the first day we tried ¨Nash¨, which seemed to be a bit of a Pizza Hut knock off ... then the next night we did Pizza Hut for real! Sad, but true ... at least we got that urge out of our systems and with any luck that was the first and last time!
San Miguel
- semana santa was only a few days away, and we had quite a bit of distance to cover to get to our reservations ... so we then pretty much high tailed it to Nicaragua
- we caught a chicken bus towards the Honduras border, and overnighted in San Miguel
- my first impression of the town is that it was HOT
- we got a really nice hotel room (with a/c, etc.), and we went on an adventure walk, looking for a specific Chinese restaurant that the book highly recommended
- the restaurant was not where the book said it´d be, but we did eventually find it ... unfortunately, the food was also nowhere near as satisfying and the book implied it would be
- back at the hotel, I took a shower and flooded the bathroom floor ... the hotel manager and to come in and plunger out the shower drain, then mop up the bathroom for us ... lovely!
- we flicked through some cable tv before we finally called it quits on our last night in El Salvador
Choluteca
- from San Miguel, we caught a bus to the Honduras border ... or so we thought!! But first, we did see a movie ... this disaster of a ¨special effects¨¨thriller¨... where a snake starts off super small, then grows exponentially each time it eats something/someone ... it was called something like SuperSnake ... once again one of the worst movies I´ve ever seen ... it appears that movies on buses and worst movies ever are somewhat synonymous
- we get out of the bus (the guy tells us to get out) ... and we ask where the border is, and people start laughing at us! Crap! ... again, it´s stupid hot outside ... we walk around aimlessly for a bit, and we spot a couple buses a few blocks down a side street ... I pop my head into the first bus, and the driver is in there, eating lunch ... I ask him what bus we need to get to the Honduras border, and he says ¨this bus¨... nice ... so we hang out with him while he eats ... he´s very friendly and chatty (turns out he´s from Nicaragua) ... he even shares his fresh orange juice with us
- so eventually the bus gets going, and it turns out the border is like a 15 minute ride away
- we get out, and walk to the immigration office ... there are two officials there ... one for El Salvador, and another for Honduras ... they check our passports, we pay the entrance fee, and we´re walking over a bridge into Honduras, looking for our next bus
- next destination is Choluteca ... we get there in a couple of hours, and my first reaction was I was foolish to think San Miguel was HOT ... San Miguel was warm, Choluteca was HELL HOT!!
- we get dropped off at a bus terminal, and we catch a taxi to the hostel we´d pick out from the book ... the place wasn´t horrible, but it wasn´t a dream either ... at least it had a fan
- we walked around in the heat for a bit, but even an ice cream didn´t put a dent in the human melting syndrome
- Isaac was still battling his cold, and mixed with the intense heat, he simply went to bed for the rest of the day
- I had been wanting to get a real pupusa, to get that shrimp bad taste out of my mouth ... Isaac had decided his was pretty much done with any further pupusa experimenting ... so this was a perfect chance for me to venture out solo and see what I could find
- turns out our one night in Honduras is another one of those World Cup qualifier nights ... tonight, Honduras is playing host to heavily favoured Mexico (and once again the entire country stops to walk the game)
- luckily, after walking a few blocks, I find a bar/restaurante that is open, as they are showing the game ... and they have pupusas!
- I get two pork pupusas ... one with cheese, one without ... turns out, the cheese makes the pupusa heavenly ... no cheese is just so-so
- still, pupusas are redeemed in my book, and I enjoy my tasty and inexpensive dinner
- I wind up watching the majority of the soccer game in the reception area of our hostel ... they have a big flat screen showing the game, and a bunch of rocking chairs to lounge in
- there are a couple of locals already watching the game ... one of them (a guy who works at the hostel) is just living and dying with every whistle, every missed shot
- Honduras winds up scoring early, and when I head to bed, it´s late in the 2nd half, and they´re winning 3-0 (they wound up winning 3-1) ... so sounds of celebration and partying were heard on the streets, throughout the night
Leon
- we get a taxi back to the bus terminal area and we board a mini-bus for the Nicaragua border
- when we arrive at the border, locals have already hopped on top of the van, and are grabbing our bags!! NOT COOL!
- we fight to grab our bags back, and it´s evident that the locals desperately want us to ride on their bicycle taxis (a bicycle in the back, with two seats, an umbrella and a baggage compartment beneath the feet at the front)
- the problem is, they completely rubbed us the wrong way by just taking our bags without permission ... so now we´re pissed off and telling them to piss off
- in retrospect, it would have been a pleasure to pay them the $1 they were asking for a ride across the border
- instead, under insane heat, we lugged our bags roughly 3km, first to the immigration office (another entry fee and we were on our way), then over a long bridge, and then a bumpy dusty uphill trek to where we only hoped buses could be found
- to our pleasure, we found the buses, and the bus we wanted was there waiting for us
- to our chagrin, the other people from the mini-bus were already on board (having taken the bicycle taxis), looking cool and fresh ... while we boarded, looking like soaking wet death personified ... good times, good times
- the ride on the chicken bus was fairly uneventful ... and a couple of hours later, we arrived in Leon
- Leon has a colonial feel, similar to Antigua ... only Leon somehow feels more authentic, and less touristy
- we get off at the bus terminal, and we decide to walk it to the hostel we´ve picked out of the book
- the walk is only about 10 to 15 minutes, but if Choluteca is Satan´s anus (in terms of heat), then Leon is a blistered boil just a few inches away ... it is HOT HOT HOT
- we get to the hostel, and it´s full ... lovely
- we try another hostel a few blocks away ... Lazybones ... they have a room, but only for one night ... we grab it, lose the bags, and melt into the beds (I´m guessing I had a shower seconds after arriving)
- our daily ritual in Leon essentially went along these lines ... we´d start our day finding a new hostel (lugging our bags around in the morning heat), then we´d go to the smoothie place for fantastic fresh fruit beverages, then we´d follow the shadows (as much as possible) to the grocery store, where we´d stock up on water, then we´d return to whichever hostel was home for that day, to drink water and essentially try not to move otherwise
- at night, it´d cool down enough that we could venture out to get food and check out the town a bit ... the meals were along the lines of flattened (tenderized?) chicken pieces, covered in some kind of sauce, served with 3 or 4 different starches (fries, potato, rice, tostones) ... one place the food sucked, another place it was delicious ... so all hit and miss
- our last day, we wind up at the hostel Bigfoot ... where we run into people from the shuttle bus, and a woman we´d met in El Salvador ... and we meet Dora (Doro/Dorothy), from Germany ... only we think her name is likely Jess, because her shirt says, ¨Don´t mess with Jess¨(it actually says, ¨Don´t miss with Jess¨... shows you good our attention to detail has become)
- Dora is a cutie patootie and a sweetie mageety ... and Isaac chats her up a bit, telling her she should check out Crater´s Edge (where we´re heading the next day, for semana santa)
- meanwhile, I find a decent internet cafe, and I get a pretty good streaming feed of the Final Four (both semis) ... it´s awesome to see UConn go down, and it´s even better to see my Heels coast rather comfortably past ´Nova ... only the cafe is supposed to close at 9pm, and even though the guy let me stay until 9:30, the game still wasn´t finished ... so I leave thinking my team won, but I´m not officially sure until the next day
- night time sleeping depends greatly on whether or not you have a fan blowing air on you ... the first two nights, we had a private room, so sleeping wasn´t impossible ... the last night was in a dorm, and it was FINE until the last chick finally decided to go to sleep, and in so doing, she shamelessly turned the fan towards her bed, instantly turning mine into a water (sweat) bed ... once I woke up, there wasn´t much more sleep to be had
- 3 nights in Leon, I was more than ready for a change of scenery ... it was time to get our butts to Laguna de Apoyo for our semana santa reseverations
- EoW