Our first bus took us from Guatemala to El Salvador. After staying in the capital for a night, we decided to try and go to the beach. Looking through a flyer about beaches in El Salvador, we chose El Cuco, ¨the most famous beach¨in the country. It seemed easy enough to get to, we had to take two city buses which cost less than a dollar each. First bus was easy to find and the ride was great. We arrived at the second bus station in the city of San Miguel and searched for the next bus, also fairly easy to find. This bus was more of a traditional bus, an old school bus where people and their things cram in to beyond full capacity. We boarded it and found a seat, with our packs on our laps for the entire hour-long ride. While we were waiting to depart, the usual people came on board selling everything imaginable or asking for money. One man came on, gave a long speech about God, and then came around to each person asking for money. No one gave him anything, and he proceeded to put a curse on each person that refused him, including us. Awesome. We eventually pulled out of the bus station and started our journey, stopping every 5 minutes or so to pick up more passengers or vendors selling some occasionally questionable food. About 20-30 minutes into the ride, we cruised to a stop at the side of the road. Apparently there were some mechanical difficulties, and the driver and some other men popped open the hood (which is in the aisle directly next to the driver´s seat), poked and prodded and tinkered for a few minutes, and eventually got it ´running´ again. We pulled back onto the road, crawled along for another five minutes at most, and once again came to a halt. More tinkering, and off we went again. Until we stopped again. And again. And again. We lost count, really. Finally, we were all instructed to get off the bus. All 40-50 of us piled off, the driver mumbled something, and he drove away. So there we were, standing on the side of the road, carrying our large packs, in the middle of a forest, with nothing around us. We stood there, trying to make conversation with the people around us with our less-than-stellar Spanish skills; most people seemed annoyed, one woman was friendly. One man was slightly creepy, as he squeezed Crystal´s biceps and kept saying ¨Fuerte, fuerte (strong, strong)¨because of the size of her pack. We moved away from him very quickly. So, after about half an hour of standing and awkward struggling to converse, we spotted another bus coming our way. Our hearts lept and then immediately sank as we looked into the bus and saw that it was already full. But fitting people onto buses is a Central American specialty, so all the passengers from our bus loaded up into the remaining empty portion of the middle aisle. Now, I´m pretty sure we were probably the first gringas some of these Salvadoreans had ever seen, and we were quite the spectacle. Two white girls, each carrying a pack the size of a small person, sweating profusely, trying not smack every person in our radius with our bags, and holding onto the sides of the seats for dear life. There was a lot of gawking and laughter, and we couldn´t help but laugh, too. It really is too bad there wasn´t anyone there to take our picture, because it was quite a sight to behold. So, with a double-capacity busload, we rode for half an hour more, finally arriving at our destination.
Oh, our destination... After we got off the bus, there was more gawking and confusion, and we soon realized why. If by the most famous beach in El Salvador, they meant a dirty, polluted, sketchy beach, we definitely found it. El Cuco was no tourist attraction. Shady hotels, questionable restaurants, the mangiest dog I have ever seen in my life. I seriously thought he was going to fall over dead in front of us. It was getting dark, so we were frantically looking for a place to stay. The first hotel we walked into, we quickly turned around and walked out of. The next one we saw seemed deserted, so we asked some locals if they knew of a place. They again seemed confused, and pointed us down the road. The dirty little dirt road. But we went down and found Viña del Mar, with a grumpy woman working the ´desk.´ She showed us our room, which was basically a cement box with two beds, a sink, and a family of spiders living in the ´shower,´basically a pipe coming out of the wall. Drenched in sweat, exhausted, and hungry, we unloaded our stuff and turned on the air conditioning, a sweet relief. After finding a little place for dinner and eating some delicious pupusas, we tried to settle in for some sleep. If it would have been possible to sleep without touching the bed, we would have done it. Bugs were everywhere, and we couldn´t help but imagine them crawling into every orefice of our bodies while we slept. I wrapped myself into a coccoon in the blanket, and I think I did a fairly good job of keeping myself encased during the night. Crystal may have some bugs growing inside of her, but no serious symptoms have shown up yet.
Needless to say, we caught one of the earliest buses out of there in the morning.
There is little photographic evidence of this trip, but here is what we have:
The palm trees were one redeeming element of the trip.Love,
C & C
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