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It has only been a couple of days since our last blog entry, but yet so much has happened since that. That is why I have to apologize the length of this post, I hope you guys can make it to the end.
So, last time you heard from us, we were at Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. After spending a couple of nights there, we decided to move along. The place was definetly nice, but a couple of days was totally enough. As a next stop we have had El Salvador for some time in our mind. I remember when we originally planned our trip in Central America, the country was not on our list. El Salvador is maybe the least popular of the Central American countries among the travellers - I guess partly because it does not have all the historical ruins that for example Guatemala has, and partly because people are still reminded of its decade-long, brutal civil war.
I guess this reputation of not being very touristy was the reason why El Salvador attracted us. After all, places like Lake Atitlan in Guatemala are a bit gringofied, even so much that practising our Spanish was a bit hard as so many people spoke English. Partly because of the same status as a popular tourist destination, we felt that we also want to skip Antigua and head straight to El Salvador, although this old colonial city is really nice and pretty.
Early in the morning on 3th of February, we first catched a ferry from San Marcos to San Pefro La Laguna on the other side of the Lake Atitlan, from where we had booked a "shuttle" (minivan full of other tourists) to Guatemala City. Although this costed us a couple of Quetzales more, we saved some time as we did not have to take three different chicken buses. And besides, the shuttle drove via Antigua, so this way we saw the city after all...
The trip to the notorious Guatemalan capital was pretty exciting. After we had spent an hour driving up and down the mountaineous roads around the lake, we entered the Interamericana Highway that goes all the way from Canada to Panama. The road is not exactly a highway in these parts of Guatemala, and the traffic is full of pure Guatemalan chaos. This chaos also created a small incident, as we got to visit our second Guatemalan bus driver fight. After driving on the road for a while, a pick-up truck full of vegetables was stopped in front of us, and our driver honked the horn for a couple of times. As nothing happened and the car was still in front of us, our driver got off from the minivan, and after a breaf chat with the vegetable driver, they started to bust some karate moves on each other for some reason. One brave (and tall) guy from our shuttle got off the minivan with another guy to calm the fighters down, and after a couple of minutes the vegetable guy drove away just before the police came. The police seemed to be on our driver`s side in this case - I guess because he had van full of tourists to take care of. We continued to drive along the road with police as they were searching the other guy, but they never found him.
We had not exactly heard anything positive about Guatemala City. All the people say its dangerous, and even some Guatemalans in Xela did not really like visiting their fast-pace capital. But during our brief visit there we did not have any problems - Guate just seemed a lot bigger and more commercialized (read Westernized) version of the previous Guatemalan cities, and as our bus left from the wealthy part of the city, we actually felt really poor with our backpacks. During the brief visit we also put our Spanish to practical use, as the young Israeli girls in our van clearly had not done proper backgound research, and we had to search from our guide book and explaing to the driver which of the city`s several bus stations they wanted to go to.
After the bumpy, hot and exhausting minivan trip from Lake Atitlan, we were really amazed how good the bus to San Salvador was. Our schedule only matched with a bit more expensive company that promised luxury service. And in this part of the world luxury means traveling with Central American business people in a two-story bus, receiving food, drinks, pillows and movies on board! And we have never crossed a border more easily than between Guatemala and El Salvador. We did not even have to get off the bus, and we just continued sipping free coffee and watching the newest Batman movie as the friendly border officials came to the bus to check our passports.
We arrived to San Salvador when it was already dark, so had reserved a hostel and now took a taxi there, as Central American capitals never receive very good feedback for being safe. But the Salvadorian capital was actually totally different from what we had expected. In 2006, El Salvador replaced their currency colon with American dollars, and otherwise too the city really seemed like some American city. Burger Kings and Mickie D´s everywhere, and the largest shopping mall of Central America was in our neighbourhood.
Next morning we had to visit this giant, because we needed a printer and a scanner to take care of some business with the Finnish bureaucracy. There is an election period going on in the country, and on the way to the mall we so some young FMLN supporters waving their red flags in pick-up trucks. This pretty absurd scene of former guerrilla movement next to the huge shopping mall reminded of the history of this country. During the 1980s, FMLN (Frente Farabundo Marti para La Liberacion Nacional) fought a decade long civil war against the government of El Salvador, and the after the peace accords were signed, transformed into an ordinary political party. But the presence of the war is still strong in the country, and it makes me really sad that it seems that we do not have time to visit some of the war museums in the eastern part of the country where the guerrilla presence was strongest.
After spending a night in San Salvador, we catched a bus to the Pacific Coast, were we are staying in a small village called Playa El Tunco. The village is full of local and foreign surfers, coming here all over the world to catch waves. We are staying in a nice guesthouse run by a local surfer called Papaya, where we can relax in hammocks and take a dip in the pool. Pretty perfect. The place is a bit more expensive than we have paid before (well, 10 US dollars is not really a lot anyways), but we can cut back in the costs by cooking in an outdoor kitchen.
Oh yeah, and of course we also had to try surfing as everybody else here seems to do it and the lessons are only 10 bucks. The result of an hour`s struggle with the board was maybe two seconds on board "catching the wave", minor scratches in our feet and one major scratch on my (Jukka`s) surfboard as some chick bumped into my way. Although it could have been worse and we had a lot of fun, I think that Michelle decided to abandon her dreams of becoming a professional surfer and concentrate on boogieboarding.
Now I have to stop writing as Michelle wants to go and catch the waves with a boogieboard that she rented. I would just rather stay in the waveless pool, it is more my thing.
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