Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
30/1/10 - day 52.
up at 7 and made tge most of the breakfast eating them put of house and home, as i was unable to yesterday. checked out and got a pick up back down to san francisco gotera. i think ive mentioned before how they sqeeze people into the public transport in central america, well this was no exception. i mean they really took the p*ss. i was crotch to face with an old man half the journey and chest to face with some girl the other half. both occasions i was the face and i didnt know wgere to look, not that i had much choice. one of the longest hours of my life i swear. i did chat to a fella who had spent 20 years workin in texas and had been sending money home to his family, but now that he's 50 he can no longer find employment there so is back in el salvador. apparently this is quite common.
next was a bus to san miguel, where i hopped on a painfully breezeless bus. i really thought i might pass out from the heat. its hard to convey how hot and humid i felt but my t shirt gave a pretty good demonstration though - it was saturated. when the bus got going the guy in front of me started chatting to me about my travels, where i was from, if needed any help with anything, etc, culminating in him giving me his email address saying if i needed anywhere to stay, to let him know! was pretty typical of the salvadorans ive met so far.
next bus i got was to santiago de maria, which took me to my final destination - Alegria. wandered about in Santiago looking for a bus stop or bus station but it was too small a town to have either. i asked a guy, and said no bus but he would give me a lift there for 5 bucks. i KNEW there was a bus, i just didnt know where to get it from. when i told him this, at which point he caved and told me where to catch it! the bus cost 40 cents by the way, just to give you an idea of how badly he was trying it on.
yet another chatty lady i was sat next to on the told me where to get off the bus at Alegria, and when i did so i was approached by a little girl asking if i was looking for somewhere to stay. she happened to be from the guest house i was looking for and she showed me in. had own room, bathroom and fan and was quite nice. this was supposedly another so called mountain town with a cool climate. well nobody told my sweat glands.
i liked alegria though. very small, very quiet, very pretty, and very slow moving. the lady at the guesthouse told me about a lookout at the top of 100 steps and also a lake that was a 2km walk away. had pupusas at a comedpr next door and then went to the lookout which was quite good but ive seen better. from there i walked very slowly, and mostly uphill, to Laguna de Alegria. not the most pleasant of walks in the heat but so worth it. easily the best lake ive been to in central america, and i didnt begrudge them the 25 cents charge to get to it either. the backdrop of the volcano and sun beaming down looked awesome.
i went for a paddle in the said to be medicinal waters of this crater lake and then lay in the sun for a while. there were loads of kids on the other side of ot playing football and the odd family dotted about here and there. after a bit more paddling and taking a silly amount of pictures, i began strolling back to the village in a much more bareable climate as it was nearly 5pm by then.
when i got back to the guesthouse, i sat in the garden reading for a bit then went for a disappointing dinner of plato tipico. so i went to some food stands along the side of the central park and had a pupusa and some meat on a stick. had a brief look at a couple of craft market stall, and headed back. got to bed about half 9.
- comments