Salvadoran Lover!

Here is Rhino and his Salvadoran lover, Toto! So cute!
PS. See I wasn't joking when I said Toto was obsessed!

El Salvador

Although our attachment to Guatemala was not as intense as our attachment to Mexico it was equally difficult to leave. Experiencing a new country with various traditions and incredibly kind people is enough to leave you with an extreme desire to return in the future. I figured I would continue the tradition of leaving a piece of myself in every country. Mexico was blessed with my undies and Guatemala has now adopted my beloved pillow. Most of you back home know about my obsessional attachment to my pillow and if not, just imagine a child's attachment to their blanket or stuffed animal and the fear in their eyes when they lose it. Yep, that was me as I realized that my pillow was left in our hotel room in Guatemala. After a few moments of intense sadness I turned to Chad and told him that I was ready to move on and form a new attachment to HIS pillow. Chad willingly let me adopt his
pillow, however for the next few nights I awoke to Chad squishing his head onto the pillow next to mine, how romantic! We were not only sharing this incredible adventure, the trusty burb, our coconut loving Rhino and hideous hotel rooms, we were now sharing a freaking dirty old pillow. Chad definitely pulls through when times get tough :)! It truly must be love!

The border crossing into El Salvador was about as painless as waiting in line for your favorite ride at Disneyland. The wait is annoying but you have something so exciting at the end that it is worth it. It was our quickest and cheapest border crossing yet, costing a grand total of about $9. The country of El Salvador is about the size of the state of Massachusetts and takes about 5 hours to drive across. Chad was impressed by the amount of perfect right hand point breaks along the coast. Due to a recommendation from a fellow surfer that we met in La Ticla, we decided to post up at the surf hotel called Esencia Nativa in El Zonte. Alex and Amelia are the Salvadoran owners of this incredibly inviting and peaceful surf retreat. They have a way of making people feel at home while educating them about the local government and all of its intricacies. I experienced Amelia as a living angel, who is here on earth to better the world. Her job is to travel to rural poor villages and teach the people how to live more efficiently, improving their way of life while lessening their environmental impact. Alex has the personality of a typical laid back surfer and puts most of his energy into making his guests comfortable while showing them the beautiful waves of El Salvador. This couple is truly amazing, it's no wonder why people come to Esencia Nativa and never want to leave!

In addition to Alex and Amelia we met some delightful travelers during our stay in El Zonte. Among these people were a sweet honeymooning couple from British Columbia, Megan and Benjamin (go figure, more Canadians :). Chad was intrigued with how Benjamin was able to convince his wife to come to El Salvador for their honeymoon. It turns out that they started their honeymoon in Florida on a cruise and then went to El Salvador for a month and were planning on heading north to Guatemala for a bit. Chad and I decided that the Canadians do it right, spend less on the wedding and more on the honeymoon. What a laid back and truly happy couple. I was impressed!

Just as I was about to get down on our fearful Americans, we met our Islamic middle eastern looking hitchhiker buddy :), Shea from California. Shea had just graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and was on a surf adventure through Central America. Chad immediately connected with him and was happy to have a surf buddy for what we thought was the remainder of our time in El Salvador and turned out to be a bit longer. Shea had been busing it throughout his journey thus far and was eager to spend some time in the burb rather than on the chicken packed buses. After he dropped enough hints about not wanting to take the bus we invited him to join us on our next leg of the journey to Nicaragua (just kidding Shea, we loved your company and you Spanish skills). Rhino was excited to have a buddy in the back of the burb and quickly adopted his lap as a place to rest his head. Shea expressed that is was way better than having a chicken on his lap and the odor was much less than that of a pig.

During our time at Esencia Nativa Rhino met his second boyfriend named Toto. Toto was a huge beautiful dog that was beyond obsessed with Rhino. He would follow him everywhere and attempt to hump him any chance he got. Rhino being the sweetheart that he is would tolerate Toto's annoyances and would hide behind Chad and I for refuge when he needed a break. Toto was not more than 1 foot away from Rhino to whole time we were there and even slept in our room adoringly looking at him (constantly with his lipstick/pinkie out), throughout the night. Kind of creepy but so cute at the same time. At these points in our journey Chad regrets having neutered Rhino because all the male dogs think he is a girl and fall in love with him. Poor Rhino!

Although the surf was not epic while we were in El Salvador Chad could tell that it had incredible potential with the right swell. We spent an afternoon in La Libertad enjoying lunch with our new friends. La Libertad is one of the bigger towns in El Salvador and the majority of the tourism is surfer focused. It is home to Punta Roca, the longest right breaking wave in Central America. After spending another night in El Zonte we said goodbye to everyone at Esencia and headed south with our hitchhiker buddy on our never ending search for waves. Unfortunately there wasn't much swell in Las Flores so we headed to the town of Tamarindo looking for a place to stay for the night. Although we did not find any accommodations in this little town we did find what Chad, Shea and I agreed was our most amazing meal for the price to date! This meal consisted of the typical Salvadoran cuisine called pupusas.
Pupusas basically consist of cheese and a tiny bit of meat grilled in the middle of a corn tortilla type mixture. They taste similar to a quesadilla but WAY better. During my time in El Salvador I tried to convince some of the local pupusa vendors that they should make breakfast ones with eggs and cheese in them, ahhhhh the thought! Second to the taste, the best part about pupusas are that they only cost 30 cents a piece. Two or three will fill you up, so for a whopping $1 you are stuffed, AMAZING! After this unbelievable meal we headed out at sunset to find a place to camp. I spotted a nice home on the side of the road with a huge gate and thought that maybe we could camp there. We pulled over and Shea with his amazing Spanish skills talked to the people who turned out to be the caregivers. They agreed to let us camp on the property and we gave them $6 for their generosity. It turns out that the incredible property is owned by an American guy and these nice Salvadorans look after it. We decided that they were happy to have a little extra money but super confused as to why three Americans would want to camp there. Chad and Shea slept on our cots under the starry sky with Rhino and Shea's new best friend--this cute little dog (we called him tick for obvious reasons)--and I slept in the front seat of the burb. We woke up just in time to watch the sunrise over the ocean and then headed on our way to the most horrendous border crossing yet.

Although I enjoyed my time in El Salvador I would not rank it on the top of my list for beautiful places in the world. I think if you are a surfer it is paradise, however if you are traveling looking for beautiful scenery this is not where I would recommend visiting. Despite what everyone says about El Salvador, we felt extremely safe during our short stay here. We didn't witness the extreme poverty that we saw is parts of Mexico and Guatemala and the country as a whole felt more stable than anywhere that we had been yet. This stability (or false sense of stability depending on who you talk to) could be due to the fact that El Salvador's national currency is the US dollar and 16% of the country's annual GDP (total of 3 billion dollars) comes from Salvadorans working abroad. Although gang violence is reportedly on the rise, we did not witness or hear about anything of this nature during our stay in
El Salvador. Overall we really enjoyed our short stay in El Salvador and would highly recommend it for some incredible surf exploration. Bottom line, once you get to El Zonte stay with Alex and Amelia and for $20 a day you will live like a surf king!

Finally Updated Guatemala Section!

I know I know, I am pathetically lagging with the posting, but I am now on Tico Time which is basically like island time where things are super slow. We are loving it! This a picture of Chad with our little Guatemalan buddies and the soccer ball we gave them. Read the Guatemala section below for more info.

Mustache rides for Evan!!!

Due to popular request we have added a facial hair progression picture of Chad! I hope you all like it! My favorite part is that Chad can no longer make fun of "Dude" for his red hair because he clearly has a red mustache, CLASSIC!!!! Cindy and Kevin, you didn't tell me that red hair runs in your family, I now find him unfit to father my children! Just kidding, I love red heads so you better watch out!!!