Our El Salvador adventure began at 3:45am at the corner of Rodulfo Robles and 8th Ave, Zona 1. We stuffed 15 people (plus luggage) into two taxis and were taken to the Alamo bus station.By 4:30am, we were on our way. The bus ride was freezing cold, but otherwise uneventful and we arrived in Guatemala City around 9, took another set of taxis to a different bus station, and left for San Salvador at 10am.
We got to the Guatemala/ El Salvador border rather quickly (about a 2 hour trip). At the border, we simply got off the bus, walked across the border, and got back on the bus. Kati took care of the passport business. We did find it weird that we only got Guatemala stamps for exiting, and never an El Salvador stamp for entering. So technically, I guess we were in limbo for 9 days?
The border took about a half hour, and from there we had another hour until we arrived in San Salvador. We waited at the bus station for a while, until we were picked up by Cristy (our coordinator for the trip) in a private microbus and brought to our hostel. So, a long travel day, but compared to our trip to Oaxaca, not so bad.
Our entire trip was planned through CIS (Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad,http://www.cis-elsalvador.org/), an organization created in El Salvador after the signing of the peace accords to promote equality and create solidarity within communities. Cristy was our guide for the entire trip. She organized everything and traveled with us throughout. Our schedule was absolutely full, but everything went incredibly smooth and we were very happy/impressed with CIS and Cristy.
Our “home base” was a hostel in San Salvador named Happy House. We stayed there the first night and others throughout the trip, although we did bounce around a lot. Compared to many of the places I have stayed during my time in Latin America, this hostel was luxury. Each room had a TV and an AC unit and a shower with hot water (at times too hot) and good pressure, and they gave us towels!
After situating ourselves in the hostel and meeting downstairs to head out to dinner, Rachel realized she had lost her passport. After some quick calls, and with perfect timing and luck, we found the passport. She had left it on the bus, but our microbus driver knew the manager of the mechanic office that always services the buses before they make another trip. The manager found the passport and agreed to hold it for us. With this luck, Rachel had her passport back within an hour. Without this luck, she would have had to pay $10,000 US dollars to get it back (if it got in the wrong hands) and spend a whole lot of time in the US Embassy. But luckily, we didn’t have to deal with that.
After solving that dilemma, we ate dinner out at a popular pupusaria. Pupusas are “the food” of El Salvador. They are basically thick tortillas stuffed with whatever you want. The most common are cheese, bean and cheese, and bean/cheese/chicharron. We also had ones with spinach and zucchini. On top of the pupusas you put a slightly pickled salad of cabbage and carrots, and then over that you pour a salsa that is a little spicy. You eat them with your hands, and they are a delicious, messy, greasy El Salvador treat… a great way to start our trip and welcome us to the country.
That night, we watched a little TLC in Spanish, mostly because we were amazed with the fact that our own TV was available to us. We fell asleep around 8:30 and slept well.
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