We arrived in the El Salvador capital, San Salvador, after a very long journey and having been awake for 28 hours. Unfortunately for us the San Salvador airport isn’t actually in San Salvador, it’s an hour away so our journey still wasn’t over. Luckily some super helpful locals directed us to a local chicken bus and spoke to the driver about where we needed to go. We paid 60 cents (El Salvador uses USD) for the hour long journey, it was actually really enjoyable apart from the fact Grace had to sit on the door steps for the first 10 minutes. But we didn’t bash anyone with our massive bags and Grace didn’t fall off the back so we took it as a win.
When we got to the hostel we pretty much collapsed into our beds and had a 3 hour nap. After we woke up and started to feel slightly more alive, we decided to head downstairs and be social, well as social as you can be on three hours of sleep…
We met a group of English, Irish and Canadian people and went out to a bar where everything on the menu, food and drinks, was $1.39 so we ended up drinking waaayyyy more than we probably should have.
After the bar we headed to a ‘club’ although I use that term very loosely. It looked like it was just someone’s house that had been gutted and a dancefloor and bar added. It was very strange, the toilet still had a bath in it… But it was an enjoyable evening none the less.
The next morning we were headed to the second largest city in El Salvador, Santa Ana. We were going to get two buses, which we were not looking forward to in the heat, but realized two of the guys we went out with the previous night were also headed there and between the four of us an Uber would be the same price but much more direct. Unfortunately the only car that would take us that far from the city was tiny, we all had to sit with our big rucksacks on our laps. Poor Grace didn’t even get a seat as where the middle back seat is normally positioned in a car, this one just had a cup holder. After the hour and a half journey she was branded with cup holder buttocks for the foreseeable future.
We spent the afternoon wandering around Santa Ana looking at all the churches and pretty squares. El Salvador gets a lot less tourism than the other south American countries and the locals are a lot more interested in us. Everywhere we went people came up and said hello in broken English. It was very cute.
The next day we had planned to do a hike up a volcano, there is one bus a day to the volcano at 7:30am. After finally testing negative for covid we were planning to head into Guatemala the following day so needed an official test to cross the border. We were hoping to get to the clinic as soon as it opened at 6am and get seen quickly and be back in time for the 7:30am bus to the volcano. Unfortunately a lot of people had the same idea of getting there when it opened, we didn’t get seen until 7:30am and had to return two hours later for our results.
Once we had our results we decided to make the most of what was left of the day and got an uber to Lago de Ilopango, a lake about an hour away that we had heard was very beautiful.
The lake is open to the public but unfortunately there is no way to get to it for free as it is surrounded by lake front properties, so we found a bar that did a day pass for $5. Fortunately for us they let us in for free, I think because we were white and it’s good PR for them the have western ‘rich people’ in their bar. Little did they know me and Grace are a long way from being rich haha, but we enjoyed the free pass anyway. The lake was super pretty and we spent a chill afternoon swimming and divebombing into it.
Around 3pm we decided to head back to Santa Ana, we knew the last bus back was at 4pm and they came every 30mins, so we figured if one didn’t turn up we could get the next one. But obviously we don’t have the best luck with journeys, after an hour and a half there were still no buses. No taxis or Ubers would come to the lake to pick us up either and it was a three hour walk back along a motorway. A couple we were waiting with decided to hitch hike to their destination, but seeing as we would have to go further than them, we would have to travel as two women alone for most of our journey. It would be getting dark soon and again us not having the best luck aaaannnnd me being a big wimp, we decided not to hitchhike with them and continued waiting long after they were gone. Eventually we saw an American guy getting into an airport shuttle and I asked him if we could get a ride in his prepaid taxi to the closest town they would pass through and he kindly agreed. They dropped us to a town ten minutes away where we were able to get a chicken bus the rest of the way home.
Now we’re going to get an early night sleep as our shuttle to Guatemala will be picking us up at 4:30am!
Tell you all about it soon, lots of love, Alice x