El Salvador

We decided to head down to El Salvador to see our friends and looked into ways to travel there from Antigua. There were a couple of options including the Chicken Bus (a reconditioned school bus from the USA which all the locals use to get around), these can be seen throughout Central America and are called Chicken buses because it's not unusual to see people with chickens getting on! I'm not quite brave enough yet to take the chicken bus, apparently people squeeze on and the Guatemalan people are quite small but I think Will and Sam and the surfboards may take up a bit too much space.

The next option was the mini bus - a guy in the square was selling tickets onto this and invited us into his little office to try and sell it to us. I wasn't sure about this - the good thing was that it went to San Salvador directly from Antigua and they didn't charge extra for the surf boards. The bad thing was that we had no idea who would be driving us, if the guy was ligit and where we might end up!

The final option was the Pullman bus, large and air conditioned this sounded like the best plan - the only problem was that we had to take a bus to Guatemala City first and then take the Pull man to San Salvador making a 5 hour journey more like 6 or 7!

So we opted for the mini bus!!

We woke up this morning at 7 and the bus was due to pick us up at 8 . By 8.00 we were waiting by the door with no sign of the bus, by 9.00 Will was pacing and we had asked the travel agent around the corner to call the company and find out where the bus was. At 9:15, the cleaning lady came to the hostel and asked what we were waiting for, we explained that the bus should have picked us up at 8:00 and it was now 9:10...'No', she said, 'it's only 8:10!'. Turns out we hadn't set the alarm properly and were an hour ahead. So shortly afterwards the mini bus arrived and we jumped on along with 2 Americans and 2 Australians and an Italian.

Driving to El Salvador was a bit nerve racking at first, mainly because the guide books tell you it's a bit dangerous, but the people were really nice and crossing the border was really easy. We soon realised that the bus would drop you wherever you wanted so we called our friends and said not to drive all the way to San Salvador and asked them to speak with the driver to arrange a pick up point. We ended up being dropped at a Texaco garage not far from the border with news that our friends were on their way but would be 25 mins... but if we sat in the garage with all our bags we would be quite secure because the garages have armed security!! Anyway 20 mins later in pulled James and Lycenia and we are now sat in their house watching Ice Age, playing cards and this evening we will have a BBQ as it's James's birthday.

Apart from this all else is fine, Sam can't wait to surf and Will is covered in mosquito bites... 3 countries in 6 days not bad goinng but I think we'll settle here for a few weeks now. James knows a guy with a property right on El Zonte beach so we'll take a look at it tomorrow. More updates later.