Figured I'd post a bit about the sun and surf here in La Libertad. No pics (see post before) until I bring out the camera a little before sunset. Our room here is a bit boring...no TV, we miss our Warner Bros. station with terrible commercials but awesome shows.
QUICK< SOMETHING I FORGOT. MORE BORDER CROSSING ADVICE.
Guatemala - El Salvador (Southern most border).
- Buildings are all together, very easy to navigate. Exiting Guatemala proved a lengthy process, but it was made easy by my friend (see post before tambien). We joked and laughed with him until our paperwork was done and off we went to El Salvador. Exiting cost us 10 Quetzals and 2.00 US.
- Pass a checkpoint, into El Sal. El Salvador is by far the easiest crossing. It still took a long time, but we only had to get through Migracion, Aduana and a few copies (0.40US). Everything else is free as El Salvador is part of the CA-4 Border Control agreement (guatemala..don't see how tho, it wasnt free and easy; el salvador, nicaragua and honduras) which makes life a little easier.
So far we're lucky, no lines at any border. We typically go early and I'm pretty sure it's not busy season, I hope I didn't jinx myself.
Anyway, the road coming up to La Libertad was hot and chocked full of semi's going slow. Once we hit the ocean things got interesting: massive dark and cold tunnels, and a ride that would hone anyone's cornering skills in any type of vehicle. At least 30 switchbacks tucked us into our bikes as we climbed and descended over and over again next to the ocean. Very cool.
When we got to El Tunco, we drove right by it. All the beaches here have very small entrances into what are like small communities. Inside are restaurants, bars, hotels, hostels. There's pretty much a 50/50 population of locals to white people here. So lots of conversation to be had because it's nice to be able to talk fluently in native tongue once more (its very draining struggling in broken spanish all the time). We asked one laid back girl what hotel was best, and she pointed us to the Tunco Lodge. Decent place, woman said 50 bucks a night, what we expected to pay by the beach, but a young kid took over and showed us around, then said the price was 40. Awesome deal! ...So we thought. Talked to a guy later that night who's staying here for 8.00. Well, now that we have our sunburns, we're gonna look a little more local and a lot less foreign so hopefully we can get some deals soon. Doesn't mater, we're happy. We have a pool, cheap food, and a/c. Lots of people to talk to, a huge surf population and a backpackers destination. We celebrated with a beer at the beach bar; 8 later and we chowed down on some much needed spaghetti. Total bill: 8 beers, 2 huge spaghettis, 20.00. Awesome again! I love this place.
Watched the sunset over the ocean, incredible and went back to the pool and back out to dinner. We had fried fish which was much better than I thought it was going to be, another 4 beers. After a stupid bet that if I ate the fishes eyeballs Nik would buy a bottle of vodka, we found ourselves swallowing Vodka and redbulls and 7-up all night. Well...Nik's night ended early, I talked to the Tyler guy from Canada for a couple more hours and polished the entire bottle of vodka..Good thing we're by the ocean, hangovers only affect me in-land.
Woke up to hammers banging at 7 am, had some french toast for breakfast and decided we'd get some surf boards. I'm not going to take pictures of my wounds, but after three hours we decided to give up and try at another destination. The waves here are slightly forgiving, but the shallow rock shelf make it dangerous. The board popped me in the head, I've got multiple scratches on both arms, deep cuts from jagged rocks on both feet and hands. Surfing is a rough sport....not to mention arduous. Everytime we'd attempt a wave and then fall, 4 more would knock us 300 feet to shore (we're on point break) and we'd have to start paddling all over again.
A Canadian surfer girl sat down with us and basically gave us a free lesson, nice of her, she was probably just afraid we'd kill her if we went back out. Anyway surfing's done....we're toast, Nik's burnt, and we've been sleeping the day away haha.
I'm hungry for food and pictures, I'm going scrounging.
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