El Salvador
January 2007
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On New Years Day, we dropped Alison off at the airport in Managua and drove to the Honduran border with enough time to cross over and check into the Hotel Barcelona, where we had stayed with Omar and “G” on our way south a couple months earlier. We woke up early the next morning and drove to the Honduras, El Salvador border and crossed into El Salvador with no problems other than the slow process of entering into El Salvador. Once in El Salvador we bite off a little too much trying to charge all the way to La Libertad with only a few hours of light. The result was a frustrating and somewhat sketchy time navigating San Salvador at night. With the help of some nice Police officers, we finally found the road to La Libertad and eventually the nice campground in El Tunco recommended by our Canadian friends Chris and Mel.
El Tunco was great even though we weren’t in the prime surf season. We within walking distance of La Bocana and Sunsal and had decent surf while we were there. The local people were super nice and one of the funniest things was the campground caretaker Salvador’s kids. They were always running around like any little kid at the beach: covered in dirt or sand, happy and half naked. We had some really fun longboarding sessions in the early morning at Sunsal and the occasional shared wave.
After El Tunco, we went to San Salvador to visit Puerto Del Diablo on our way up to Cerro Verde. The internal tourism in El Salvador is starting to take off so the government is promoting its national parks and the idea of camping heavily. This was great for us because we were able to find really cool places where we could camp for almost nothing. From Cerro Verde we drove toward the Honduran/Guatemalan border where we found the Monte Cristo Cloud Forest. It is similar to Monteverde in Costa Rica accept for there are hardly any people other than the rangers. We saw three Quetzals in a tree right when we pulled up to the park, what a welcome. It was cool at night and the view looking down over northwestern El Salvador into Guatemala was breathtaking.
We resigned ourselves to the fact that there was just too many things to see and places to surf in El Salvador for this trip so we have decided that out of all of the countries in Central America, we need to explore more of El Salvador first. We hope that you find a way to get there someday if you are in for a taste of some of Central America’s most unspoiled nature experiences and best surf. Despite what people told us, we found it to be a safe country with very nice people and great roads.