The beautiful view from Dan and Betsy's house
Just after a full moon surf
The crater lake of Lago de Coatepeque.
Storms would pass us every evening
Showing the locals how it's done
Another beautiful ocean front dinner
Vivek and Nima after the van got broken into
Natural salt water pool
Xanadu
Sweet splash
There have been few miles put on the van since the last time we wrote, and we’ve since settled comfortably into the beach life: surfing, hanging around in the hammocks reading, and cooking amazing meals.
I am proud to say that I’ve made some huge advancement in the world of surfing. Although I am still terrified by the brute force of the ocean, I now know what it feels like to glide effortlessly over the crystal green waters. Surfing takes a lot of strength in paddling and knowledge of how waves work. Being in the right place at the right time to catch a wave is no easy task. But once you’re up, the power and speed of the waves bring time to a standstill and you are left with nothing more then a fluid silence….. Then one either pulls out of the wave or in my case reality hits and I go down face-first into water allowing the waves’ power to eat me whole. Jeremy on the other hand sets out everyday exited and gets the job done, catching huge waves always coming out with a smile.
When we’re not out surfing we’ve been home eating leftover Halloween candy and doing much needed vehicle maintenance. First we took to the task of bringing Dan’s pick-up truck back to life after close to a year of hibernation. It took a few days of work but she is up and running like a champ now. Then we decided to make our van a little more Latin by installing a second horn. The new horn sounds like an extremely loud whistle and is great for catching the attention of roadway hazards; usually bikers, slow traffic, attractive women, and occasional livestock. In fact just the other day we had a cow charge out in front of us from a side street, momentarily stare us down like a bull in a bullring, and then dive out of the way. I’m not sure if it was our new horn that scared him or the sight of a huge white van screeching towards him…I’d like to think it was our new horn.
We spend most our days in El Sunzal, either at the beach or here at the house, and try to go into the town La Libertad as little as possible, usually for food and internet. The people here in El Salvador have been awesome; everywhere we go we are treated with smiles. It is the first country where the majority of people stop for a quick friendly conversation and then continue on there way, without bringing up money. Although we might appear to you back home as two dirty guys living out of a van, you’d be surprised how wealthy many locals think we are. We are often mistaken for walking bags of money (if you can picture a cartoon bag of money walking down the street) and not two totally radical dudes. The local surfers have been especially cool though; first off they are amazing at surfing, super nice and often offer us waves that they are in perfect position to catch. It is easy to see why Dan and Betsy talked up El Salvador so much. Jeremy and I spend all day trying to decide which beachfront house we’d rather live in. We actually met a young couple from London, Danny and Bee, who decided to give up their jobs and build a house in El Sunzal. They had us over the other night for a great evening; we discussed English/American stereotypes, laughed at each others accents, and drank beer like Englishmen.
The following day we met Galo, Dan’s real-estate agent, who has got to be the nicest guy we’ve met all trip. He’s this awesome little El Salvadorian who lives in the capital city, with his wife and kids. He’s one of those people you meet when traveling that stops everything he’s doing to take you out and show you what his country has to offer, a real genuine person. He took us out for a full tour of San Salvador. We saw everything from the congested downtown district to the upscale neighborhoods, and everything in between. We were shocked to see how modern the city is; their malls are far superior to our Gateway in SLC, and offer ice-cream at half the price. He even took us out to lunch for some local pupusas, which are little pancake looking things filled beans meat, and cheese. They were delicious, except that we haven’t been able to find them since. Anyway if anyone is interested El Salvadorian real-estate Galo is the man, check out his site: www.pavasa.com.sv.
Next we went to the bus station to await the arrival of our good friend Vivek, who is officially our third friend to come down for some wild times (we still haven’t heard from Bo, Jake, Dave, Thad, James, Brad, Justin, or Sarah). Vivek had some time off before a new job and decided a Central American trip was in order; he flew in Guatemala City, and bused his way to El Salvador. Our plans were to spend a few days here in Sunzal and then drive up north into Honduras and visit the ruins of Copán.
Well, that night after quite the feast, Jeremy and I decided it was time for a life changing experience: moonlight surfing! It was the perfect night, we’ve had a week to get to know the break, and the lighting was perfect. We set Vivek up at the van with the video camera and The Daylight (our trusty spotlight, with a beam equivalent to 800,000 candles). Equipped with our surfboards and glowsticks (complements of James Taylor) we walked down the cobble steps to the beach. The ocean was relatively calm, the tide was right, and there was a porch light that would give us a perfect reference point once we were out. With two excited smiles we ran towards the water and jumped in.
Immediately, the briskness of the water had me fully alert, and all my concentration went into paddling out through the black waters that surrounded. There is an amazing feeling that comes from doing any sport at night, an appreciation for the calmer environment. I can only equate it to skiing under a full moon in the dead of winter where everything takes on a silence except the sound of the snow swooshing off your skis. This was much the same, all we had was the glitter of distant lights, and the light sound of our boards against the choppy water which was always overtaken by the sound of breaking waves barreling into shore. Before I knew it, we had paddled all the way out towards the break and were sitting on our boards enjoying the night sky. It was a wild feeling to be sitting there, nothing but stars, distant lights and a great black eeriness underneath us. Every now and then Vivek would shine the spot light on us and we’d wave back with our glow sticks. All was well and we decided life is good. I paddled into position and to my surprise caught a perfect wave. I was a little too excited to stand so I just sat up and rode the whole thing into shore. Jeremy came in soon after and well you can imagine how excited we were. Full moon surfing, we had truly lived!
During the following few evenings Jeremy, Vivek and I took quite a liking to the Latin American pop singer Shakira. We’d make huge ice cream Sundays and watch DVD’s of her live concerts. We were all dying to see her in concert. We had almost gone to see her in Mexico City, and then again in Guatemala City. Well you can imagine our grief the following day on our way to Honduras when we came to a stop light in San Salvador and noticed a huge Shakira billboard. It was advertising her San Salvador concert for November 6, the very night before when we were home, half hour away, watching her DVD and discussing how bad we had to see her in concert. Suddenly our drive to the border became long and silent.
What is it like crossing over into Honduras? We opted for a night crossing, agreeing that things would go smoother without the usual border crowds and luckily we were right. The El Salvador side was manned by a couple nice border patrol guards that took us through the paper work and got the van officially out of the country. Then we pulled up to the Honduras side in hopes of a speedy entry. Well it turns out that Honduras, unlike all the other Central American Countries likes to charge $50US per vehicle every time you enter into the country. Not only that, they wouldn’t even consider us until we had paid the fees to the bank the following morning. The whole thing seemed much too expensive for a weekend trip and we decided to turn back into our country of choice, El Salvador. It took some time explaining to the El Salvadorian border patrol why we were back so soon., but they were kind enough and had our paper work back in order in no time. Soon we were back into the country and on our way to the supposedly stunning crater lake of Lago de Coatepeque.
This place turned out to be truly beautiful. High up in the hills, surrounded by green jungle and huge private houses stood this emerald green expanse of water. There was one island and a road which we were told went all the way around the lake and was in good condition. In an attempt to find a public access to the lake we drove almost all the way around it until the road turned into a single track trail through the jungle. We found a huge house under construction and the crew was kind enough to let us swim. Jeremy came across a huge tree that had some how made its way into the water quite a while ago and had since been stuck against the shore. It took some manhandling, but he soon had it out in the open waters. We officially named the tree Bo and spent the whole morning like little kids ‘tree rolling.’ This consisted of climbing the branches like monkeys in order to weight the tree right so that it would barrel around in the water. This kept us busy for hours trying to come up with more efficient ways to spin Bo around.
The expensive welcome into Honduras and our missed Shakira concert called for a night on the town in San Salvador to raise our spirits. We stopped in Santa Ana for lunch, a town the guide books say is great for relaxing and soaking in the local environment. We pulled up near the main plaza, parked right in front of the cathedral, and went looking for lunch. Sadly the town was not very exciting, lunch was nothing to write home about, and our day we were about to find was going to get much worse.
We returned to the car to find the front right window of our van completely shattered. As our stomachs sank we jumped in to find out what had been stolen. Luckily these idiots were too scared to actually go into the van and missed our cameras, video equipment, and other desirable items. But sadly Vivek had his sweet camera in the glove compartment filled with all the pictures of the last few days. They stole his camera, all our CD’s, and the face to our CD player. This was the worst part, not only did they take all our music, but they were too stupid to steal the whole stereo. Thus they are left with a face plate that is completely useless, and we are left with the rest of the stereo that is worthless without a face. The whole thing was completely brainless and left us with a bitter feeling towards the people in Santa Ana. Was it a simple break in, or had they seen our foreign plates and thought “wealthy tourist?”
The following day was spent installing a new stereo and finding a place that could custom build us a new window. It turns out Plexiglas was the material of choice and least expensive. $200.00 later (not counting Vivek’s camera and over a hundred CD’s) we were back in business and eager for another night on the town before Vivek returned to Guatemala City and then to the States.
We spent the whole night out at the bars and met a whole bunch of locals. We had all the rowdy fun one would expect to have with friends in a foreign country; Mojitos, salsa music, Cuba Libres, and all-night fun. Vivek left early the next morning and we have since comfortably made our way into our old surfside routine.
Our plans are to spend a few days here with Dan once he arrives and then drive back up to Honduras. We are planning on seeing Copán and then boating to the Bay Islands on the Caribbean coast where we may bump into Tony and Danielle again.
We want to thank Dan and Betsy again for making these last few weeks happen, and to everyone else who is following our site.
Keep us posted on the snow report back home and send us any sweet ski pictures.
Take care,
Nima