Tuesday, 02/23/2010 Playa del Tunco, El Salvador

Last Friday we did a pool day - a nice local hotel allows you to use their pool and facilities for $3.75 / day.

Saturday the owner of our hotel, Blanca, offers us along with some other guests to take us to some small town of the beaten path where we also can swim a little. It turns out quite interesting. The town isn't very exciting, - but the drive is. We see modern transportation methods (sorry about the picture quality),

along with idyllic landscapes close to a remote village where we go for a swim with some locals.

To see the radical differences in these countries is amazing. On one hand you find internet cafes on every corner even in the smallest towns, while on the other we pass small, one-room houses built of clay brick and ochs-wagons that make you think you are set back at least a century. Even though for the most of us are aware that most of these people are very poor, it becomes a different pictures when you find out that normal families can't afford any kind of stove/oven or a fridge. They cook over open fires in the one-room houses, and hence many of them have respiratory problems (a lot of aid organizations build stoves in countries down here to fight this problem). Most kids only go to school up to 4th grade, then most have to start working to help support the family. I can't really say that I was that surprised by this. But what really surprised me is how those kids switch between acting their age (like in the picture above) and being quite responsible employees / part-time-mothers & fathers of their siblings. Being down here also reminds me how little we actually "need". I guess in the end happiness is rarely achieved by material things - and maybe those act often as an inhibitor.

Sunday morning comes along. Lise and I intend to head off to Copan, Honduras today. Lise already mentioned last night that maybe we should head south with Emma and Leona to the beach in El Salvador. I remember that many of the border stations close early on Sunday, so possibly I won't even be able to enter Honduras today. We decide to stick around today and all head down south tomorrow.

Monday. After another relaxing pool day, we are ready to hit the road today. I get up at eight in order to get an oil change. It's 3,300 miles since I left Knoxille, so it's time. After a little bit of asking around I find a place. They want $3 for the oil change. Then he tells me that we need to go buy the oil. It's not the kind of shop that has oil on storage. And not the kind of shop where I'd get an oil change under any other kind of circumstances. Enough of the pessimism. I have to call Jason in Knoxville from an internet cafe to confirm that I can use 20W50 in the car - it never get's cold down here, they don't use 10W30 etc. They do the job and everything is fine. After breakfast and saying goodbye to our host Blanca we head down south.
The first surprise: We come by a place called Playa del Sol. For miles and miles there are walls with gates to our right - it appears El Salvador's elite has bought up the entire beach front. Cheap, decent hotels are impossible to find. We stop by a "Comfort Inn" where they let us hang out at the beach for a while, which was very nice.

The beach is beautiful. But all the locals we meet are fairly unfriendly. We notice that nobody smiles around here. The (very) few budget hotels that we encounter all have lots of little sheds between them and the beach where all the fishermen hang up their nets when they come in. Where else could they do it. Essentially the locals access to the beach has been almost completely eliminated. I'd be pissed, too.
We head up to Playa del Tunca, about 90 minutes northwest. It's a surfertown. Cheap. And - as we encounter - great seafood. We end up in a nice little hotel with pool:

A room is $25 for two people - $12.50 a person, expensive for our standards - so this is a treat. The pool is beautiful, down here it's quite warm already. (yeah, picture that while you're shoveling snow next time ;-) ).
Tomorrow it's off to Honduras, the Copan Ruins. On the way we'll pick up Eddie, who I met here this morning in the hotel, in San Salvador - fellow travelers bring down my gas costs, and it's more fun to travel together. Nos vemos ...

http://picasaweb.google.com/joegrass76/04cOnTheBeach#
(also added more pictures to the Suchitoto album).