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entry 16: el salvador 02/24/06

We left the creature comforts of Guatemala City and headed for El Salvador, hoping the crossing at Valle Nuevo would be uneventful. The ride was easy enough but the tranquility soon ended as we neared the border. You can tell you’re at the right place, even though you can’t see any signs that say “El Salvador This Way”, because of all the young men who are running at you, yelling and talking so fast that you would think that a naked Pamela Anderson was sitting behind you. No kidding, each of us had at least 10 guys who were so close to the bikes that you had to slow down or risk running into them. They either wanted to be your “tramador” (border guide) or they wanted to be your money exchanger. If I’d known how things were to unfold I would have gunned the bike and left them in the dust. It wouldn’t have done any good though, because they stick with you until you’ve stopped in front of the border station. Lynne has been great at border crossings, her Spanish is better than mine and I think it throws the officials when they see it is a woman riding the bike. I hung out watching the bikes and Lynne went inside with one of the freelance border guides.

As I am standing outside, I am approached every 30 seconds with someone waving quetzals (Guatemalan currency) and U.S. dollars wanting to exchange money. You do need the local currency of El Salvador (the U.S. dollar) so why not do it now? I have to preface this next part by saying I was aware of what the exchange rate was before getting to the border and I did graduate from the fourth grade. On this day the 7.65 Guatemalan quetzals are worth about one U.S. dollar. I was carrying 2,000 quetzals. As soon as I pulled out the cash I had 6 pairs of eyes with hands very close to me. The adrenalin is starting to pump because you don’t want someone to grab your money and run and when you ask for the person directly in front of you what exchange rate they will give you, you are happy to see 7.65 come up on their calculator. My mind does some quick math and I multiply 2,000 (quetzals) times 7.65 and I come up with about $150. This guy’s calculator shows $144 which is close enough to my math. We do the exchange and I stash my cash. Lynne comes out and we are good to cross the border. As we cross the bridge that separates the two countries we are stopped by an Salvadoran official who checks our papers and directs us to immigration. This time there is only one person who follows us to our parking spot. I highly suspect he received a call from the guy who helped me exchange money on the Guatemalan side. He offers both guide and money changing services. Lynne again accomplishes 90% of what needs to be done without this guides help. We ended up paying $8 to the guide on the Guatemalan side and $5 to the guide in El Salvador. Lynne still has some queztals she needs to exchange and when a rate of 8 queztals per dollar is offered I object and ask for a 7 ½ to one exchange rate, because I don’t want to get ripped off!

The only two honest souls we found at the border.

OK, now let’s see what I did wrong. First, never accept help from a guide without agreeing on a price for their services. Both of the guides started at more than double what they got paid in the end and they use the group pressure or the “you’re robbing me blind” psychology to make you pay more. Second, know what you should end up with, in the new currency, before you get to the border. In this case division should have been used instead of multiplication. My 2,000 queztals were actually worth about $260. I got ripped off for almost $120!!! Third, do your money exchange they way they do…in couples. Everything gets counted four times. And last, when your wife tells you that something doesn’t seem right; take the time to listen to her. I can’t believe I actually helped these crooks to rip us off. But, looking at it from the perspective that after 11,000 miles and 5 months of traveling through 5 countries, this was the only time people have really been dishonest.

We moved on from the border and ride into El Salvador - immediately noticing how nice the roads are in this country. A quick ninety minute ride brings us to the town of Apaneca - picked because it sounded nice in the Lonely Planet - and it was as far as we wanted to ride after the border crossing. We asked a local gentleman which hotel in town would have inside parking for our bikes and he recommended one several blocks away. After waiting for a half hour for someone to come and unlock the courtyard gate, we paid the $18 and unloaded our bikes. We decided to go to dinner and had walked about a half a block from the hotel when we realized we had forgotten to bring our camera. So I walked back to the hotel, where you have to ring a bell to get back inside because they keep everything locked up tight, and went to our room. When I opened the door I noticed the light was on but I’m pretty sure I turned it off when we left. I looked around the room for the camera when I remembered that Lynne keeps it in her tank bag on the bike. As I turned toward the door I noticed a shoe sticking out from underneath it. I pulled the door back and standing there is the girl that helped us check in! I’m a little shocked but, then again, hotel staff have become part of our daily lives and I thought she must be bringing us towels or soap. I apologized for trapping her behind the door and walk out of the room and to our bikes that were parked only 20 feet from the room. As I find the camera on the bike, I watch her leave the room and more importantly make sure that she isn’t carrying anything. I went back into the room and did a quick inventory and then left again for dinner. We did a complete inventory that night and nothing is missing, but did notice some things seem to have been disturbed, so we are sure my coming back for the camera saved us from more heartache. What a “one-two punch” welcome to El Salvador!

After a fairly sleepless night we decide to head out early and are rewarded by a cool morning ride. Cool weather has become a relative term down here. My thermometer on the bike dashboard is reading 78 degrees at 8 o’clock in the morning and climbs to 90 by noon . The asphalt roads are as good as any in the states and traffic is light so we make good time to San Salvador. However, we didn't see any promising places to stay along the road and we didn’t feel up to driving through a city with a population of a million plus people. Once again we consult the Lonely Planet guide book and choose the next town large enough to have places to stay the night. San Vicenta it is.

Not all hotel rooms are created equal!

The approach to San Vicenta is down a beautiful winding road that gives you a great view of the town and its large white church, which marks the city center, and all of the tree-lined streets are set against the base of the volcano San Vicente. The beauty soon ends as we pass by a town landmark, a facsimile of the Eiffel Tower, which is a 30-foot concrete structure cracked and pitted from an earthquake several years ago. As usual our first priority is to find a safe place for us and the bikes and after having no luck riding around the central park (where decent hotels can almost always be found), we asked a local for some help. This attempt ended with us five miles out of town, standing in front of a “No-Tell Motel” that couldn’t understand why we would want to spend more than two hours at their hotel. Back on the bikes and back into town, we reluctantly consult the guide book once again. I hate to keep trashing the Lonely Planet because it is a good guide book for the backpacker who is under the age of thirty and wants to spend $10 a day on food and lodging. We are not that kind of traveler and our bikes make most of the LP’s hotel suggestions worthless because of parking issues. So…we had no luck finding a good place to rest our heads - and to put it bluntly we “cooked” in a small room through the night and as we left in the morning I noticed we had consumed a gallon of water and a half gallon of assorted flavored drinks.

At this point we have decided to forgo sightseeing and concentrate on just getting the heck out of El Salvador. With little sleep and constant heat we are quite grumpy when we pull into our last stop in the country, San Miguel- just north of the Honduras border. We find a “splurge” hotel that runs us $71 a night – but is well worth the extra money as it has a great pool and some other nice amenities. Just as I unloaded the bikes, two buses pull up and offload 60 U.S. Army and National Guard troops. Sitting around the pool with some of the guys we found out that they are in El Salvador to build an army base, which will house construction workers who will help build schools for the kids in the area. A few of the guys were surprised that we rode the bikes down and an ironic twist was that they were not allowed to leave the hotel for safety reasons and had several El Salvadoran army troops stationed at the front of the hotel to make sure they were safe. All in all it was nice to have some guys from the U.S. around for a few days, except when they called revelry at 5am and had their breakfast outside our room at 6am.

With our minds and bodies somewhat refreshed we headed for another border crossing – Honduras. Let’s hope our prior experiences have left us better prepared for this one!

From Lynne

Not alot of photo memories here - I guess we were just a bit too hot and cranky. We'll do better in Honduras and Nicaragua.

And thanks to all who have sent those encouraging emails - you're the berries!