A Snapshot of El Salvador

Posada Luna in El Tunco... perfect parking right between our room and the pool.

We wound up spending a couple of days at El Tunco trying to acclimatize to the heat and simply enjoying being in a new country. The heat, though. Wow. Sitting on the beach wasn’t even pleasant as it felt like hot air was blowing on the beach with every wave that came ashore. We met up with a few other riders for dinner, including Nelson, with whom we have many mutual friends all over the world and whose travels to Alaska we followed via Facebook. And another Facebook contact of ours, Gabriel, even came and found us on the beach and took us to a great place for our first pupusas.
Gabriel was really excited to share his country with us… food, history and current events.


My first time riding out of hotel parking... Success!! No broken frames (on the hotel gate or bike)

From El Tunco, we headed to Santa Ana to check out the small colonial city and enjoyed a bit of street food. Nelson had offered that we could camp at his property on Lake Coatepeque which is a volcanic crater lake. The peace and coolness there was a welcome relief from the heat of the beach and we
really enjoyed falling asleep listening to crickets.








Frog-Man

We rode into San Salvador the next day and WOW. It was HOT. There was traffic. And more traffic. But lots of smiles and waves. Little 150cc bikes pulling up in traffic to chat and being shocked when they realized I’m a girl. It was good fun, despite the fact that I was soaking wet.


Roel needed to replace his shoe-laces... if this guy didn't have something to fit Roel's boots, no one would!

We rode through the main square and the main market and then gave up and went to McDonalds to hang out in the air-conditioning before meeting up with Nelson.

Nelson, his friends and family were wonderful and welcomed us to San Salvador. We spent the night chatting about moto travels in Alaska, Central America and beyond… Nelson gave us some sweet personalized t-shirts that will keep us cool while we ride and also gave us a lot of key advice about the rest of our travels in Central America.


Incredible lunch with Nelson's family


It's a good thing I can only ride one bike at a time... Nelson has a verrrrry nice collection

We wished we could have spent longer in San Salvador, especially because Gabriel had invited us to meet his family, but we were keen to cross the border with David who was planning on crossing sooner-rather-than-later because of his timeline for getting to South America.

We don’t like timelines. But we like David a lot. And through two border crossings and several celebratory beers, we have developed a trust and bond with him that we really value and know is rare to find on the road. Though it was sad to leave San Salvador earlier than we wanted, we were excited and less stressed about the crossing knowing we’d be with someone we feel so comfortable with.