1. Drive to El Sal: So on Saturday morning, Tom picked up Aubrey and I at 5:30 in the morning to start our 4.5 hour drive to our next Central American adventure. We made five cds to listen to, packed a load of snacks, and Aubrey made some bomb.com M&M cookies for the road. I really love traveling with Aubrey and Tom because it just seems like the perfect mix of personalities and enthusiasm. The drive there was absolutely beautiful. We stayed coastal and drove through dense trees for probably 75% of the trip. It’s really amazing how much the temperature changes all around this region based on how close one is to the water and the various differences in evaluation
2. Border “Control”: Moving between El Salvador and Guatemala was hysterically easy. We had a crap ton of stuff in our car, including 26 bottles of hot sauce we smuggled in to El Sal for Tom’s friend, and all the border patrol people saw was the surf boards and said, “vas a la playa?” As soon as we confirmed their theory, they took one look at the passports and we were in. BAM! Coming back to Guate was not quite as easy but still much less of a hassle than anywhere else in the world. The only difference was this time Tom has to actually get out of the car to show our passports at a little booth thingy. Hard life!
3. La Mizata: The first beach we stopped at upon arrival to El Sal was in this quiet little town called Mizata. There were a bunch of locals there playing soccer on the beach and jumping in the waves. Tom was having trouble taking the broken end of his fin out of his surfboard and when the people there saw he was struggling, they all RAN to come help. They went out and found some tools in their truck and yanked the pieces out. It was so amazing. I mean, they literally stopped what they were doing and rushed over to see how they could help. Sometimes kindness like this completely overwhelms me, like almost to the point of tearing up (what a baby!).
Once his board was fixed, Tom went out and surfed and Aubrey and I played frisbee with some of our new friends and gave them all the cookies we had made. It was one of the coolest feelings I’ve had since I’ve been here; just being in the sun, interacting with incredible people through anything but spoken language, breathing in the fact that I was in El Salvador when a few hours before I was eating oatmeal in Guatemala City… it was surreal for sure.
4. El Tunco: After Tom had got his surf on, we headed to the real place we were staying for the weekend, El Tunco. “Tunco” is the Mayan word for “pig” so the whole town had a little pig theme going on (made me think of my Bacon relatives!). The surf there is apparently some of the best in all of Central America and it definitely showed in the little surf village that was created around shore. We stayed at Tom’s friend’s hotel but he was out of town so it was just the three of us and the family that works to maintain the place that were there the whole weekend. We walked around the town, ate some amazing burritos, took a few naps, played in a sweet pool, and then Tom and I went out surfing…
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| Look! We're in a jungle! |
5. Real Live Surfing: …So this weekend was apparently a huge one in my surfing “career” as I caught my first real live wave. Tom and I paddled out almost a kilometer from shore and were out there with the legit El Salvadorian surfers. It. Was. Amazing. I cannot even describe all the emotions I had. It was intimidating, exciting, exhausting, scary, and addicting. I learned all the rules about surfing when other people are around, learned how to turn my board around while sitting on it, which directions to paddle, which waves to go for; basically a TON of learning. But then when it was actually time to go it all came together and made so much sense. Tom is doing a great job coaching me and I think he is enjoying it too because I’m learning so quickly (so I’m told). The worst part is that I can only practice about every other weekend so it may be a slow sport to catch on to. I’m going to try renting a bunch of different kinds of boards until the spring and then maybe look into buying a cheap used one for myself, that is, if I do indeed continue with this path :)
6. Hurricane Mateo: No, we were not actually in a hurricane, but we did feel the aftermath of all the rain that came with it. While we were surfing it was raining really hard but I didn’t seem to notice or mind because of all the adrenaline, but that night it poured like I had never seen before (even coming from Seattle). When we woke up the next day, the rivers in town had completely flooded and broke into the ocean making it a disgusting brown and yellow color. Tom said that the river water was really contaminated and that swimming in the ocean with that water in it was recipe for sickness. So, we decided to save our stomachs and avoid the water that day. The night before, however, we were walking back to our hostel from the beach and the river had just been broken right in the path of our walk. We had to hand our stuff over to some macho El Salvadorian’s and Aubrey and I held hands as we walked through a waist deep dirty river with an intense current with rocks at the bottom. There was a string of restaurants lining the beach that had a whole bunch of customers watching this whole scene unfold. Hopefully we were able to provide entertainment for some nice people that night.
7. Heading Home: Though it was hard to head back to school after such an awesome weekend, we were able to make quite a few more memories on the trip back. First, Tom let me drive for part of the way so I could practice driving a standard since Aubs and I are probably going to be buying one of our own in the next few weeks. It was relatively uneventful until we came up to road construction that required us to pull over to the side and turn the car off completely. There were a ton of locals trying to sell us junk while we waited there, a little girl convinced Tom to give her all his silly bands, and a few random people who were in charge of moving the cones when it was our turn to go. We were second in line though I’ve learned that Guatemalans care little about what order they are in in these so called “lines.” All the sudden it was our turn and people started zooming past us as I struggled to start the car and just as the little girl who took Tom’s bracelets was walking towards our car for more goodies, we took off. The locals all started cracking up and yelling things at us but little did they know I had the whole situation planned as a get-a-way attempt from that greedy little child who wanted to rob Tom naked.
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| Airing out our safari vehicle |
A little bit later Tom was driving again and he suddenly asked with great urgency that someone grab him his video camera. We looked ahead of us to see that the bridge we needed to cross to continue on the road was completely gone. No signs, no road blocks, just road then river. BAM! This river was probably close to 100 yards wide too. So we turned around and found a detour that we had overlooked the first time and carried on. Only in Guatemala!
The best part of the trip happened next. We were driving on the highway and Tom suddenly slowed way down and pulled over to the shoulder. He had a little smirk on his face but never provided an explanation. He put the car in neutral and just let that car roll backward on a down slope. He tried to tell us that there was an optical illusion on the road and it looks like you are moving forward but really you’re moving backward or something like that (Aubrey and I did NOT get it). But anyway, the whole time Tom is entertaining himself there is a cop truck (all cops drive around in these massive 4 door pickup trucks here) slowing way down in front of us, pulling over to the shoulder, and then flipping a u-turn and driving right towards us against traffic. Tom tried to just drive off and hope that they weren’t interested in him but sure enough they turned their lights on and signaled for him to pull over. When they came up to our car, they told Tom to get out of the vehicle. Aubrey and I were in the car ready to pass out; we’ve heard a ton of stories of corrupt cops that suggest you pay them a certain fee right on the stop to get out of getting in serious trouble. But the whole time Tom was out of the car he was explaining to the officers exactly what he was doing, in all honesty, and the officers loved it! They were saying things like, “oh yeah! I’ve heard of that optical illusion!” or “you need to get really close to the edge of the road if you really want it to work out well,” etc. I really couldn’t believe my ears. I thought for sure we were going to be intimidated or threatened and instead Tom made some new friends.
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| Welp, see you later, Road! |
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| Arrre we going to die? |
Okay, this blog has got to end it is WAY past my bedtime. I will put some pictures up tomorrow after school and maybe continue with some new stuff that’s been going down around these parts. Hope all is well!
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