El Salvador

After a day of chicken buses through Honduras, Sean and I spent another night in Honduras before heading to the boder town of El Poy. We were dropped off at the border town and started walking towards the road blocks and immigration offices with our backpacks excited about entering El Salvador.

We heard that the El Salavdorian border officials would be really strict, but it was quite the opposite. In reality, we had to ask around to get someone to look at our passports and even then they were Honduran exit officials and barely seemed to care. We kept on walking through what felt like no-man's land, and finally asked where the next bus stop was and where to find immigration. A really helpful guy, like all the Salvadorans we encountered, told us we were already in El Salvador and pointed to the nearby bus stop. We hopped a bus to the town of La Palma, and a short ride later we were there. I think I'm still waiting for somebody official looking to grab me and ask why I was in El Salvador without permission.

La Palma is an interesting little town. Many of the townspeople make their living producing art in the style of Fernando Llort. He taught his style to the artists in the town, and the bright colorful work is all over town and painted on every kind of souvenier item you can imagine. We looked around at the shops, hung out in the town square, and hiked along a almost totally dried up river. La Palma is a nice place with really friendly people, but honestly a bit boring.

We thought we would make the next day more exciting by taking what had been described as a terrifying chicken bus ride through the mountains to the border town of Metapan. If anyone ever tries to tell you to take the so called exhilarating ride from Citala to Metapan, suggest that you sit in church reading chemistry text books instead because it would be more exciting. The four hour ride along dirt roads with a few hills at 10 m.p.h. was pretty and a nice view of rural life in El Salvador, but nowhere close to exhilarating. Oh well, now we know.