Back to Canada I

My last day of work was the second of April and I left Bagaces to travel back to Canada on the following day. I headed to Nicaragua and arrived in Grenada after dark. I checked into the familiar Bearded Monkey hostel for the night and talked with a number of interesting travellers including one from Woodstock Ontario. The next morning I headed to Leon and I met up with Greg, who is also travelling back to Canada, in one of the hostels. The next day we signed up for volcano-boarding on the Saturday and visited some of the sites in the city, including a bizarre folklore museum set inside an old Somozan prison that was used to torture dissidents in the 60's and 70's. The volcano boarding was quite an experience as we climbed a brand new 100 year old volcano just outside Leon. The trip to the volcano was in a back of a pickup truck and we went through rural Nicaragua, down many one lane tracks covered in thick volcanic dust. The volcano looked like a huge black rock sticking out of the farmland. We were each given goggles, bright orange coveralls and board modified to be a tobaggon and we lugged them up to the top. The top had an active crater that was warm and was actively leaking sulfuric fumes. We took our sleds to the steep black slope of the volcano and were given a quick course on proper volcano boarding technique. Then each of us took turns sliding down the entire volcano. You could brake as much as you wanted with your feet but you also could reach up to 60 kph going straight down. I attempted to be the fastest one down by avoiding braking as much as possible but I managed to wipe out near the bottom and tumbled down the volcano. I managed to get back on the board and finish the slide but when I peeled off my coveralls I noticed that my legs and arms were covered in deep scratches from the crash. I had by far the worst injuries of the group and as a prize I was given a free Volcano Boarding hat. After the boarding we ran into Justin, another ex-Bagaceno, who had also finished work at Saco and was heading up the Pacific Coast to Guatemala surfing the whole way. The next day I ended up attending a rooster fight in the afternoon. It is a common event in both Nicaragua and Costa Rica but I had never attended one in Bagaces. There was a small ring on this farm just outside Leon and the spectators would place bets on the winner of each match. Normally neither rooster is killed but I didn't enjoying watching the fights and soon left after watching the locals place bets and cheer on their roosters.

I left Leon on Monday with Greg and we went to the Honduran border. We caught a bus directly across the southern bit of Honduras to El Salvador and spent the night in San Miguel in El Salvador. In the morning we went to the northern mountain town of Perquin which was the guerrilla's capital during the El Salvador civil war from 1979-1992. It is very peaceful now and has a sobering museum dedicated to the war. There were many powerful photos and weapons relics from the war (including parts from an American helicopter shot down) as well as the room where they used to broadcast the guerrilla radio broadcast. There was also a trail up the nearby Cerro Perquin where there was a great view of the mountains and were remains of a guerrilla encampment including trenches and foxholes. Returning to San Miguel in the afternoon we then travelled to the capital of San Salvador. The next day was spent hanging around the capital. I looked for a camera to replace my broken one but I decided I would continue to use Greg's pictures for now. Also, one of my wounds on my upper thigh was beginning to bother me because it was constantly rubbing on my shorts. I went into a pharmacy to find a bandage and ran into a couple of friendly medical staff from the nearby Green Cross and they invited me to the clinic and thoroughly cleaned the wound and bandaged it up properly.

The next day we headed to the nearby Joyas de Ceren which was an ancient Mayan village that had been perfectly preserved by a volcanic eruption, similar to Pompeii. The citizens had managed to escape but all the house's pottery and even the food had been preserved. It gave a good insight into the day-to-day life of a regular Mayan village, rather than the great buildings of the other Mayan sites. After we headed north to the mountain town of San Ignacio near the Honduran border. The next morning we caught a steep bus up the mountains. It was only 10 km of well-paved road but the trip lasted an hour because it was so steep. It was only another hour and half hike from the bus to reach El Pital, the highest mountain in El Salvador. It was fairly cloudy and there wasn't much of a view but the peak was directly on the border between Honduras and El Salvador and it was fun to jump from country to country. We quickly returned to the town and managed to catch a ride with a pickup truck back down to San Ignacio. We caught a bus back to the capital and spent the night in San Salvador again.

The next day we headed down to the Pacific coast to spend about three days on the beaches of El Salvador surfing and hanging out on the beach. The first beach I stayed at, Playa Tunco, had more tourists and hotels and restaurants. It had a famous surf break at Zunzal that hosts a number of surfing competitions every year. The main break was too advanced for me but I managed to find a smaller wave to surf on for a couple of hours. After a day at this beach we headed down the coast to another quieter beach, Playa El Zonte, where we strung up our hammocks in a house of people we had met in San Salvador. This beach was popular with surfers but there were hardly any other type of tourists and the town was still a normal small Salvadoran village. We spent two days there practicing surfing on the smaller waves. It wasn't the best for surfing directly on the break of the wave but the surf was so powerful there was no problem getting up in the whitewash. We took pictures of each other surfing as well as some of our bigger wipeouts. It was a lot of fun but I was glad when we left because the front of my chest was being rubbed raw by the surfboard. The salt water healed my volcanic wounds but I managed to add to my injury list by scraping the top of my foot on a rock leaving large gashes across the foot. I also managed a nice sunburn but it was refreshing spending a few days on the beach.

El Salvador is a very small country and it is extremely easy to get around. You rarely have to wait more than 15 minutes for a bus to any part of the country and you can cross the country easily in 6 hours. There are a lot less tourists here than in Costa Rica or neighbouring Guatemala but the people are extremely friendly. They never seem bothered by questions about buses or directions and go out of their way to make sure you get to where you are going. The war seems to be a distance memory to most of the people here but there are still serious economic problems and we were constantly warned about being careful in certain areas of San Salvador. We never encountered any problems in the country and I definitely enjoyed my stay.