Day10-El Salvador, Wed, Dec 8, 2010

Hop scotching through Central America – one day, one contry!  Border crossing #3 – Guatamala into El Salvador,

Start & Stop: Antigua, GT to Acajutla, El Salvador.

Day’s mileage: 145 miles (233 km)

Ride time:  9:33 AM Antigua, GT, 14 south to Escuintla, CA2 southeast to the El Salvador border “La Hachadura,”  ended the day at 5:47PM, Acajutla, El Salvador.

Weather:  Warm, mid-70 to 80-degree F – Hot mid-day sun

Lodging:

Fuel:  $3.10/gal

Money Exchange:  $1 USD = 8.7425 El Salvador Colon SVC

Dean: No internet Wednesday.

Whoa!  Last night in Antigua, Guatemala we made a detour!!!  We decided to go south through El Salvador.  Our original route was to ride up north to Copan, Honduras and skip El Salvador completely.  Many have told us that they have had unique and challenging experiences crossing through El Salvador.   After some discussion, based on “we are here and this is a unique opportunity let’s go see if travel through El Salvador is as bad as it’s reputation.”

We left the hotel down town Antigua 9:30AM.  The cobble stones are very interesting to ride on.  These are not European cobblestones that are similar sized squares.  These are normal rocks placed in a pattern down the streets.  Some big, some small, some round, some long, some pointy, its just a uniformed chaos of placed stones.

We rode south between the two volcanos to Escuintla then east to the border.  This crossing is confusing and the Guatemala Aduana/ Emigration and the El Salvador Aduana/ Immigration are mile apart.  Truck traffic is huge!  Maybe 40-50 trucks on a 2-lane bridge backed up for each country.  Our experiences are not unique!  Others have had interesting crossing too.  The country of Guatemala is wonderful; the people we met were friendly and helpful except at the border.  Ever person you see looks at you as a money source.  Border “assistants”, money exchangers, beggars, and the local police have a never-ending presence with road-blocks just out side of the border.

Border Stop Time: 12:45PM to 3:45PM

Lisa: Did I mention how much I loved our little hotel?  Well I loved it.  There were fresh flowers everywhere and other little niceties that were just so luxurious after 8 not-so-luxurious days on the road.  Wednesday morning dawned cool and spectacular and I never wanted to leave my bed in the room with twelve foot tall beam ceilings.  But coffee called.  Fresh brewed, hot, rich coffee, in huge urn so it was a bottomless cup. Oh my gosh, such a small thing and so completely wonderful.  So, needless to say, after a week of Nescafe in Mexico, this was the bomb.  And then they brought out fresh fruit, eggs cooked to order, fresh breads….and on and on.  Look, I know that I am gushing but Dean and I have basically eaten one (usually not so good) meal per day for a week, usually tacos, so I was craving Fresh and Delicious and boy, did I get it!!

Anyway, for the previous few days we had sort of revisited our original plan which, as most of you know, included Mike Kneebone and Bob Higdon (the All Stars!).  We all had input and added things that were important or of particular interest to someone. With the ‘group’ down to the two of us, it just made sense to alter the plan some.  Bob had wanted to see Copan and the ruins there and I’m sure they’re awesome but they just weren’t inspiring either one of us this trip.  So we decided to hightail it south to include El Salvador and the Pacific Coast of Central America.

The planning for this took a few hours Wednesday morning and I was all too happy to make a later start since I had coffee (COFFEE!!!!) and great surroundings.  Waypoints entered and finally packed up, we made a really late start from the hotel.  We determined that we wanted our photo in front of one of the lush volcanoes I mentioned before.  Which was great but it made getting on the right road after that somewhat problematic because it’s one of Central America’s many interchanges that is rather poorly marked – no S, W, N or E – just directional names of cities, cities which do not show up on our map.   So if you watched spot you can probably see us doing all four cloverleaves in the one intersection.  An inauspicious beginning to an already late day.

We wanted to take this one particular road to the El Salvador border even though both our GPSs were screaming for us to go a different direction.

Dean: What’s unusual about that??

Lisa: They’ve been particularly unreliable on this trip so we ignored them, in our infinite wisdom.  Cruising along, dealing with a long road closure due to resurfacing, passing trucks and those silly signs in Spanish that simply can’t be too important since they didn’t bother to offer an English translation.  It was really great too because the traffic thinned out a lot!  Ignorance is bliss … Until … oops.  Yeah, the road ends and ends rather spectacularly with a missing bridge across a rather wide river.  This might or might not have accounted for the paucity of cars.  Duh.

Some soldiers came running out, fearing, I suppose, that these two ignorant Americans were going to run off into the river.  They pointed us toward the detour and off we went.  Nothing like a dusty dirt road traveling with semis.  Lots and lots of semis.  And the detour quickly deteriorated into a rocky, sandy road that really called for a higher speed than the other traffic was willing to do.  At the slower speed my bike was shaking like in a paint mixer and at some point my laminar lip shook loose and disappeared.

Dean: A whole lot of stuff was shakin’ off Lisa’s bike!

Lisa: For the icing on the cake, at one point a bus coming toward us decided to downshift and pass, entering our ‘lane’, rapidly approaching us and throwing huge amounts of dust, merging back in just short of disaster (ours).  The dust was blinding for at least a second or two.  Yup.  Who’s havin’ fun now?

So, how can we possibly add to this fun?!  I know!! Let’s be American and cross a border in Central America on a motorcycle during high season!  Someone kill me now.

We started the process in Guatemala and running back and forth and lots of gesturing when a few of the tramitadores (guys who assist you in the border process for a fee) began offering their services.  Dean countered with a half price offer (we are disagreeing on the number – we’re old and have no memory) but it was a relative pittance.  Most of the guys got huffy and left but Gonsalvo stayed, spoke fair English and was really cute so he was hired.

Making a list, checking it twice!

I’d like you to pay close attention to all the photos of Dean at border checks.  He is the only one smiling and that’s because he’s the only one who does nothing.  And I’m not kidding.

At the start of all this, as I was waiting in line (Dean was in the shade somewhere, fixing his make up and filing his nails) a Guatemalan woman wearing a uniform approached me, carrying a clipboard.  She asked for a few moments of my time and hey, I got nuthibut time.  I’m standin’ in line at a Central American border.  Let’s redeem the time and you can teach me to play bridge.  But I digress.   So I start answering her questions and clearly this is something the Guatemalan government and Tourism board has put together.  I answered honestly and said, yes, I would tell my friends that this is a nice place.

So fast forward to taking my papers to Gonsalvo, standing in line and there are three young guys ahead of us, all rough housing and flirting with the gal behind the window, all jockeying for position.  At some point about 20 minutes in, it became clear that no work was being done and they were stalling us on purpose.  I asked nicely that they step aside, relayed by G to them in Spanish and they said that if we paid them $5 each, they’d move.

The locals blocking the window for the Aduana (Customs). They had a stack of paper 1-inch thick to keep the customs officer busy.

Raise your hand if you know how that went over?  Ok.  No problemo.  I got Dean to stand in line in my place (it was a hardship but he’s a giver) and went back to the gal with the clipboard.  I told her to change my answer about sending friends to Guatemala because this was garbage and I wanted no part of it.  Well, while I was hoping for a little assistance with the delay tactic, little did I know that would ignite the woman and she marched herself, armed with clipboard, up to those young men and dressed them down in Spanish like nobody’s business.  I don’t speak much but she threw the Gobierno word in there (Government) and a few other officious sounding things and wow, next thing ya know, the door opens and the woman on her ‘lunch break’ popped out to take our papers.

I’m just too exhausted to tell you the rest of the sad story but that was 30 minutes of the four hour process.   The best part is that we were able to weave our way through the trucks alllll the way to the front of the line on both the Guatemalan side and the El Salvador sign, saving literally hours.  We got out of there late and Gonsalvo was helpful and nice.  As we left he handed me his cell phone and said that his friend, Rony Garcia ( Rrrrrrony Garrrrrrrcia) would be happy to help us at the El Salvador/Honduras border.  Oh my gosh, how nice and thoughtful!  (cue Jaws music)

So, now it’s once again so stinkin’ late and AGAIN we get stopped by some officious looking people with machine guns who want to go over our paperwork with a magnifying glass- the paperwork that was just generated and massaged for 4 hours at their own checkpoint.  After about 20 minutes, I was so concerned I told the Commandant, look, I’m runnin’ out of daylight, can we speed this up?  He got all worried, tapped his wristwatch and told me I’d better hurry cause it was dangerous here after dark.  Yeah, I was confused too.

We found the only hotel in the area. It was awful. It was dirty, no internet and no hot water. But they had cold Coronas and all was right with the world.