Rancho Estero y Mar La Paz

... also bumped into James from there - best view intown from his deck of the surf & lagoon but far more primitive facilities.

We all agreed to meet later for sunset beers & then went back to our hotel to cook dinner. I'd headed to La Libertad to get supplies as no shop to speak of in town (except beer & surf ones!).
Went to pier & got 4 minute lobsters for $4.50 so had a tasty thermidor dinner.

... as everyone else was boarding. I was glad I decided to do all carry on because I am sure that my luggage would not have made it.

We met up with Habitat at the airport. They have vans for our transportation and we rode to Santa Ana in them. The size of the vans allowed us the chance to get to know each other. After a quick rest stop we arrived a little later at Hotel Sahara.

... too noisy to be low profile in the general vehicle sense. Still a very nice gesture and we gladly accepted. We drove up to the Parque del Boqueron at the top of the Volcan de San Salvador that rises over the city. We were discovering how unreliable our map was, as we missed the turn-off for the volcano and ended up driving right to the very end of the urban area, where it dead ends against forest in a rather sketchy area. We got lucky driving back and stopped to ask directions at a ...

El Salvador is a hidden gem. Not yet properly discovered by hordes of tourists but has enough external influence to create enough amenities in little happening enclaves along the very beautiful black volcanic sand Pacific coast. It has so much tourist potential that the government, keen for more foreign investment, offers ten years of tax freedom for foreign ...

... is very smart and efficient.   We gave him a 10 dollar tip too and he was so proud of himself of what a good job he did... So the boder crossing into El Salvadore was not too painful - just a lot of waiting and doing the same thing over and over again.  We would fill out a form, bring it to the customs window, hand the form to the official who would then crumple it up and type the info (Name, License Plate Number, Make ...

... just take us back to our hotel without charge. He wanted to charge us the original fare because it was going to be all the way across town again - Rikki was about to implode and refused to give the man anymore of our business, so we jumped out of the cab in the middle of nowhere and started to walk up the street to a bus stop. Luckily a bus came that said Metro Centro, so we hopped on. We rode that bus all the way ...

After the initial culture shock we had upon arriving in San Salvador´s Cedeinfa (Center for Community work with children and families), we had time to settle in to our new home for the next few days. We are staying in the staff house of Cedeinfa, in the roughest part of San Salvador. There is a lot of gang activity and violence. Even the tiniest of houses are covered in barbed wire and have tall gates out on the street side. In the house we have 6 Germans, 1 American ...

... for her to come over to me instead. She rolled her eyes playfully and began to saunter towards me, at which point I, presumably due to excitement, began to walk towards her so that we would meet in the middle of the dancefloor. But just as I was about to open my mouth and deliver my killer opening line, she walked straight past me without so much as a glance in my direction. To this day I still don´t understand what happened - she can´t have been looking at someone over my shoulder the ...

... We drove past a garbage dump where people were scavenging for anything they could and a cow was standing in the middle looking for food. We got to a house with a man and a guy about my age. There was nothing in the room except three hammocks and a large wooden chest with locks. The floor was dirt (which they spit on about every 30 seconds) and the walls were still the original adobe (no paint or even plastic). My counterpart told me I would be staying at the house ...

... in mine, which includes a married couple living very close to me. The first day we went to our community our Spanish teacher came with us and introduced us to our host families. We were blown away by how rural and Peace Corps looking they were (the only way to really describe it). When I first met my host mother and brother I wasn't sure how it would be. I was leery from the start because of my experience in Mexico. My brother looked to be a teenager and I wasn't sure how that would ...