"I Love it here!"

  El Zonte, El Salvador
Saturday, June 20, 2009

Ya we are!

We left you off when we were finishing off our Spanish immersion school in Antigua. We had 6 days to kill, so we booked a surfing excursion through "Global surf" in Antigua and headed off to El Salvador on Friday morning. Our little excursion included three days of lessons and two nights accomodation in Horizonte cabins on El Zonte beach. We had a couple of very laid-back and just all around good dudes as surf instructors and within half an hour of arriving we were in the waves. El Salvador is BEAUTIFUL and poor Lisa had to hear "I love it here" about every two minutes from me. We made a good effort out there.

Lisa and Cé

The waves were pretty intense, and sometimes extremely strong...Lisa tried it out for a couple of days, but then decided surfing wasn't for her...on the third day of lessons I got raped by a random rock... "Part of the sport" apparently, so I was coxed back out there and on my last ride of that day, I managed to stand up and ride that baby in. All in all, I wouldn't call myself a "surfer" yet, but after a few attempts in various places in the world, I'm what I like to refer to as a "dabbler". 

Céline surfing the waves

  The surf group went back to Antigua on Sunday afternoon, but we stayed on. I really liked our little place. For three nights we stayed in the dormitorios, which were basically outside since they were surrounded on three sides by window, (and random holes where windows used to be). There were six beds but noone else showed up. It was nice and high up, so not stifling hot either. Lisa and I were able to fall asleep to the sound of the waves and wake up with a view of all the surfer dudes that had gotten up early, just givin' er'- to put it in Canadian terms. We shared the room with a pigeon family who had their nest in the palm roof and Lisa also informs me that there were a couple of bats that flew in and out of our little sky hut. Fine by me. Probably kept the mosquito population down. Did I mention the hammocks? Lots and lots of wonderful hammocks. And a big TV to watch movies on at night, of course not all the questionably legal DVDs worked, but the attempt to watch them was fun ;) So basically, I loved our trip to El Salvador. I would reccomend it to anyone. I attempted to surf almost every day and was semi-succesful, but just being out there was one of the best feelings in the world for me. Also, the food was cheap and pretty good.

Stretch before you surf...

We especially enjoyed the "papusas". A local dish, well worth the 20 minute wait in the steamy hot floor-less restaurant with random pollos and perros running around. So, our El Salvador vaca came to an end and we headed back to Antigua on Wednesday afternoon so we could catch our flight on Thursday afternoon from Guatemala city (definitely not my favourite place).

Surfing isn´t easy!

Thursday was 9 hours of travel time including three planes, but luckily one flight was long enough to include a movie... At last at 12:45 AM (bolivian time), we arrived in La Paz, Bolivia. Woohoo! South America here we come! Have to say though, going from El Salvador where it's scorching hot to Bolivia, where it's winter...brrrrrrr! Soon to come-Boliovian adventures!