El Salvador
¡Estamos en El Salvador!
Getting here wasn't as straight-forward as we'd been led to expect, but we're here nonetheless. We got to the bus station in Santa Rosa de Copán, Honduras bright and early, only to run into Scott and Melissa, the people we went on the tour with yesterday. Turns out they couldn't get hold of enough Honduran Lempiras to get to the airport, and we had more Lempiras than we needed. So we exchanged some Lempiras for US dollars (the currency used in El Salvador), and all worked out really well...
Until we tried to buy tickets for the 8:30am bus to our El Salvador desination. Every person we asked about it said something different...there'd be a bus at 9am, there were no buses on the weekends, there were only buses on Thursdays and Fridays. Huh? Last night people assured us there was a bus at 8:30am. As luck would have it, a bus suddenly showed up at 8:30am. But when we asked if we could get off the bus early at La Palma (rather than riding all the way to San Salvador and then having to come back to La Palma), we were told the bus only goes to the Honduran border. Ok, well that was better than nothing. So we took that, and Chris got to chat with a really nice Peace Corps volunteer for part of the journey. I really enjoyed my last (for now) look at the gorgeous Honduran scenery as we drove to Nueva Ocotepeque.
Upon our arrival in Nueva Ocotepeque, we got a crowded taxi to El Poy, the border town which straddles Honduras and El Salvador. Much to our surprise, there was no one around on the Honduran side to try to get money out of us or even look at our passports. (The guide books and other travellers have warned us about the extortion going on at these borders.) We just walked on over to the El Salvador side, where we were stopped by an incredibly nice El Salvadoran border guard. He asked to see our passports and was all smiles, joking about not asking us for any money, speaking some English (he seemed to want to practice), even giving us maps! He also gave us stamps in our passports when we asked. This guy gave us an excellent impression of the country right off the bat, second only to our welcome to Australia.
We stayed in El Poy only long enough to buy a phone chip and catch a bus to La Palma. It's really strange to be using US dollars here but at really deflated (compared to the US) prices. Our phone chip only cost $5, and our bus journey only cost 65 cents! More on La Palma later...
Getting here wasn't as straight-forward as we'd been led to expect, but we're here nonetheless. We got to the bus station in Santa Rosa de Copán, Honduras bright and early, only to run into Scott and Melissa, the people we went on the tour with yesterday. Turns out they couldn't get hold of enough Honduran Lempiras to get to the airport, and we had more Lempiras than we needed. So we exchanged some Lempiras for US dollars (the currency used in El Salvador), and all worked out really well...
Until we tried to buy tickets for the 8:30am bus to our El Salvador desination. Every person we asked about it said something different...there'd be a bus at 9am, there were no buses on the weekends, there were only buses on Thursdays and Fridays. Huh? Last night people assured us there was a bus at 8:30am. As luck would have it, a bus suddenly showed up at 8:30am. But when we asked if we could get off the bus early at La Palma (rather than riding all the way to San Salvador and then having to come back to La Palma), we were told the bus only goes to the Honduran border. Ok, well that was better than nothing. So we took that, and Chris got to chat with a really nice Peace Corps volunteer for part of the journey. I really enjoyed my last (for now) look at the gorgeous Honduran scenery as we drove to Nueva Ocotepeque.
Upon our arrival in Nueva Ocotepeque, we got a crowded taxi to El Poy, the border town which straddles Honduras and El Salvador. Much to our surprise, there was no one around on the Honduran side to try to get money out of us or even look at our passports. (The guide books and other travellers have warned us about the extortion going on at these borders.) We just walked on over to the El Salvador side, where we were stopped by an incredibly nice El Salvadoran border guard. He asked to see our passports and was all smiles, joking about not asking us for any money, speaking some English (he seemed to want to practice), even giving us maps! He also gave us stamps in our passports when we asked. This guy gave us an excellent impression of the country right off the bat, second only to our welcome to Australia.
We stayed in El Poy only long enough to buy a phone chip and catch a bus to La Palma. It's really strange to be using US dollars here but at really deflated (compared to the US) prices. Our phone chip only cost $5, and our bus journey only cost 65 cents! More on La Palma later...
posted by Trace at
12:44 pm
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