Suchitoto - Santa Ana - Juayua

So we left Suchitoto hoping to make our way to Santa Ana - El Salvador's second biggest city. We were hoping too that we could avoid San Salvador (the country's notorious capital city) on the way. Unfortunately, it seems that San Salvador is the country's transportation hub with seemingly all buses either originating or terminating there. Luckily we were able to limit our time there to the time it took to get off the bus, hop in a taxi, transfer terminals and find out which buses were leaving imminently for Santa Ana.

Our poor impression of the capital was lessened somewhat by the nice taxi driver that ferried us from Occidente to Oriente. He was so nice that in his eagerness to converse with us he often turned almost fully around in his seat to interact with us better. Such was his enthusiasm that we narrowly avoided some close (and potentially disastrous) interaction with various other road users. Luckily we managed to arrive safely - and were Santa Ana bound within minutes.


Santa Ana is El Salvador's second biggest city and is something of a tourist draw according to some El Salvadorian tourist bumf we'd somehow acquired. Once again we were badly misled by Lonely Planet (their El Salvador section of this book is in dire need of revision) because they didn't print the address of the only place worth staying at in Santa Ana and it's off the map. Eventually we did find it, but only after phoning them up and asking what their address was. Fortunately my Spanish is now good enough to hold a rudimentary phone conversation as long as they don't stray from the basics...

We were slightly perturbed by the presence of a few churches close to our lodgings. The presence of these churches is not at all sinister in terms of their mission or purpose – it's just that occasionally we have problems sleeping when they kick off. Some appalling (usually female) singer steps up to the mic to blare out some devotional (and seemingly tuneless) number accompanied gamely by a keyboardist who seems to have the beat set firmly to '1983 electro pop classic' and the volume to 11. I think I may have mentioned this subject before, but I think it bears repeating.


The afternoon we arrived, in an act of uncharacteristic touristic enthusiasm, we walked the 15 (or so) blocks into town to have a quick look around. There's no doubting that the church and theatre in the central square of Santa Ana are quite nice – it's just that other than those two buildings there's seemingly not much to captivate the tourist. The hotel/hostel was nice though. We did get free wireless and everyone there was very nice.

We did miss a trick, however because the owner of a hostel in Juayua (our next destination) was staying the night and left before we could cadge a lift off him. That meant that unfortunately we were stuck with the chicken buses again. We were advised that the best bet is to get a bus to 'Los Naranjos' and sit in the cool climate with a coffee and the friendly locals rather than in the hot and sticky Santa Ana bus station. Cool and friendly Los Naranjos may be, but unfortunately anywhere that may have been able to serve us coffee didn't know we were coming and had rather inconveniently closed for the day/the afternoon/ever?

We found Juayua to be a pretty little town – perfect for chilling out in. In other words it was a little sleepy, but otherwise unremarkable. The hostel, run by Cesar and Eddie (the dog), was very nice and colourful and there was free wireless internet again (very convenient), but we didn't really find much to hold our attention. After checking that Cesar wasn't about to head off to our next destination (you never know...) we boarded a chicken bus towards Alegria. When I say towards Alegria I mean towards Sonsonate and then to the Sonsonate bus station and then to San Salvador, then to El Triunfo, then to Santiago de Maria and THEN to Alegria. We even got music videos on these buses (must have had an upgrade) – but unfortunately they were dodgy Spanish language music videos featuring middle-aged (and occasionally overweight) blokes (one sporting a variety of comically oversized sombreros) singing wistfully at much younger, much slimmer women who were hopefully being paid handsomely to look like they were very much enraptured by the singer who in most cases was old enough to be at least their dads.

It's perhaps worth a minute to elaborate on the 'chicken buses'. These gas guzzling, exhaust spewing, garishly painted behemoths are certainly a feature of the Central American experience. They also have a terrible reputation for being not only gas guzzling and exhaust spewing but also dangerous for passengers and fellow road users alike. We are definitely careful not to use them after dark or in dodgy areas if possible. But spare a thought for these workhorses of Central Amerian public transport. After many years of (almost certainly under-appreciated) sterling service to school children of the USA, they're flogged off like old horses to the knackers yards of Central American bus operators. Then they're driven on hazardous unpaved mountainous roads at break-neck speeds until no amount of spare parts or TLC will ever get them running again. Finally, they're sent to scrap yards to be stripped of any useful spare parts before being left to rust. This was the fate of one such sad specimin we spied on our way up to Alegria. Its roof had been removed leaving only steel struts jutting out like ribs of a carcass picked clean by vultures. I remember feeling a little sad for the poor thing.