ChrisJenTravel.com – Honeymoon Trek

Chris: Our mothers taught us that if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. So, while we try to think of something nice to say, you’ll have to wait. I guess the surf was okay. And the friendly guards at every store, shop and hotel had nice shiny guns.

Jenny: We tried to stomach the food. The names of the dishes on the menus sounded great. Great if you like chunks of boiled skin, cartilage and bone connected to your small pieces of chicken. Chris and I finally decided to break out the camping stove and cook some good ole spaghetti. We left El Zonte and Zunzal (dirty, black sand beaches) and drove past La Libertad (well known surf spot). We were slightly turned off by the city named “The Liberty”; hearing that it was so dangerous you would need a police escort to the water if you wanted to surf.

The country is not set up for tourism. Although their currency is the American dollar, there are only about 3 cities that we would be able to use an ATM (you have to have the Plus sign on your card for any others and we don’t have the Plus sign). We headed to San Salvador, a really clean and large town and found La Dispensa Don Juan…a grocery with an ATM that accepts our card. Hallelujah, we would have enough money to leave the country.

Chris: Before we left, however, we wanted to give one more spot a chance: the much-touted break of Las Flores in the Eastern half of the country near El Cuco. We drove the 2 hours (turned out to be 3) to the spot and were greeted by another grimy beach town with locals staring at us like we’d just landed in a spaceship. Around the bend was a nice little right point break wave at a secluded beach. The waves were somewhat small but looked fun, so we decided to check out the few lodging options. First was an all inclusive luxury surf hotel, right at the beach. The place charges an outrageous $300 per person per day for the pampered surf experience, but we decided to see if they had a restaurant for later nonetheless. The armed guard called ahead to see if we would be privileged enough to get in the gate but we were turned down with no explanation. It could have been the real dirt on our car or the fact that we had real surfboards tied on top. No problem, amigo, are there any other hotels around the bend? No. Any access roads to the beach? No. Go back to El Cuco. Fine, we’ll just drive on to make sure. What do you know, there’s two more hotels and a beach road just around the bend. Thanks for the honesty and attitude that your employer owns the beach. Unfortunately, the other two options were a) a bug and trash infested shack and, b) outrageously overpriced (even though completely empty). One of the other owners lied to us as well; telling us it was 2 hours to the next town so we would want to stay at his rip-off of a hotel. It took us all of 30 minutes to get to San Miguel, where we found a clean budget hotel, hunted down food that had no association to El Salvador, and planned our escape the next morning.

Jenny: On our way to look for the nice hotel, I was dying to empty my bladder. The town wasn’t the nicest that we had seen. We came across an El Salvadoran fast food chicken restaurant. I went in and on the way out was escorted to the counter by a lovely guard with a huge pistol grip shot gun, basically saying you must buy something. I irritatingly bought a small drink and the genius actually put my drink in a to-go bag. A soft drink in a to-go bag. I said “No necessito” (I don’t need) and he looked at me dumbfounded. Only in El Salvador.

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