The month of January 2010 we spent mostly in Central America; a few days in Chiapas, Mexico, around a week of road tripping on the Yucatan Peninsula, still in Mexico, for a week we were indulging ourselves in Guatemala’s hot springs, lakes and coffee shops, 4days on El Salvadorian beaches, maybe 4 hours in Honduras but even that felt too long, 5days on beautiful Nicaraguan coast and on 1 Feb we crossed over to Costa Rica. The idea of this recki was to find some cool surfing beaches, where we could linger for a bit on our way back North. So far we found a couple of those- El Tunco in El Salvador and Playa Madera in Nicaragua. Hopefully, in Costa Rica there will be more.
Jan was good but it was not all peaches and cream. I couldn’t help feeling disappointed when I woke up on the Caribbean coast near Tulum and all I could see was developed for long kilometres beaches full of garbage. On the top of it, it was very windy hence chilly hence not really a swimming weather- so much for the hot tropical sea from the folders, heah. But it’s not like I had a bad time there- Mr Coffey and I hauled a bottle of Mezcal to the beach and worked on it till it was empty gossiping like schoolgirls on Friday nite sleepover; made me feel young again.
Guatemala was simply great and after reading all the travel advisory crap, it took us by surprise. Colourful, vibrant villages where people seem to live in tune with tradition, beautiful volcanic landscapes, great coffee and cakes, the food I tried was soooo good, that I wished I was a cow and had four stomachs. You know those groovy colourful blankets that they have in Mexico? I reckon that the Guatemalan blankets look even better. I still have a kick when I think that we bought one. I always wanted to have a blanket like this. Oh, yeah- last but not least, Guatemalan organic weed- maaaan… and I mean, maaaaaaaaan. It makes you incapable of any bad thoughts about yourself; no matter what you do, you just can’t go wrong. I bet this is all that their politicians smoke, because the same people have been screwing the country for decades.
The first day in El Salvador we found this fantastic surfing place in district of Libertad- El Tunco. It’s a laid back surf village, waves are just amazing and carry you so far that you actually don’t even need a board to have fun. And it’s cheap, cheap, cheap. After spending there a few days we were thinking that all the Salvadorian beaches were going to be as amazing. Having high hopes we arrived on the south coast of El Salvador where beaches were as disappointing as were the high prices and bogan residents. We spent the night on the gas station, squeezed in between two buses and a neon sign- still better option I thought; and the next morning we left the country.
And then came Honduras. We were made welcome to the country first thing on the boarder by a hospitable policeman, who was asking for different documents as long as found one we didn’t have, then took Mick’s passport and refused to give it back until somebody mentioned to us that $100 might make him change his mind or we have to return to El Salvador. The car in front of us with 4 Israeli managed to bring the bribe down to $50 but we didn’t want to pay. As I turned the car back to the bridge to El Salvador, for I had a plan how not to pay the Honduras bastards and still get into the country, there was a little commotion on the bridge (the Israeli squad in action) and while nobody was paying attention to us, I found myself holding our papers in one hand and reversing slowly the car from the bridge, back to Honduras. Later on, the Israeli did the impossible and got their money back from the Honduras police. And since we shared such a great experience together, we decided to share some more and team up for crossing Honduras having one objective in mind- to get out of there as soon as possible. It worked really well- whenever police stopped us and it was around 4 times, we all forgot the little Spanish we knew, played dumb smiling apologetically, magically grew in number and volume, looked cute and vulnerable or confident and unbreakable- whatever seemed to work. There wasn’t a shortage of effort on the side of Honduras police to pin us for whatever, safety triangle and extinguisher being among the favourite, but there was always something that made them let us go in the end without having to pay. We celebrated that nite in Nicaragua in a little beach town of Las Penitas, having dinner together, sipping Salvadorian vodka and Nicaraguan brew. Some two local kids were hanging out with us, trying to sell us some shells and checking out everything in our car. I made some funny deals that nite.
From Las Penitas we slowly rolled to Playa Las Cardones and even though we met there a cool family of local fisherman, we met them through their neighbour who invited us to stay at ‘his’ house and proved to be somewhat weird. He had some issues and didn’t deal very well with loneliness so he unloaded it all on us. Ouch! Language barrier wasn’t helping either. This could have been a great experience, but we left from there tired of our host and his confusing behaviour; but very fond of his neighbours, who were extremely hospitable, gave us some fresh fish for breakfast and were just a very cool couple.
After this full-on immersion in Nicaraguan culture we were after some more conventional tourist experience and we found it all 12km north of San Juan del Sur. When we arrived at Playa Madera, I could hardly imagine a destination that would be more desirable- a beautiful, quite beach with just enough interest from travellers to have a campsite with pit toilet under tamarind trees with direct access to the beach and a bar. Alleluia! We spent there 3 days hanging out with the fellow travellers, cooking and eating together, discussing our plans and experiences, just having a good time. I see there a potential for a fantastic month of surfing, some time in not too distant future.
On 1 Feb we crossed over to Costa Rica but I will leave it for another time.
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