It draws tourists simply because it lies in the middle of a lake,
connected by a bridge. After about 10 minutes we had walked around it
and had about 6 hours to kill before our night bus to Guatemala city.
We chilled out at a little cafe called 'Cool beans'. It had wifi and
hammocks, but the salsa on our nachos had that nasty fizzy off taste -
we knew immediately and got more. After cool beans we relocated to a
beautiful empty hotel across the lake, we read books and killed
mosquitoes then headed for the bus station.
We haven't done an overnight bus since the freezy freezy ice bus in
Colombia. This was the total opposite- The sauna scorcher bus. At
about 1am we awake to the booming sound of the tyre exploding. We then
sit by the road for 2 hours while the driver sorts out what to do.
They end up changing the tyre (aided by our mighty bright torch
light), but in the process manage to deflate the spare tyre... 4 tyres
across the back (1 of which was flat - but better than noisy shredded
tyre). We rolled into Guatemala city about 4 hours late.
We were heading for the pacific coast in search of waves. We caught a
chicken bus ( old American school buses now used as local buses - they
stop everywhere...extremely slow!) bound for Sipicate. The lonely
planet listed this as one of the highlights of Guatemala, surf
capital. The bus took forever, it would zoom along little country
roads picking up and dropping people off before parking up ( in the
scorching sun) in each village for 30-45 minutes. We finally arrived
at the coast, piled our stuff into a tuctuc headed for the surf
paradise hotel resort, Rancho Castillo. Tuctuc got lost and took us
somewhere totally different, then realised, then short-changed us for
his mistake. Grrrr.
So, Rancho Castillo is on the beach, separated from the town by a
swampy canal, you cross over by speedboat. First impressions were good
- resort with 2 pools, on the beach, rooms were spacious, resident
crocodile pen, massive restaurant etc. We checked in and it soon
became apparent that we were the only guests in this huge resort. They
told us the restaurant opens at 5 - We were starved from not eating
breakfast or lunch. We came back from our stroll on the beach and most
if the day staff had gone home - just 2 guys and a child remained. I
found some menus and told him what we wanted, then we
waited...waited...for an hour. We then had a conversation that
concluded that the restaurant wasn't open, we couldn't have dinner
here and that we would have to speedboat back into scuzz town to get
food. Sooooo angry (mainly because we were super hungry) our Spanish
is not great but it was clear that we were trying to order food - menu
in hand. Our nice boat driver showed us a good place to eat (he waited
for us, personal escort). The main reason we were here was fir surfing
so bright and early Kirsty heads out to check out the surf. There were
waves, but really small and it was low tide, wasn't going to happen.
We checked out (argued and paid less for the room) and got back on the
chicken bus, this time headed for the surf coast of El Salvador.
We had our bikinis in these breathable bags attached to the outside of
our backpacks, which were now on the roof of the bus. We realised
later that it must have been the overweight pervy bus conductor whol
had stolen our bikini bottoms - sicko!! Kirsty was first to notice
that they were gone. 'ah, you must have left them at the resort' I
assured her. Then I checked and mine were gone too :( yuck!
We crossed into El Salvador - tuctuc buggy assisted us between the
immigration offices at the border. We had hoped to catch a bus to the
surf town of El Tunco but all the buses only went as far as sonsonate.
We splashed out and got a taxi, which was worth every penny. Our taxi
driver was also a driving instructor, so his car had a brake pedal
under the passenger seat! I was tempted to use it soooo often as this
guy was a shocking driver. We swerved about 3 dogs before finally
smashing into one - yelp! Terrible! We arrived at El Tunco after dark
but were happy to see lots of surfers walking around. Hooray, hostel
on the beach!
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