Catching up (finally have internet!)

After a painful week of horrible internet connection, I am now in San Salvador, where I will spend a few days before coming home for Christmas. First of all, here's what I've been up to lately:

On Monday I saw some of the waterfalls surrounding Juayúa. That was a really neat way to spend the morning.

After seeing the waterfalls, I hopped on a bus to Sonsonate, from where I planned to get a bus to Puerto La Libertad and then another bus to Playa el Tunco ("tunco" means pig). When I got to Sonosnate, however, the last bus for La Libertad had already passed. I talked to one of the bus drivers and he said that I could take his bus to a smaller town halfway between Sonsonate and El Tunco and then a friend of his who owns a restaurant could take me in his pickup to El Tunco. Since that sounded a lot more pleasant and quite frankly safer than being stuck at a bus station in Sonsonate after dark, I jumped on the bus and sort of wedged myself between a guy holding a box of chickens and an angry looking lady with her son who kept stepping on my toes (the bus was so crowded that I had to spend almost the entire ride standing). By the time we reached this guy's restaurant, I was the only one left on the bus. I tossed my stuff into the pickup bed and sat down in the back with the rest of this guy's family and we set off on the thirty minute ride to El Tunco. I don't think I fell asleep, but riding in the back of that pickup was sort of like a dream -- everything was so still and quiet and peaceful. It was completely dark except for the car's headlights, and I managed to lay down and look up at the starriest sky I had seen in a long time (since we were so far away from any city). When the truck stopped at the road that leads into El Tunco I snapped out of it, grabbed my stuff, and, after thanking the driver, walked into the noisy little town where I ended up spending almost a week. 

Sitting at a beachside restaurant, the sun having just set.

El Tunco gets it's name from this rock, which I honestly don't think looks anything like a pig.

The beach consists of completely black sand, so fine it almost is like the ash you find in a fireplace. I surfed a few times and really got the hang of it, but always had to take the next day off because of how sore paddling out to the waves made me. Some of the other people at the hostel and I spent the afternoons going to an orphanage that is down the street from the town where we played soccer with the kids for hours. Honestly, I have no idea why I stayed there so long. I really don't like the cooler-than-you attitude that the surfers have, I don't like the constant noise and the 24/7 party, and I don't like how expensive the food was. Maybe I just needed somewhere to rest since I had spend most of the past two weeks spending only a few days here and there. Whatever the reason was, I enjoyed myself and met some really cool people, but I'm surely glad to be somewhere else.

Stay tuned for a post on San Salvador.