Day 31 - Beach Break Hotel, El Zonte

We had already decided to spend the day in El Zonte rather than head on to another location in El Salvador. We could make the border the next day with ease and the town we had originally located for our next stop, La Union, looked very nice, but we had our new friends to consider, and the beach break hotel was very nice, even if it was a US$100 a night. We spent a lazy morning doing some admin, catching up on blogs, video editing, and phone calls back home. It was great not to be under pressure to travel for a change, but it meant that we had the pressures of updating everything. I was in the pool by about 10:00 as it was just so hot and humid, it felt like it really needed to rain, but it just didn’t come. Gary and Robyn told us loads about their plans for setting up their new business in El Salvador. They are also very much into bitcoin, which it turns out is legal tender in El Salvador. Gary is pretty clued up on it and let us in on a ridiculous amount of information, too much to process, but very interesting stuff. Robyn gave me a book that is apparently a “dummies guide to bitcoin” that was published in El Salvador, and she reckons will make complete sense once I have been through it. Gary also told us about how much the president of El Salvador has done and is doing to clean up the country and bring prosperity to it. Bitcoin is a big part of that, although I still have some way to go to even have half a chance of understanding it. It got to about 11:30 and I knew we had only paid for 1 night, so I wanted to lock in the 2nd night. I climbed out the pool and went to chat to the reception, who informed me that not only was our room booked from 12:00, but they had absolutely no availability whatsoever. Once again, Gary and Robyn came to the rescue and informed us that they had stayed at another place about 3 doors down called the Rancho lokoo Resort. So, we scrambled ourselves together, popped down the street, and were able to get booked in, again for US$100 for the night. Whilst El Salvador is very nice, it is a bit dear for accommodation! We were only going to be in the country for 2 nights, and our new mates paid for dinner the night before, so hey ho! Once we got ourselves moved across the street and 3 doors down, Gary and Robyn had stuff to do for their land purchase, so Jorik and I jumped on the bikes to top up with fuel, get some cash (again), and have a look at El Tunco. Within about 5 miles of leaving El Zonte, we saw loads, and loads of transporter vans and buses for the surfing comp. there were probably 50, if not more, all with different country flags on the windscreens. Some countries had more vans, but there were loads of them. As we turned off the main road to enter El Tunco, which has a one-way system through the town, we had to pay US$1 to enter. For info, El Salvador no longer has its own currency. They use the US$, which helps to prevent fraud or counterfeiting, or something. Anyway, it was US$1 each to enter the town, and we had to pay US$3 each to park in the town, which we did so we could have a wonder around. A very cool little town, but also very commercial with loads of surf shops, clothing shops, restaurants, hotels and hostels. It was also heaving, absolutely rammed with people. We grabbed a beer and a sandwich and watched the mass of people moving about around the beachfront. We walked along the beach, stopping here and there, watched a bit of the surfing, even saw a couple of saffa girls in their springbok surf shirts and wished them well in the comp. They probably thought to themselves, “who are these old grommets”.

We spent a couple of hours on the beach and watched some surfing and then headed back to El Zonte. Back at the Rancho lokoo, we caught up on some admin, popped down to the beach for a swim, and then planned to meet our new friends at the restaurant on the beach for happy hour. We ended up having such a good evening with them, that we went back to the hotel that we had stayed at the night before, had dinner and drinks with them, which they again paid for (cheeky), and then said our goodbyes as we wanted to be on the road early the next morning to accommodate extra time for the border crossing into Honduras.