Monday, January 23, 2006

At the last minute, we changed our plans. Time is running short - though with six months left that’s hard to imagine – so we decided to skip Suchitoto and head straight to San Salvador. We hated to say goodbye to our room at Paseo El Pital in La Palma. That room was like a little home for us. It was so great to eat at our own table that we got our dinner to go every single night. But, $20 USD per night, dang... a bit over budget.

After a quick lunch – I had the fish sticks, mmm – we went to the bus stop to wait for the 119 bus to San Salvador. We’re getting used to the chicken bus style, but the problem was that the busses in El Salvador (so far) is that we don’t have anywhere obvious to put our stuff, no under-the-bus stowage, no overseat racks, no roof-racks. So if the bus was as crowded as we expected it to be, where would we put our packs?

The answer, after we were shooed onto the bus by the ayudante, was in a heap behind the driver’s seat and on the toes of the people in the front row. I felt sorry for the ayudante. He was just as rushed as they all have been, and there’s us bumbling around all, “where do we go, what do we do?” while he’s yelling, “Suba, suba, suba!” (“Get on, get on, get on!”) Like, just get on, what are you waiting for?

So we managed to squeeze onto the bus and I was literally pressed against on all sides. I didn’t need to hold onto anything. A girl offered to hold my daypack. I’m sure she was very nice, but I’m also beginning to thing that’s just the way it is – people who are sitting offer to hold other people’s bags and chickens and babies, that it’s less of an act of great kindness and more of a simple expected courtesy, like holding the door for whoever’s behind you.

We stopped a couple of times, each time for a lone woman. The ayudante would leap off, yell, “Suba, suba, suba!” shove her onto the bus and then yell, “Alé!” while swinging himself onto the steps. The bus would take off and he’d ride the next few yards hanging out the door while the woman inserted herself into our mass.

Even without the bag, I was still getting an unwanted anatomy lesson. Michael and I looked at each other. By then he was still up by the door and I, much less solid and unmoveable than he, had been wedged further down the aisle, so we couldn’t talk. But we found out later that we had both been thinking we couldn’t possibly stand that situation all the way to San Salvador.

Somehow the ayudante managed to traverse the aisle and collect our fares. Two dollars and eighty cents for the two of us to San Salvador, a three hour ride. A seat opened up and a woman tapped me and pointed to it. I should explain that by “seat” I mean six inches of horizontal green pleather on the aisle of a bench already occupied by a man, a woman and a toddler. After the past few months, it looked like gold to me.

But my first instinct was not to take it. Why should I get a seat? I don’t even belong here. The woman was being too generous, she should sit herself. And I opened my mouth to mangle the Spanish for that but then thought better of it and just said, “gracias” and sat down. I still don’t know how to ride the bus properly and I figured it would be better for everyone involved if I just got out of the way as much as I could.

Eventually the bus cleared out some, and Michael and I ended up sitting together in the very front. And I mean the very front. This bus had a long bench seat running parallel to the windows, facing the driver across the engine. I could rest my right elbow on the dashboard and lean my head against the windshield. This meant we had a great view of the road. It also meant the rest of the bus had a great view of us. And they didn’t waste it.

Our great view of the road included mountains, valleys, and a volcano, as well as those frequent heart-stopping excursions over the double yellow line on blind curves, where you pull back into your lane just inches and seconds from hitting oncoming trucks. You really experience this to the fullest when you’re right up there. We also passed a mangled freight truck being attached to a much smaller tow truck. The bus really cleared out as we approached San Salvador, and we moved to a regular seat.

According to the LP, there are few budget lodging spots in San Salvador. We planned to take the city busses to Boulevard de los Héroes, where we’d find two of them. This was a disaster. The book mentioned bus 29 and 52. We asked directions from some girls at a vending stand, and they told us to take bus 7C, and pointed the direction. Assuming they’d know best, we hopped on a passing 7C. It was a school bus type and had a little turnstyle built into it, just behind the driver, who confirmed that his bus went to Boulevard de los Héroes.

We sat on the bus for an hour, alternately approaching our destination on the map and retreating from it, but never retreating in such a drastic manner that we felt we had to get off the bus. It was like winding through the velvet rope maze at the bank, alternately walking towards the teller and then turning and walking away, but always getting closer. Or so we thought until we arrived right back at the bus station.

From there we tried one of the busses suggested by the LP, 52 I think, but it’s all a blur now. We sat on this bus for another hour and when it showed signs of doing the same thing, we got off the bus to walk. It was hot. We haven’t experienced true heat in quite a while. Not since way up in Mexico. After a few blocks I rebelled and we took a cab. The bus rides had cost twenty cents each. The cab ride was four dollars.

Our cab driver might possibly have felt pleased with himself if he had charged us an extra dollar or so, but if he did, it would have evaporated as he drove around lost and burning up gasoline looking for Calle San Salvador. He asked directions three times. Once from a young boy (“Oye, chico!”) who didn’t know, and once from a security guard who pointed in the – to us- vague Latin style, and once from an old lady (“Disculpe, Señora”) who sent us down the correct street.

On arrival at Ximena’s Guest House, we had very little motivation to do other than stay there. The woman who checked us in seemed to dislike us intently. Maybe she was having a bad day or maybe she was upset that we chose to stay in the $8 per person dorm dorm rather than the $23 private room. This is our first dorm of the trip. I have not slept in a dorm in years. Bunk beds! Mine has Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sheets.

No one else is staying here, it seems. The place is absolutely desterted. So it almost doesn’t matter that we’re in a dorm, except that we can’t lock our room, and Grouchy McDisdainerson at the front desk, who sighs heavily when we talk to her, has told us she doesn’t have room to store our valuables. And we do have more than our fair share of valuables, but they all fit into a courier bag, so I would think there would be someplace safe for them, but no. So they’re staying in our room while we go to the mall for dinner. Grouchy said something about locking our room for us, but we don’t believe her.

HOURS ON THE BUS: 132.75

 

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A pig says:
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Our driver on the bus to San Salvador.

Wreck.

Road to San Salvador.