Arrival in El Salvador

I realized as I was writing the first draft of this post that it was turning into a essay, so I'm going to break this guy up into a few different posts with pictures. That ways you won't have to put aside an hour of your life to read about my adventures. Anyways, I flew in Tuesday night from El Salvador but just finished doing the preliminary run on the photos right now. We had such a blast down there, and I can't wait to go back.

My father arrived in San Salvador on Thursday afternoon because there was a parents' dinner the night before. Apparently that was interesting, but alas, I was not there so I can't really comment on it. I arrived the next afternoon and got a shuttle up to the Sheraton in San Salvador. My father and grandparents were on a tour so I called up Roger and Sandra and had them come over and pick me up. We were supposed to meet Dan and Anne so we could drive up to Ataco and spend the night, but while I had pulled up at the hotel about an hour after I landed, Dan and Anne had not arrived. Roger was getting a little worried because they had rented a car and therefore had a very high probability of getting incredibly lost.

While we waited, we drove back to Sandra's house to hang out for a little while. I met Sandra's mother again (I had first met her in Kansas City the year previous for the civil ceremony) and I also met her German Shepard mix, Oso.

After a very tense few hours, we finally got a call from a slightly frazzled Dan. They had finally found there way back to Villa Serena, the hotel they were staying at, about three hours behind schedule. Apparently they had skirted with the border of Guatemala before realizing where they were in relation to where they were supposed to be. The three of us piled back into Sandra's car and rode on over to the hotel. Along the way I pulled out my camera and started shooting away, simply because I could. It was a little difficult out the window of the car, but really I just wanted to look around.

Fifteen minutes later we rolled up in front of the hotel and were greeted by Dan and Anne. They were now standing behind their rental car because Dan refused to drive anymore that day, especially in that city. Understandable because the drivers in El Salvador are psycho. Good, I didn't see an accident the entire time I was there, but psycho nonetheless. Anne also pulled out a map so Sandra could show them where everything had gone wrong.

At this point it was just after 5PM, three hours after we were supposed to have left for Ataco to go up and spend the night. It was starting to get a little bit dark and the tour was supposed to return soon, so I opted out of heading up to Ataco and waited in the hotel for Dad, Grandpa and Grandma. I got a little hungry, so I decided to go walking to find some food. Well as I walked down the hall from my room, who do I run into but Dad coming out of the elevator? So we put some things back in the room, grabbed Grandpa and Grandma and went out to dinner at this little sandwich shop down the street.

Later that night Dad, Grandpa and I stopped into the hotel bar to get ourselves acquainted with the local fare. The Cerveza Nacional Pilsner is nice and light, and Suprema is also very good. We caught up on some of the news on the TV and then headed up to bed to be ready for the wedding the next day. Meanwhile, I couldn't sleep, so I dropped back down there a little later that night to check out their gin and tonics, once again very satisfactory.

I know, not an overly exciting first day, but I enjoyed it and there wasn't too much pressure so it allowed me to adjust to the country. The next three days, however, were when I fell in love with the country.