I was awake at 5 but lingered in bed until 6, partly because i wasn’t convinced the border was really open 24 hours like the lady at the hotel said, but mostly because it was really comfortable in my air conditioned cocoon. I got to the border at 6:30 and was stamped out of Guatemala, pedaled a little down the road and across the bridge, paid a $12 tourist fee and got stamped in with no questions and no inspection. I had a few quetzals left over which I exchanged for dollars with some entrepreneurs hanging around the Guatemalan side. The US dollar is the official currency of El Salvador (together with bitcoin but nobody is using that). I thought I was going to be living like a king when I paid just $1.25 for a breakfast of gallo pinto (beans and rice, but better) fried bananas and good coffee. But what I’ve found is that while street food is cheap other stuff is not. Lodging is surprisingly expensive, at least in the beach town of Acajutla. The first place I looked at wanted $100 for one night. It was a decent spot, with a pool, but Acajutla is not a lush beach paradise. It’s a semi-squalid town with an industrial port. The security guard at the restaurant across the street saw me enter and leave and psst’ed me over to tell me to go knock on that door there and tell them the guard sent me and I’d like the price. I ended up paying $30 for a clean, simple room with good air conditioning and in later walks around town I decided it really was the best deal in town. Down in the really nasty section I could get a room for $25 but without A/C.
No hot water (nor at last night’s place either) but the cool water that comes is so refreshing it’s not a problem. I cleaned up and went across the street for beer and shrimp tacos and ended up chatting for a while with Alan who had ridden in from San Salvador on his motorcycle. Like me, Alan is retiree after a successful career in tech and is traveling south. Unlike me, he’s on a BMW, stays in the Hyatt and is 36 years old.
I’ve seen a lot of roadside bike shops. I was invited to “sit a spell, get out of the heat” when I paused to observe. Note the bike rack, consisting of hooks suspended from the roof beam by inner tubes
He wasn’t as surly as the picture suggests. Each package of two sweet items was 25 cents. Or “un quarter” but pronounced in only a vaguely recognizable way
