This morning, I woke up at 7 because we have a LOT of things to do before 11am checkout. I went downstairs and made coffee, pulled my laundry off the clothes lines in the laundry room, played a game of solitaire, made a smoothie and went upstairs to pack my clothes.
When my big backpack was packed, I brought everything downstairs. Kara joined me and I started on breakfast. We had some leftover omelette from yesterday so I made fresh garlic butter, reheated the omelette and added some cheese, then piled everything on an English muffin and topped it with avocado. It was delicious!
We then hard-boiled some eggs to take on the road, packed up all our food, and quickly did all the dishes. At 10:55, our host, Tito, rang the doorbell and came to check on us. He asked if we were still planning on taking an uber to El Tunco, the coastal town we’re visiting next. We had been planning on it, but this morning Kara checked the prices again and they had gone up from $16 US to $50 US! So we said actually, we’re going to take a bus.
Tito offered to drive us to the bus station, which was so nice of him. We had been planning on ubering there otherwise. He had to go get his car (the one with AC) which took about 10 mins, so we wouldn’t have needed to rush as much as we did at the end but oh well. I took some last pictures of the airbnb before we left.
Tito dropped us off at the Terminal de Autobuses Occidente, where we THOUGHT we were supposed to go to catch the 102A to El Tunco. We walked around inside a bit until we looked confused enough that someone asked us what we were looking for. I said we wanted to take the 102 to El Tunco and she told me that bus ran outside on the street but didn’t come into the terminal. I thanked her and we walked back to the street. We were then looking around on the street for the bus stop and ANOTHER stranger took pity on us and asked where we were going. I said 102 to El Tunco and he said “well I don’t know why that lady told you to come out, that bus leaves from inside”. So, back inside we went. We looked around for a bit and then asked a taxi driver where the 102 left from. He said back out on the street. Oooookay so we went back to the street. We spent some time watching the busses and trying to figure out where they stopped, and we saw a couple 102s coming toward us on the other side of the street so I asked a street vendor which direction we’d want to be going to get to El Tunco. She said to stay on this side of the street, but go further up. So we walked a little further up, stood there for a second trying to figure out what to do, and then turned around and saw some official-looking guy in a uniform. He smiled and said “102?”, we answered yes and he told us to keep walking down the street, a little past the gas station. We thanked him profusely, thinking we’d finally gotten good instructions. When we got to the gas station, however, there was no obvious place for a bus stop. We walked until we got to a school and I asked a guard where we could take the 102. He said the 102A didn’t stop anywhere on this street but the 102 we could flag down right here. That was fine. So we waited for a while until we saw a 102. I flagged it down and it DIDN’T STOP. We were defeated and hot and tired by this point, having lugged all our stuff around for an hour trying to catch this bus. We didn’t know what else to do so Kara checked the Uber prices again and they were down to $41 US. By this point Keith had offered to pay for our Uber so we took him up on it and completely had to abandon the bus idea. We tried.
Our driver picked us up in a chevy spark and we crammed all our luggage inside and hopped in for the 50 minute ride. I listened to a book on the way, and Kara remembered that there was another station we could’ve gone to for the 102A bus, but it was too late, plus, it really was nice to have door-to-door service (thanks Keith).
We got to Hostal Niña Oly and were greeted by the host. She let us put our bags by our room and told us she just needed to clean the room. Check-in started at 3pm and we had a couple hours to spare so we headed down to El Tunco Beach.
It’s mostly a surfing spot, the beach is quite rocky and it wasn’t very busy, but we swam anyways. There’s a severe lack of shade anywhere on shore though so as soon as we got out of the water, we went into town to wander around and find a place to kill time. We bought pasta and cheese for supper at a corner store, then went in search of a cafe.
We ended up at Açai Floripa which had AC and yummy looking bowls. I built my own in a chocolate waffle bowl with oreo crumbs, strawberries and condensed milk. It was super good and refreshing because it’s HOT out here.
When we were done, we headed back to our hostel and checked in. It’s really nice! More like a guest house, we have a private room (there are only 4 rooms in the entire place) WITH our own bathroom and a shared kitchen. We have the nicest patio too, because the other three rooms share one but we get our own two chairs and hammock outside our door!
Everything is super clean. We immediately turned on the AC and showered because we were boiling, and then we just hung out in the room a bit. Kara called her dad and I chatted with Keith a bit. Kara then decided to go to Playa El Sunzal for sunset and I was going to join, but Kiera was free to call for a bit so I hung back because we haven’t talked in SO long. When Kara got back, I prepared supper. We boiled pasta and mixed in some leftover sauce from yesterday.
It was really good and easy, we did a great job grocery shopping in San Salvador we didn’t waste anything.
After supper, I washed the dishes and we hurried back into the cool room. The kitchen and terrace are all open-air and it was still HOT out. We did some future trip planning, then I called Keith and wrote yesterday’s blog before bed. See you in the next one!