On Saturday 8th November we left San Salvador and
took a local “chicken” bus to San Miguel.
From there, we hopped on another bus which took us through the mountain
range to the ocean front town of El Cuco.
At one point the bus was struggling so much up the mountain that we were
barely moving at all. In fact, when we
reached the top, the driver and a few of the locals whooped and cheered, which
makes me think that perhaps the bus getting to the summit is somewhat of a rare
occurrence. We then hurtled down the
other side of the mountain at top speed which was very exciting, and I’m sure
completely safe.
Once we arrived in El Cuco we started to walk the 40 minutes
to our hostel, La Tortuga Verde but soon managed to hitch a lift in the back of
a pickup truck instead, which was far more enjoyable! Here we are enjoying the
ride.
La Tortuga Verde is a beachfront hostel, yoga retreat and
turtle sanctuary. The owner buys
hundreds of turtle eggs at a time on the black market to save them from being
eaten. He then hatches them and releases
the baby turtles into the ocean. When we
arrived we found that we were just in time to help the latest hatchlings be
released! This was a really amazing
experience, and you feel really responsible for the turtles you release. Apparently however, only 1 in 100 turtles
actually survive the journey out to seam which is a bit of a bummer. I bet it’s my one that survives though.
We love this place – it has such a chilled atmosphere, with
palm trees and hammocks everywhere and a view of the ocean wherever you may
be. Originally we had booked to stay
here for three nights, but quickly extended it to nine nights the day after we
arrived. Even though we have been here now for eight days, I’m able to condense
all of our activities into one blog entry, as apart from one or two exceptions,
the days have mostly followed a pattern of: eat breakfast, lie in hammock, eat
lunch, swim in sea/bodyboard, eat dinner, drink cervezas! So, I’ll just fill you in on any extras that
weren’t covered in that last sentence.
La Tortuga Verde is on Intipuca beach, which is a hot spot
for surfers; obviously this means that the waves are pretty big and
powerful. Now, I take my self-appointed role
as “Frazier/Madge Family All Situation Health and Safety Rep” very seriously,
and have always prided myself on having a “respect for the sea”, and thus not
swimming when the tide is turning.
However, on Thursday the sun must have gotten to me, and I adopted
Nick’s attitude of, “How dangerous can it really be?” The answer – quite dangerous. After 10 minutes of frolicking in the waves,
we soon got caught in a riptide which had pulled us beyond the point where we
could stand, and with every massive wave that crashed over our heads, we were
being pulled further out to sea as it dragged back again. Thankfully a few minutes later we had managed
to fight our way back to shore, feeling thoroughly exhausted and quite a bit
scared. Lesson here: RESPECT THE SEA!!!
On one of our first days here, we learned that a pub quiz
would be taking place at the bar that evening!
Obviously we were very keen as we do love a good quiz, even on the other
side of the world. Well, we went to the
bar (early) and waited and waited for said quiz to start, and after an hour or
so were informed that it would have to be cancelled as we were the only ones
who had turned up! To reward us for our
keenness we were given the opportunity to go paddle boarding in the estuary for
free the next day. As paddle boarding is
a sport which relies highly on a sense of balance, I left Nick to it and hung
about on the shore, pretending (in my head) to be a CIA agent on a
reconnaissance mission - We’ve been watching a great deal of spy-based drama
“Homeland” in the evenings.
Now for the really exciting news: Those of you who read our last blog from our
travels a couple of years ago may remember that we encountered a series of
doppelgangers along the way. Well….we’ve
found our first of this trip! He has
been named “Australian Greg”. Greg
Gaynor is a friend of ours from uni, and this lovely Australian man named Chris
resembled him so much in facial features and mannerisms that I just had to take
a photo of him for the blog. For those
of you who know Greg, here he is.
And finally – we went to a pool party last night (Saturday)
and something very important happened:
After years and years of trying, a fellow guest at La Tortuga Verde
managed to teach me to open a bottle of beer with a lighter!!! That’s something
to tick off the bucket list.
As I’m writing this, Nick is walking up/down a volcano (on
his own), so if he ever returns I’ll let him tell you all about that in the
next entry. Tomorrow morning we leave La
Tortuga Verde and are journeying to Nicaragua through Honduras.
Here are some pictures of the beach to annoy you all…..sorry!!
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