It has been a rough couple days. We traveled from Guatemala to El Salvador. Our journey was marked by a series of bad hotels, sleepless nights and situations where we felt less than safe.
One particularly bad experience was our visit to the Salvadoran beach town of La Libertad. We wanted to rest and sit in the sun and I wanted to surf what is touted as one of the best waves in the Americas.
unfortunately La Libertad was anything but restful. It was a dirty, dirty town. The beautiful black sand beach doubled as a garbage dump. Putrid sewage water drained directly into the ocean. We could not find a good hotel, they were all trashy and on loud streets with lots of people hanging around.
The biggest problem in La Libertad was the drastic absence of women. Apparently surfing is an exclusively male endeavor in El Salvador. We were there for 24 hours and we saw two other women. There were many young American surfers who looked at us like movie stars. There were drugs out in the open and everyone seemed a little drunk. Not a good situation for Allegra and I but it was too late to head back to the city. We settled on a hotel. At about 10 a huge storm hit which knocked the power out. It is extremely hot and humid in La Libertad and we were excited about having a room with air conditioning. No power, no AC. We laid in our tiny, hot room in the dark waiting for sleep to come. Sleep did not come, but a bunch of people did. The quiet hotel suddenly filled with people. People playing their radio all night, people talking loudly, people snoring loudly, people making other noise. It was unbearable to be in that little hot room in that unsafe city with all that noise. We put in our headphones and listened to Norah Jones, but there was no peace for us. If it would have been possible, I would have taken a taxi in the middle of the night to the nicest hotel in San Salvador, price no concern. But, it was not an option for us to leave that room.
As soon as it was light I took a cold shower and we packed up to leave. I didn´t sleep more than two hours and I had not slept very much the night before when we staying in Guatemala City.
We left La Libertad at 8 in the morning. I had neither the energy nor the desire to do surfing.
After the bad night. We came to a lovely little guest house in San Salvador to take naps, watch movies and eat pizza. I feel better now.
1 comment:
Did you ever hear that oldie,"mama told me not to come...that ain't the way to have fun...that ain't the way to have fun!' Sherry you should not be there in that place...yuk!
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