Our last two days in El Salvador were busy partly organizing paperwork to cross two borders in short order and partly shopping in a country by now familiar to us and well equipped to supply our needs.
Rusty checking out the rabbit cage at Finca Macedonia where we were staying. Rabbits are farm animals small enough to not put the fear of God into him:
Our morning at the coffee farm in the mountains started with a bang as we waited for Brenda the owner to give us the all clear to use her shower. Her pitbull called Piston, a brute with a personality showed up at the van and took an instant dislike to Rusty. I saw trouble brewing but they went at each other before I could grab Rusty’s collar. I tried to separate them as Rusty retreated to the van and I held Piston s brief moment as Rusty slid underneath, his refuge. Piston wasn’t having any and followed slipping out of my grasp. I grabbed his tail and a hind leg and fell down behind him struggling to pull him away from my dog. The noise was defending and two farm workers showed up with a rope to lasso Piston and hold him. Eventually Rusty came out from under GANNET2 after they left and I was relieved to see he was fine. It turned out blood dripping from his mouth belonged to Piston who ended up with antiseptic all over his face. Rusty defended us like a champ. I was quite proud of my little street fighter. We had a laugh with Brenda, no hard feelings and shared a cup of delicious Salvadoran coffee. Life on the road… with all its surprises. I hugged Rusty a lot but he shrugged me off.
We tried to find eggs and failed. They only sold them in boxes of three dozen at the supermarket.
We got down to sea level more or less and trudged toward San Miguel, the largest town close to the Honduran border.
Southern El Salvador is a much poorer part of the country, shabbier homes less manicured streets, more roadside trash, more run down cars.
The vet in town charged us $20 for two health certificates for Rusty, one to pass the Honduran border on Saturday and the other to cross into Nicaragua on Sunday. And then she clipped the little tyke’s nails. By the way he is still 55 pounds his steady weight all these years.
We filled out the online applications to enter Honduras and Nicaragua and we made a few extra photocopies -oh the paperwork!
And Layne failed to find a few of the things we like to eat at the San Miguel Walmart.
No blueberries or walnuts, no blue cheese, none of Rusty’s favorite food or his preferred treats so shopping was a bust! Oh and then Layne tried to get just half a dozen eggs to put in the fridge…”Stop!” She said as we passed a hole-in-the-wall store. She came back defeated.
“I got eggs,” she said, “ but only five. She sells them in fives for a dollar. And she wouldn’t sell me a sixth. No way. She sells eggs in fives only.” You get used to this sort of thing. In Mexico the shopkeepers laughed at Layne and her little yellow plastic six egg holder. She would fill it with six eggs all right but they sold eggs by weight…weird.
Darkness was descending as we left Walmart with a few odds and ends. We left the dead dog to the right as we edged out into the evening traffic. Cars pushed and shoved but we managed to get on the main road out of San Miguel toward our planned camp for the night.
Layne found a lake south of San Miguel and iOverlander showed others had stayed there successfully, at Laguns de Olomega.
The listing said there was an abandoned water park on the edge of the lagoon and locals come and hang out but overnight it’s quiet and a good place to sleep just twenty minutes from the city.
There were a couple of motorcycles and a car when we arrived at sunset but it got dark quickly and we were alone.
The resort water park thing looked like it hadn’t been used in years. We both felt a bit creeped out by the ruins and the somber atmosphere but we decided to stick it out.
Clearly there are people who use the place most likely at weekends. You can imagine before, boat rides music and families picnicking.
In the US the owner of such a property would throw up a fence and mutterxdarkly about liability and insurance regulations etc…
Here there is no liability and no one to sue. You play here at your own risk. I don’t have much faith in American libertarians who call for freedom from trial lawyers and all that. Everyone when the time comes wants justice and a big payout when they feel wronged!
Rusty and I wandered at our own risk while Layne made for dinner which was sausages and ribs, Salvadoran style.
Below you can see a table and stool chained together. I can imagine a long Sunday of selling snacks right where Rusty was resting. Besides the place was clean and the trash cans empty.
We slept like logs, no one murdered us and the next days drive was a meandering plan to visit one last town before the Honduran border.
