The Journey Begins

A very long couple of flights from LAX has finally seen us arriving in San Salvador. Gary has maintained his perfect score for airport screening, and the final hurdle at San Salvador airport saw Ty and I waiting in the main area of the shed whilst Gary was once again searched and searched again. No rubber gloves this time, which is perhaps a good thing as we noticed a definite gleam of anticipation in his eyes as they were snapped on at LAX.

The taxi ride from the airport and a subsequent short walk in La Libertad confirmed our initial impressions of San Salvador - this can be a scary and intimidating place. There are almost no women evident on the streets and many of the men carry firearms openly. These guys clearly subscribe to the 'bigger is better' philosophy though, and the toy of choice seems to be a chrome plated sawn off shotgun. Every self respecting pedestrian should have one.

When searching for a store to sell us a SIM card, we bumped into a Red Cross worker who was surprised that a couple of gringos were out and about on the street. Alberto is mid40's and works in San Salvador and stays with his mum in La Libertad. He noted that he helped someone right outside the store in the previous week who had suffered a gunshot wound that had gone straight through the victims hand, then entered next to the nose before coming to rest just in front of the left ear.

We ended up chatting to Alberto for a while, and he assisted us through the red tape associated with a foreigner buying mobile phone SIM cards. In fact, the red tape beat us in the end and we purchased the items using Alberto's own identity card.



Photo: Gary (front left), me, Matthias, Alberto, Ty and Steve

Alberto was such a mine of information that we ended up inviting him back to the hotel for beers and a chat. Whilst there we also bumped into Steve, a Dutch guy taking the Pan Ameeican from Alaska right through to Ushaia on the bottom of South America on a big BMW off road bike.

With a heap of stories to tell ( and a few beers under our belt ) we headed off for dinner down by the ocean. It was very useful to have Alberto along, as the whole tone canister change from street to street.

Bikes update : Matthias was denied an entry permit for the bikes at the Honduran border and has had to leave them at the border. We will all jump in his RV tomorrow morning and drive the 3 hours back to the border to try and sort this out. If all goes well, we will set off from the Honduras/ El Salvador border by lunchtime tomorrow headed for Guatemala.

Please note that contact will be extremely sporadic from herein as there is very little infrastructure to support modern comms over here, our iPhones do not work anywhere, and wireless internet is still a rarity. All 3 Spot Trackers will be operational from lunchtime tomorrow.

Wish us luck ......

Location:La Libertad