Goodbye Clint, Hello El Salvador (El Salvador)

Thursday was a bit of a sad day. A couple weeks ago, Clint mentioned that he was thinking about splitting from the group to travel solo, as he wanted to spend a bit more time in Central America: go to Spanish school in San Pedro Lago Atitlan and get scuba certified in Honduras among other things. He hasn't bought a ticket to go home from Chile like Jared and I have, so he is slightly more flexible with his schedule. Well, the time came for us to leave Guatemala, and in turn, Clint.
 We woke up, packed, and headed to Guatemala City to drop Clint of at a bus depo. After a quick goodbye, we left Clint there, and headed out to El Salvador. I think Jared took it the hardest, as he was hoping to experience The Americas with one of his best friends, and male counterpart.
 But, the trip must go on! The backseat rider now gets to enjoy a bit more space. The drive to El Salvador was pretty easy. I'm realizing now that basically every border requires those silly copies of documents they stamp, forcing us to do a lot of shuttling back and forth from offices. They are also are all full of the annoying people offering to be a "guide" through the process.


I think what astonished us the most about the El Salvador border was the line of large cargo trucks backed up for several kilometers.
 After about an hour or two at the border we headed in to go to a beach town called, El Zunte. We made it in a bit after the sun had set, and found our hostel Esencia Nativa pretty easily. After eating a bit of dinner, we hung out with some fellow hostelers and locals, and the called it a night.
 The next morning, Nicole and I woke up early for a jog and workout, showered, grabbed breakfast with Jared and set out for the beach. The area around the hostel had an insane amount of bugs and flies, and the beach right by us was very rocky. We watched some people we had met surf for a bit, and Jared got an idea of what surfing was like there, which was daunting. After a bit of a walk down the beach, we found a good area to relax and swim, before heading back to the hostel to get some advice on surf spots for Jared, as they area right by us was way too rocky for him. We met the owner, a fellow longboarder and super nice guy, who offered to lead us to a spot a few towns down that would be appropriate for Jared.
 The two went out, and Jared got some pretty good waves and a serious cardio workout. After getting his surf-legs back, we all headed back to the hostel for some lunch and a rest. Jared made some friends with a European group of guys who invited us to go out that night to a town called El Tunco. Nicole and I made friends with a group of American volunteers, so we all had dinner together and pregamed for our night out.

 El Tunco was much more buildup than our town, so we found a fun bar with a live band. I had been setup to meet my friend Eliza's friend, Jay who was able to pick us out by her description of a loud girl with blonde curly hair with a large guy who looks like he was in the military. We hung out with Jay all night and drank yummy Flor de Caña and coke. At about 1am we took our pre-arranged cab home and settled into bed. The next morning, Nicole and I woke up and slammed down a post-drinking Gatorade with breakfast, before heading out to the beach. Unfortunately, Jared had a harder time recovering, and was bed-bound for a bit.
 After some solid tan-line-removing at the beach, we headed out to a nearby town to watch a surf competition we had heard about from some locals. We were excited for our first surf competition, and expected something straight of out Blue Crush; however, what we got was an empty beach with a few surfers in the water (much like the exact scene the day before), and absolutely no idea where the actual judging was happening. We still got to see some excellent surfers ride a few waves, grabbed a pretty heavy lunch, and then headed back for nap time. That night, we all stayed in to wake up early for our long drive to Nicaragua.