From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

It was a surprise: there was no border crossing between Guatemala and El Salvador! It should be the same between El Salvador and Honduras, then between Honduras and Nicaragua. In fact, these 4 countries organized a kind of area where goods and people can freely circulate, a bit like Schengen in Europe. So Guatemala has given us a visa, and this visa is valid until we get to Costa Rica. We only have to show our passport at these 4 borders and that’s all. Sara was a bit disappointed for not having a stamp of El Salvador on her passport!

With all what we heard about this country, we were anxious about crossing it by bike. But, for the moment, we had only nice encounters, or almost! The landscape and the climate did not change: it is still very hot, with garbage all over on the side of the road, but also around the houses, still palm trees, still sugar cane trucks, still chicken buses. But we are watched more carefully by the inhabitants and are sent many “gringo, gringo!”. Sometimes, we answered them: “We are not gringos, we are from France, it is different!”. Most of them seem not to understand. Whatever, at least we can exchange some words and smiles!

We pushed hard to get to the town where we stopped for the night, Acajutla, only 30 minutes before the sunset, after 109km... Impossible to find even one hotel... We became very anxious... We asked people in the street where to find one. One of them, an elderly man, told us he would lead us to the only 2 hotels of the town. We took his “carrito” (bicycle with 3 wheels) and we followed him. The first hotel was not very clean and the owners were nice but drunk... The second one had a view on the ocean, but it seemed there was not any available room. It was going to be available “very soon”... Strangely, the price was US$15 (the money of El Salvador is the US Dollars) for 12 hours... Most of the time, such a price is for hotels where you do not usually sleep, if you see what we mean … They made us wait and our guide was sure we would get a room. In fact, the owners accommodated us in a room in the 1st floor of their house. I visited and said it was ok, without noticing that there was no window at the windows, just holes! So we had to share this room with lizards and mosquitoes the whole night!

While waiting for me, a man asked Sara: “how much do you cost for the night?”. Most of the time, when she is alone, people whistle her, more than in the other countries. Nothing really bad, only machismo, but she had trouble with that, and I can understand it.

We do not feel unsafe and we even decided to have a day off here, in La Libertad, for resting on the middle of long biking day.

Sebastien