Adventures in El Salvador

So This is the over all experience thus far from my family's experience in El Salvador. We are all sailing my parents home/sailboat to the east coast from the west coast. We will update this with the many past experiences and places we stopped through out Mexico and will continue to further update this as we continue in our journey. Hope you ENJOY :)

Along this last passage there were these “frigget” birds. There was what seemed like around fourty birts that decided to take a shot at resting their wings and grabbing hold of the top antenna of “tealeaves.” We tried to yell and slap the chords connected to the mast but they were not going anywhere. The more that they attempted to take turns sitting on the top of the mast (more specifically the antenna..) the more that we saw the hard work and effort my uncle put into climbing up the mast and rewiring the past antenna being bent and destroyed from the “frigget” birds trying to get a free ride. We realized that we needed to stop them.. So we had to pull out the bee bees and the slingshot. 

 Here is a picture of the dock and the little restaurant connected next to the marina where we can access the limited and inconsistent wifi. Nevertheless, being able to get your feet on the earth after being out on sea for awhile is a releaving feeling in it of itself. And then ontop of this you are also able to connect to the internet and connect with everyone back home? This is very much a different experience than that of having a cellular plan and always having the internet at -- “your fingertips," handcuffed to your wrist, or attached to your hip-- you choose which one works best for you..

Your typical road through each street in this town.

 This is one of the towns in El Salvador, this one that we visited which we had to take the two hour bus from the marina just to get to… this is how every street is.. jammed pact full of people in and out of the stores and walking down through the center of the roads as well as selling what they can to the people walking by.

 This is a cool looking building in the middle of the town that we visited.. and as close a look that we could manage to get at it.

Thought this was a pretty cool religious kind of symbol on the back of this truck. It appears to be the “star of David” or “merkaba” and there is a Christian cross that is in the middle of it. 

Here are some cool looking metal bar like windows separating the inside and out side of this unopened restaurant looking place.

Here is a cute little baby that was resting on his mothers arm just about a foot away from where I’m pinned up against the side of the bus.

 Where I’m at on this bus, crammed up against the side of the wall on the second stair of the entrance between the opening door and the bus driver, there is close to twenty of us in this little space just outside of the picture alone. Not to mention there is about three people thick in the isle between each seat. They literally have people hanging on the outside of the bus that will grab hold of the handle bars on the outside and cram each body closer together just to fit as many people they can on each bus. Fun stuff. 

 Here is the last sun set on the ocean before we made it into El Salvador.

 Yeah they have pet Reindeer.

 Along the pathway there is a friendly little Buck (reindeer looking guy) We call him Buck though..

So every now and then we’ll feed him.. Sometimes he will put his antlers through the fence and sometimes he will lick your fingers.

The birds here are tropical too.

 Yep, these are cows.. and yes, they are casually strolling down the only road at the point we are located in this channel part of the town.

What the locals are eating… “papusas” pretty good stuff. It is like a pancake outside with meet and what not on the inside..

 So it turns out the Hematite ring that I have been wearing actually have magnetic properties but only when it is heated up. I place my hand to my side in the sand while I’m sitting here on this beach and my ring will pull out all the iron from the sand and get stuck to the outside of the ring.

Here is the picture we attempted to take of the side of the building so that we could have some sort of reference base to find our way back to the marina. We had to haggle with the workers here that carry fully automatic rifles slung over their shoulders just to realize that their directions of the bus times were actually just a bunch of lies… were assuming this is because they want the “Americans’” or non locals to pay the price the taxies charge to get into town which is around 60-100(plus)$ versus a maybe five bucks round-trip for a bus ride.. A crazy bus ride but what ever… there is a big difference.

Okay so here is the GPS pic of our entrance into El Salvador and it was pretty crazy because the channel opening causes waves to break out to sea and close by the beach. The channel is not that deep so you have to wait till high tide and have the marina come in on a wave runner to point you in the right direction at the right time so that you can ride one of the waves, with your boat, into the bay and marina.

Here is the wave runner on our starboard side guiding us through the waves which are hard to see on camera as they are about a mile or two out on both sides of us.

It can be hard to see ahead of the boat at times specially when you need to pay real close attention to detail so we have to stand up and peer over the top of the biminey so that we can see and steer with our fingertips. Here is the crew of Cpt and first mate of Tealeaves

Seeing the sun come up while on passage is always a safe and relieving feeling because you know the weather and waves seem to calm down when the sun is up and also you know that you made it through the night and those on shift after you are more rested than you and can now watch after the boat and the crew.

There is a 1 mile walk to the road where we could either catch a 2 hour bus into town or we could walk another mile to the beach across the road.

 So we had to anchor out at the beach for a few hours and wait till a jet ski could come and show up the pathway in. We had to call the people in charge of the port and speak to them in what little Spanish that we know and plan to meet them out there when it was high tide. Once the tide was in enough the bay would be deep enough and we would be able to safely ride the waves into the bay and then into the marina from there.

 waking up to the sun rise over the ocean is a releaving feeling. The ocean seems to settle down and you have the feeling that you are a little more safer in the day time. You can see more boats around and not rely so much on the radar. Also you know that it is now time to switch off shifts and that those to follow you are more rested than you and will naturally wake up because the sun is up.

 This is my aunt on the front of her and my uncle rick’s boat “TeaLeaves”.. In the background is the Gabby wray. Buddy boating and traveling with multiple people seems to be much safer of a way to travel from port to port and country to country.

 Cpt Rick taking the lead and getting ready to attempt to ride a wave into the marina.

This is some of the first views off of the boat in this port in El Salvador

 El Salvador is beautiful in that everywhere we look there is nature and something pleasing to the senses to bring you into the experience.

Thank you for scanning through and reading the captions.

I am working on cataloging all the places we've been and experiences we have had and will have as my family and I continue our sailing journey from the West coast to the East coast. We have passed through Mexico and are in El Salvador for the moment. I will work on updating this to include the many places we've visited in Mexico and more..