El Salvador- religion, volcanoes, ocean and tortilla sandwiches.

We decided that our side trip to northern Guetemala wasnt going to stop us from checking out El salvador. So, we pointed our bikes back west and headed back across Guatemala toward the ¨economoc capital¨ of Central America, and spent a week riding through the land of volcanoes, religion, ocean and pupusas.

It was obvious as soon as we crossed the border that it did have better roads and the houses had more paint on them. El Salvador is a small country with a lot of people, but there was still plenty of country side to ride through. El Salvador has about 5 major cities which all have large populations, which makes it a very urbanised country.

A beautiful chance meeting with Jose and his family lead to us spending 2 days living with them and a trip to the beach to enjoy some cold beer and a trip here to the fresh food market in San Miguel.

The country is well endowed with volcanoes, we rode past several, some of which are obviously active. Basically we enjoyed easy riding through fertile agricultural plains looking at volcanoes on the horizon on one side and the pacific ocean on the other.

The beach we visited for the afternoon with Jose and his family, thankyou so much for your hospitality Jose.

El Salvador had some of the nicest people we met so far, and is also the most religious country we have been to. There was a lot of churches and nearly all of them had people in them everyday, some people we met even go to church twice a day, once to pray in the morning for the coming day, and one for giving thanks in the evening for the day passed.

Pupusas, in one word, bloody delicious. The national dish served in El Salvador and found everywhere from peoples homes to street vendors for breakfast lunch and dinner, is a trotilla sandwich. You make masa (fresh ground corn), then shape a ball, then poke a hole in it, fill it with something delicious like sasuage and cheese, the shape it into a round sanwich by hand and fry it. Served with a fresh tomatoe salsa and some pckled vegetables. The trick is it make a clapping noise when shaping the dough, a noise Yuriko & I really enjoyed to hear coming from the kitchens of peoples houses as we rode past at around meal time.

Pupusas, YUM!