A morning at the beach, and a day spent flying

I met up with M' around 9:30 as she had agreed to drive me to the airport, as she also had to pick up her cousin who was flying in the same day, but as neither flight was in the morning she said that we would have enough time to take a quick drive to the beach, and she said it would be a crime if I did not visit the beach near San Salvador, at a region called La Liberdad.

The drive through the city to the beach was great, as it gave me a chance to see some of the rich chateaux's and poor slum houses almost next to each other and I was amazed at how close they were to each other, as normally an area is rich but here one street could be rich and the next poor.

As we drove we were chatting and I remembered that this area was where the two German guys were going to visit to do some surfing and after about half an hour we pulled into a side street leading to a hotel that was right on the beach.

I had no idea that a lot of the beach front resorts doubled up as restaurants and private swimming pools, but in turned out that even if you were not a guest staying at the hotel you would order food and drinks from their restaurant and for a mere US $3 you could use the pools.

I am so glad that I had left the rain behind as being yet another gloriously sunny day, I was able to do a tiny bit of lazing in the sun and if only I had known this before then I would have stayed here instead of in the city centre, and with prices of US $57 for a single room the cost was very resonably priced for the good facilties and location.

Looking out over the beach I was gobsmacked at the dark sand and large pebbles and stones that were the beach area, and they were as beautiful as any beach I had seen before, with the palm trees swaying gently in the sea breeze.

Sadly, with the time it took to reach and then return we didn't have much time to stay there and after a nice breakfast it was time to leave and head off to the airport, and I could not thank my M' enough as she had been the best guide she could be, fun, happy and refused to always let me pay for things, despite her not taking any money for the petrol that she was using when we were driving around for the last few days.

The airport itself was pretty small when you compare the size of the city, but it was well modern and the staff knew enough English for it not to be a problem either checking in or finding my way to the gate.

Before I boarded I shared a last banana split with my M' in the airport restaurant and we spend so much time talking that I almost missed my flight, barely passing through security at 1:15pm when my flight was due to depart at 1:25.

The next 9 hours were spend rushing to catch planes, flying and watching crappy airline with tv with more adverts than shows, drinking coffees and only a few hours all in all wasted in airport departure lounges. I was surprised at the speed and smoothness of my connections, all with TACA, and all of them took off and arrived on time which meant the forty minutes between flight times was perfectly enough to go from one arrivals lounge to the next departure gate.

I have never seen such small queues as I did at the Mexico Immigration station and I think I spent less than a minute answering about two quick questions before he stamped my passport and waved me through. Equally good timing was that my holdall luggage had arrived perfectly undamaged despite two flight changes, and it came out number 7 on the luggage carosel ( I like to count to see how many other pieces of luggage are processed before mine, silly but it helps the time go by ) and then I was through to the main terminal.

I phoned up my friend K' who had herself just arrived at the airport and together we went to have a mini tour of the city at night before finding an Irish bar where we grabbed a quick drink before making plans for the next few days and then finding me a place to sleep for the night, as I could not find the paperwork that I had printed out of my hostel.