El Salvador - sticks and stones may break my bones, but bags of urine...

It's really cool when things you do as an afterthought turn out to be better than things you put a lot of planning into. I decided to check out the famous-for-its-warring country of El Salvador kind of as an afterthought. A friend who volunteered there with his wife told me not to bother unless I was going to surf. Other travelers had told me that they only stopped in the capital, San Salvador, for a night on there way to or from Guatemala. So I guess my expectations for this little country wedged into the Pacific coast between Honduras and Guatemala were not high. Maybe that's a good thing.

I arrived just short of the Salvadorian border after hitching my way from the Nicaraguan border across Honduras in the back of a pick-up with a one-eyed dude, a bundle of bananas and an off-duty security guy armed with a shotgun. Security guys with shotguns are as common here as 15 year olds with cellphones back home, so I wasn't particularly worried. And as Central America, and especially this region, is notorious for its dangerous highways due to the gangs and drug-runners that ply these roads, I just kept telling myself that having a shotgun made us safer. It was especially hard, however, to convince myself of this whenever my co-passenger would fidget with the safety...ON. OFF. ON. OFF. Please don't point that thing at me!

Once in San Salvador, I caught up with my CS host and we made our way to the stadium to catch another World Cup Qualifier. Though tickets were only six bucks for the cheap seats, we had to buy El Salvador jerseys for another five to avoid getting pummeled by insults and, considerably worse, bags of urine. It's also a 'rule' that bringing a woman to this rambunctious section, also know as general or Vietnam is a no-no and the price of saving a few bucks is more urine, water and endless hurling of insults at both the cheapskate and his date or wife or even daughter. We stayed (relatively) dry, but ES lost a nail biter to Costa Rica.

The rest of my time was spent at the beach watching other people surf in El Tunco, hanging out with some really cool folks and real life revolutionaries in one of El Salvador's most famous (and beautiful) revolutionary towns of Suchitoto and relaxing for a couple days at an off-the-beaten-path beach of Playa San Diego and hostel called El Roble. Like Colombia, the people here in ES were super friendly and eager to share the fact that their country offers so much more than gangs, war and violence. This afterthought of a visit turned out to be a wonderful surprise. Sometimes its best not to plan.