Day 36 – Guatemala City to San Salvador

Last night we had a great dinner with Henrique, his wife, and a German couple friends of his. I went to RPI with Henrique and hadn’t seen him in 11 years! Was great to see him.
He took us a restaurant owned by a couple friends of theirs. The husband is Italian and does the cooking. The wife is from Guatemala and tends the tables. They live half of the time in Italy and half of the time in Guatemala. The restaurant is therefore only open for a month or two every year. I felt very privileged and honored to be there, not to mention that the food and the wine were amazing.
This morning we headed towards the El Salvador boarder. After struggling a little to find the way out of town we finally got to the main highway that took us South towards the coast. Soon after we hopped onto highway 2 heading East at guess who we found!? ARI! What an amazing coincidence! I saw a motorcycle from afar and soon recognized his red bag and black helmet. We were on a roll and didn’t stop to say hello but knowing that we would see him at the border.
The crossing itself went quite smoothly – the usual photocopying, kids trying to guide you, money exchangers and several minutes waiting for the guys to finish all the paperwork.
Ari caught up to us at the border – was good to see him – he stayed behind because he didn’t have some paperwork that was necessary for him to get into El Salvador… long story… I’m sure we’ll run into him again… he wanted to go straight from Guatemala to Nicaragua – quite hard to do in one day – not because of the mileage but because he would have to do 3 border crossings – Guatemala to El Salvador to Honduras to Nicaragua – ouch!
El Salvador did not look much different than Guatemala as far as the road went. We could tell that it is a little poorer and definitely a lot more people on the sides of the road.
Once we hit the coast the road was fantastic – good pavement and sweet turns – sometimes too sweet due to the melon and orange peels left on the road.
Soon after we ran into Mario – an El Salvadorian who Marc had exchanged some emails with – he was very excited that we were driving through and came to meet us on his KTM 990 Adventure – the same bike I have. It was so immaculately clean that it could’ve been mistaken for another bike 🙂 His had crash bars, Xenon and fog lights, and an after-market exhaust which I got jealous of 🙂
We had lunch at a restaurant by the beach – I had a frozen pineapple juice and fish ceviche to start and then calamari rice – very tasty.
We rode up from the beach to San Salvador with Mario – very relaxing to drive with someone in front of you who knows the roads! We went to see if Marc’s package had arrived (it hadn’t) and then to a BMW dealer to check the tire and the oil situation. This time we had a very warm reception. We confirmed what we had in mind last night – not much we can do about the bent rim, the tire will hold with the bulge, and the extra oil was not good. Marc noticed that his fuel consumption skyrocketed today and Rafael, the mechanic at the dealer, explained that the extra oil drowned the air filter thereby allowing very little air into the pistons.
Tomorrow morning we will go back to drain some oil out and change the air filter.
We also need to do some laundry…
At a non-descript hotel in El Salvador waiting for Mario – we’re going to get him dinner for all his help here.