shelane

I was not a tourist in El Salvador. I went to work at a children’s home. It was a wonderful experience to do some work that will help the kids. The best part was getting to hang out with them. One girl game me a 40 minute social studies lesson about El Salvador. It was so adorable.

Roaches the size of rats and humidity in Houston worse that anything I experienced.

Today was a fun day. I set my alarm to get up in time, and we were ready plenty of time in advance. When I went to get the bus tickets, they said that the schedule changed to fifteen minutes later than what was posted. It ended up being almost 45 minutes before the bus got there. The ride was less then an hour and it wasn’t too bad.

I paid the entrance fee in dollars because the rate in pesos was higher than the rate I got at withdrawal. Well, then there is no doubt at how much I paid. I just paid the basic fare because I knew I wasn’t going to use all the other services that were included in the full fare. I paid for my snorkeling gear separately.

Snorkeling this time was nothing like when I went in Cancun. First, there were a lot less people actually snorkeling, so I concentrated on the fish and not the people around me. Second, there was a lot more room to move around.

I was out there for almost two hours. I got out once to walk across the floating bridge. When I got back in, the water felt pretty cold. I swam into some caves that were there, and that was pretty cool. I also saw a ship underwater. (I think the park people put it there) I saw some pretty amazing fish. One was huge with lots of blue and red colors, and a big mouth. I found out later that its name is mouth of fire. As I swam around, I hit some warm patches and cold patches of water. I eventually just got out because I was cold.

I found Jessica where I left her, comfortably reading in a hammock. After I returned the snorkel gear, we walked around. I ended up doing a little translating because the girl working at one counter wasn’t doing very well. They thought I was from around here because of how much Spanish I knew (of course they didn’t know the difference). I was going to have a little fun with that, but Jessica gave me away.

We took a train (really a Jeep pulling a caboose) to the beginning part of the river. There was a group of people from Spain on board. I understood them perfectly. Their accent wasn’t even as thick as my European history teacher’s. We walked around most of the lagoon area. We saw some pretty amazing stuff. The water from the river and cenote was so much clearer than the rest. I wished then that I still had my snorkel gear, but now I realize that I saw it just as well from above. We saw some ducks that I wanted to feed, but the dispenser wasn’t working. When I walked across the floating bridge with Jessica, I was reminded of being in an amusement park or fair fun house.

We were given bad information about the buses, so we ended up killing time in the hammocks. We found out when we left to catch the bus, that we could have left earlier. We took the free bus (that came every 15 minutes) to the highway. From there, we took another bus that was on the way to Playa del Carmen and Cancun. That bus cost me less that the one to get to Xel-Há, but it wasn’t first class either.