Vamos a El Salvador!

Our journey began on Monday ... crazy to think that we embarked only a few days ago!

Anyway, we got a late start on Monday. We left around noon, but the weather looked decent - it hadn't started raining yet. Once we got to Guatemala City, however, it started raining! Little did we know this would be a theme for our trip.

It soon became apparent that we were lost. I knew we were lost, but I didn't know how to get us back to where we needed to be, so we pulled off at a McDonald's. We came in and ordered some fries to help warm us and to help ease our consciences about loitering there.

I pulled out my map of Guatemala City and asked one of the McDonald's employees where we were. He said he didn't know. But fortunately, Mario Cifuentes came to our rescue! He's from Escuintla and he's living in Guatemala City while he studies dentistry in university. Super nice guy, and his English is really good. He showed us where we were and the way out of Guatemala City.

Mario gave me his email address, so I'm going to try to find him on facebook.

I toyed with the idea of turning back to Antigua and restarting the journey on Tuesday, but by the time Mario had finished giving us directions and we had finished our fries, the rain had all but let up so we headed out again!

The drive was beautiful!

Maybe four hours after we made it out of Guatemala City, we made it to Jutiapa. It was dark, and after cruising through town and not finding any open hotels, we stopped by the fancy hotel by the highway. It was $40 a night! I asked if there were any other hotels in town that were cheaper. The one the receptionist sent us to ... well we never saw it. It was part way up a pretty big hill and when we asked the guard at the gate how much a room was, it turned out to be more expensive!

So, we returned to the fancy hotel and got a room with air conditioning! They had a gated parking lot too! So we headed into town to find dinner. Next to the central park, we stopped at a place with a patio and it turned out to be crazy expensive! We decided just to get a couple of limonadas (basically frozen lemonade) and find another place.

Most of the restaurants were closed but we found a sandwich place that was still open. We ordered up a few sandwiches ... and as you can see it was mostly condiments! I think Nealy's ham sandwich had one piece of ham and so much mayonnaise, ketchup, and sandwich spread that it was a sauce sandwich with ham! The sandwiches weren't very good - but the bread was excellent!