m & d south on motos: Antigua, Guatemala to El Tunco, El Salvador

We spent Christmas in the beautiful colonial city of Antigua, Guatemala. We had booked one of the nicer hotels in town in advance so that we wouldn't have to spend Christmas in some dark hostel. The city was great, but unfortunately I (Davis again) was sick and didn't really feel better until Christmas day. In Guatemala they stay up all night on Christmas Eve and blow shit up for hours starting at midnight. I'm pretty sure there is a lot of drinking involved as well. Our hotel was great, but the highlight of our time in Antigua - strangely enough - was watching the Saints game at a sports bar where we hollered at the top of our lungs when Drew Brees broke Dan Marino's 27 year record for passing yards in a season. I hope everybody knows that it's a fact that every time we miss an entire season out of the country the Saints win a Superbowl. You can look it up.

OK... After Drew broke the record we headed for the border with El Salvador, which turned out to be the worst border crossing yet. The problem at this border was checking our bikes out of Guatemala, which required the attention of corrupt (and quite affluent looking) Guatemalan Aduana officials. After waiting 4 hours we were basically told that there were still "80" (yeah right) truckers in front of us and that if we wanted to expedite our process a $30USD "propina" would get us through in an hour. We conferred with our partner in misery, Carlos, and decided to just pay it so we could get started on the bike importation process on the El Salvador side at a decent hour. Carlos is a moto mechanic from Ecuador who rode to Alaska, then turned around to ride to the tip of Argentina, and will then ride back home to Ecuador. All on a 1979 BMW R 80. Of course it ran perfectly the whole time.

Finally through the Guatemalan side of the border after five hours in the sun, the El Salvador side was very professional and after a long line at Migracion the dreaded bike importation process was delightfully fast (and honest!). Still, it was way too late to make it to any decent sized town before dark so we pulled in to the closest beach town we could find just as it was getting dark and spent the night in the deserted town of Barra de Santiago for 26 dollars. El Salvador uses US Dollars exclusively, so we don't have to make constant calculations for a change.

In the morning we left for the surf town of El Tunco, next to El Sunzal in the La Libertad area of the Salvadoran coast. El Tunco is a great town full of surfers and backpackers and was packed full for New Years Eve. We stayed at three different hotels, moving around as each full place kicked us out. I don't usually like the towns full of other gringos, but we had a blast in El Tunco playing in the huge waves and eating great food. The place is small enough that we stayed in or ate in almost every place in town. On new year's day we headed out past the bleary-eyed hippies towards the border with Honduras. We didn't take many pictures as we were wet and sandy the whole time, but here are a few from Antigua to El Tunco -

Cell phone shot of the Antigua Cathedral at night

Marion loved this carved doorway and I fancy the Rover. They're both quite nice.

Our hotel in Antigua was built around ruins of a centuries old Spanish church destroyed by an earthquake

Guatemala-El Salvador border. Our friend Carlos' bike - '79 BMW R80 S

All our bikes lined up at the border. Here they stayed for 5 long hours...

A little Berkshire Hathaway representation at the border. There was also an XTRA truck and a kid with a GEICO logo on his t-shirt, but I don't want to bore the blog readers too much...

Long line at Migracion on the El Salvador side of the border

Reached the beach town of Barra de Santiago just before dark. Not bad.

Beautiful view from restaurant in El Sunzal, El Salvador. I ordered their house dark beer and it is apparently half red wine, half beer. This is not a good idea and should at least have it's own name...