At the boarder Glen and I had to pay a fifteen dollar tax but Matt didn't. We had to have a bus transfer to get to Santa Ana. The final bus ride was beautiful as it went up and over a big jungle pass. Santa Ana is a nice colonial city with the ruin of an earthquake destroyed church on one of the two central plazas. After spending a day here I broke off with Glen and Matt because I felt like bike touring so I rode to San Salvador and they climbed a couple of volcano's. I spent a day exploring San Salvador. It is a pretty big city with no modern skyline that is built on a slope in a large valley. It was kind of boring because there was nothing special to see. There were American flags all over the place and a lot of the people I met told me they had relatives in America. El Salvador had some political problems in the 80 like most of the countries in central America and the states let a bunch of El Salvadorians take refuge. I rode down to the beach to see if I could do some surfing but the waves weren't good. I had a really interesting hotel room in that town of La Libertad. I don't know what my room was originally, maybe a big water tank, but my room was up on a tower up above the building, and one of the highest buildings, and it had windows on every side, so I had a 360 degree view of the whole town.

The next day I spent walking around the market and checking out the beaches. Then I took the bus back to San Salvador.

The next day I rode my bike up a steep dirt road to the boarder with Honduras, but they didn't let me in because my passport photo was completely smudged away from the moisture under my stairs where it was kept in Guatemala, so I had to take the bus back. I noticed on that ride that most of El Salvador is deforested so it is kind of ugly. They do have their share of volcanoes and lakes though. That night I went to the hotel next door to get a beer and asked the people there if they had seen Glen and Matt, and they happened to be there, so I hung out with them which was cool.

The next day I went to the Embassy to get another passport, and the American woman who attended me kept telling me I should have taken care of the passport. I kept explaining to her that they shouldn't have given me an unlamented photo, but she seem to be listening. She asked me when I wanted my new one and I said immediately and so I got another one in about an hour, but I had to pay 60 bucks, luckily with a lamented photo. The next day I took the bus into Honduras.