Big Mission: El Salvador Phase

Hot Beaches, Cool Mountains, and Magic Lakes

This was the scene a couple of days before we left Kodiak in March. Naturally, we were pretty excited about ditching our cold weather clothes and spending a few days lazing about in nothing but our swimsuits, or in some cases, less.




Here's Paxson running out of the bedroom sporting nothing but a hat and a man-purse. "I'm all set!"

We met Team Shadow at LAX. They traveled from Anaconda, MT. We all boarded the direct red-eye flight from LAX to San Salvador, and 4.5 restful hours later, landed in heat and humidity! First stop, rental car place. 4.5 short hours later, we left the rental car place and hit the open road.

2.5 hours later, after driving through sorpresa land without even knowing it, we made it to our beach casa. Only we didn't print out the entire set of directions. So we arrived pretty close to where we thought we were supposed to be, and started asking random people if they knew where we were supposed to stay. They did!

We rented this house on the beach, Playa Maculis, on the very eastern edge of the country.

Some sunset shots. The beach itself was usually close to deserted. From time to time we would see a few other people on the beach. The occasional cows wandered by. That was about it. Pretty much a perfect, secluded place to play.

From around 11 AM to 2 PM we stayed in the pool and the shade. And yes, those are our stealthy rental cars in the background. One of them even made it the entire rental period without breaking down!

In the morning and late afternoon, we'd hit the beach.

At low tide, the kids played in tidal pools.

Surfing and boogie boarding, as well, for the bigger kids and grown-ups. Team Shadow took some awesome pictures. You might be able to see them here on Facebook. There are lots of great shots!

Ilsa, the caretaker, cooked tasty Salvadoran food for us.

Thank you, Team Shadow, for meeting us down in El Salvador for a double family style adventure!

After a week at the beach, we wandered up into the mountains. This is the last picture we got before our camera battery died:



We visited the Salvadoran Revolutionary War Museum. Very interesting history. We enjoyed some very tasty coffee and a magical healing swim in a volcanic caldera lake. Then we went home.

Other highlights. Man, it is hard to remember things at our age without the aid of pictures! We went to a night carnival with the world's scariest carnival rides. At least, in terms of being a parent and setting your child on them. Needless to say, they do not appear to have the same tort laws in El Salvador. Fortunately, Pax and Stokes grew tired of the rides pretty quickly. Mostly, they really wanted cheap toy plastic cell phones. It's tough to know just what will capture a child's imagination.

We saw some swimming cows in a large lake, Olomago. The town of Olomago has a public school named John F. Kennedy Escuela. Interesante! Checked out Playa Tamarindo, which is long and beautiful but also very very caliente. We checked out La Union, which gets a horrible rap in the guidebooks, but didn't seem particularly bad. It has a very nice brand new cargo port just outside of town that isn't doing anything, or much of anything. (La Union is where we'd go for groceries.)

A map of our trip.