What a difference a border can make. El Salvador is a completely different animal. More on this in a few days.
I’ve read a few ride reports from others and I can’t remember anyone whining as much as I have about the heat. And I can’t use being Canadian as an excuse because some of the others have been too. Oh well.
So the plan was to head up to altitude to escape it for a few hours.
Next to El Tunco is a town of 35K, La Libertad, which seemed like a good place to explore.
So I rode around the backstreets on my way to the Lake this morning. Here’s the town behind the waterfront
Then off. John 3:16. Uh oh, looks like he means it.
Up to the mountains. The road around the lake was superb
Our first view. It’s a massive volcanic caldera and new, about 60K years old.
A few miles of pavement down from the crest, then dirt for a few miles around the lake. It’s a continuous community
We arrived at a tiny restaurant over the water.
The water, according to all reports is supposed to be cool. It isn’t, it’s like a bath. Back to the temperature thing. My usual greeting to people isn’t *Buenos Dias*, it’s * Mucho color. Es normal?* which translates roughly to *Christ it’s hot. Is this normal or what?*. The Latinos are pretty intuitive and reply, kindly, * no it’s not normal* which means *as your host in this country, since you’re obviously suffering, I’m going to be tactful and pretend this is abnormal*
After lunch, up to the caldera rim and back onto this beautiful road
Here’s the riding perspective
With great views of the lake below. Lucinda insists on hogging the photos, showing off her new Rotopax, which she thinks is very ADV’ish
On the other side of the road, the landscape is gorgeous, and mostly farmland. El Salvador is tiny, only 8K square miles, with 6M people. But it doesn’t appear that densely populated so far
Closer
Then back to the coast. A cop pulls me over, mostly just curious again. Things are slower here for the most part and he reads the registration word for word. Patience…
Then the ocean
The track. Yup another wrong turn in there
