El Salvador

El Salvador welcomed us with open arms. Clearing the boat through customs and immigration was cake, and we had an entire resort to ourselves for a few days at almost no cost since we were hooked onto a mooring. A little further inland, the landscape boasted thousands of acres of sugar cane fields as we headed into the town of Usulutan. A bustling mercado de national was in progress as locals scrambled to complete their Christmas shopping lists. The only grocery store looked like a club in LA, as people waited in a long line and security only let people in while others came out. Items in established appliance stores had Christmas present bows on them, as guards with shotguns stood at the entrances. The people were friendly, and little girls kept grabbing Chad and I by the arm to drag us into their stores. There were a disproportionate amount of sun aged men missing one arm, presumably caused by the harvesting of sugar cane.

The place we stayed in looked like the Amazon, and included swarms of mosquitoes and crocodiles. We took a short hike through the jungle in search of monkeys with no luck. Makai felt at home in the wilderness and learned to howl in the jungle, breaking the dead silence the night before we left.