For $2/day we got full use of the their two pools, showers, two restaurants and ocean front property. For another $1/day we got full wireless Internet access. It was ideal – do a little boat work in the mornings and lounge in the pool in the afternoon!
The pride of the country’s cuisine are “pupusas”. They are sort of a tortilla that is layered with a bit of meat, beans and rice and then folded over on itself and grilled. They are totally full of starch and somewhat tasteless but they only cost $.30 and three of them fill you up for the night.
We ate these for dinner twice in the month we were there. They also sell by the bulk: purple crabs. Mike found one in a soup he ordered – there was no meat and a straw flavor – ugh. 
The resort had a “special” buffet one night of specialty Salvadorian food and hardly anybody ate any of the food it was so bland. The chef was really disappointed. So the next week the special was “Norte Americano” food. It was all you can eat burgers, pizza, sandwiches, etc. People kept going back for more until 10 pm.
The temperature was only in the high 80’s but so was the humidity; so life in the afternoons was very sticky. Therefore, it was almost mandatory in the afternoons to dingy into the bar, have a drink and then lounge in the pool for three hours or so. All the cruisers would meet at the pool and eventually decide what to do and where to go for dinner.
Well known among cruisers is the grapevine of recommendations, e.g. where to go for any known service, etc. We got a good recommendation for a great dentist for teeth cleaning in San Salvador (the capital). With another couple, we boarded the local bus and took the 90-minute bus ride. But the police stopped our bus 100 meters from the bus terminal for no apparent reason. After waiting onboard for 10 minutes while lots of natives piled off, we finally go off ourselves and found out that all buses were being pulled over and the drivers were being tested for alcohol and drugs.
They had to do a urine test and a breath test right there. These folks are serious about preventing bus accidents. A young Salvadorian took us under his wing, negotiated a taxi ride to our hotel for us and came along just to make sure we made it OK. There is such a negative worldwide opinion of El Salvador that they go out of their way to show that the country is now safe and friendly.The dentist was great and we got the best teeth cleaning yet (better than Mexico) for $52 USD. She took photos via a miniature camera and found three cavities in Mike and two in Mary. (We came back a week later and had them all fixed - $50 for large cavity and $35 for small ones.) The four of us went out for dinner at an Argentinean restaurant and had great Nicaraguan steaks for $12 each. The next day we went to the “poor peoples” farmers market (they have three separate markets). We saw one man making coleslaw right in his hand.
The police were so concerned about us in this “dangerous” market that they stopped us, told us they were concerned and then assigned two more cops to follow us around at a discrete distance to make sure we were not robbed and able to return home and say what a great country is was; i.e. safe, friendly, etc.We caught a taxi ride all the way back to Bahia del Sol for $30 (split four ways) and got back much quicker and less tired. BUT, it had gotten very dark and overcast on the way back and that night we had our first heavy downpour, with lightning and thunder all around. And then for the next 10 days it was rain, rain, rain. The rainy season had started and now won’t stop until mid-October. It got even worse when Tropical Storm Alma passed 90 miles to the east of us and brought even heavier rain. While we had been having lightning storms almost every night, it was now the full story every night and just a lot of rain in the daytime. The normal rainy season is just lightning and rain from 4pm to 9pm every day; even the locals were wondering what was going on – they’d never seen anything like it. Aboard CarpeVita, we found leak after leak after leak. We’d use the hour or so of non-rain to patch and fix leaks. We are 90% sure we got them all before we left.
El Salvador is very much tied to the USA and so they have their own TSA and go through your bags more than is done in the U.S. It is like night and day compared to Mexico. We got on our non-stop to Atlanta just fine but upon arriving had to be searched all over again (shoes off and everything) just to get out of the airport. That is what we call going overboard.
In Atlanta, we rented a car and drove to Charlotte, NC to see our daughter Jenny. We spent four days there and went to the US Olympics whitewater training facility where we spent two hours running the same rapids and getting as wet as the real guys and gals do. Then it was back to Atlanta for a family reunion (the Winkles clan – mike’s great-grandmother), which was really fun and interesting. Next was two days of driving a rental car to Michigan to buy a small motor home; then to Chicago to return the rental car and then finally on to Cleveland to see our son David. We had met many people along the way who had been from Cleveland and could not understand why anyone would choose to go there at all. David went because his girlfriend was from there and as Paul Harvey would say “and that’s the rest of the story”.
It truly is an old steel town – part of the rust belt – but seems to be trying to climb out of the mess. Unfortunately it got hit the worst of all US cities in the foreclosure mess with some blocks having 30% empty, abandoned homes (and some even stripped of copper tubing, copper wiring, etc.). But offsetting this is a wonderful botanical garden, a new modern art museum, and a great natural history museum. It also boasts a pretty good rail system for commuters that should see more business as the price of gas continues to go higher.
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