The day to El Salvador was long. Really, really long. The road to the border wasn’t paved, which meant it was very slow going, avoiding pot holes, mud and stray stones. And, as we reached the pass (oh yeah, it was also all uphill) and the border controls the skies opened in the most almighty storm. Completely and utterly crazy rain, booming thunder, and lightening tearing through the sky. It was quite the welcome from El Salvador!

The border was completely smooth, although possibly because they don’t see many (or any?!) tourists through there. The immigration guy had to ask his colleague what to do with a European passport!

It was all downhill from the border, which usually would be a joy, but there were two road surfaces: mud or cobbles. Neither are fun. In fact, I would not wish cycling down wet cobbles on my worst enemy!

Once we got down into the vicinity of the town, we started to look for accommodation. This was easier said than done, as we had a bit of a cash flow problem. I’d taken money out in Honduras knowing we might struggle to get money, and assuming, naïvely, that there would be lots of hawkers at the border willing to change our money. Alas no. So, we had 1000s of lempiras, but only $20. Kind of useless.

Time was getting on, and the sun was about half an hour from setting, so we didn’t have much flexibility. Thankfully, finally, a guy told us about a hotel that accepted card. Given our epic journey that day we treated ourselves to a gorgeous mountain view cabin! The money doesn’t count if it’s going on a credit card, right? We got some well needed food (including two desserts each!).

The next day we went and explored Perquin. I love it when we choose a place on a map to stay, and then you get there and it’s actually a really cool place with some awesome stuff to see. This town was the heart of the Salvadoran revolution against the government in the 80s – there was a museum with photos of all the guerilla rebels and old equipment. One of the old fighters was the ticket collector – he told us how he had been flown to Germany to have surgery done on his leg after it was damaged in the violence. Incredibly interesting.

On from Perquin we decided to continue along back roads. I’d just downloaded this new app – Komoot, and it had a really good functionality for planning cycle tours. We’d got a really awesome “cut through” all mapped out – avoiding traffic and getting out to see rural El Salvador.  The roads were lined with chickens, geese, cows and the odd donkey. They were very rough, often strewn with cobbles (my nemesis!), tufts of grass and patches of mud.

We bumped along to the little town of El Rosario. It was really cute, and people seemed to be very phased by two cyclists passing by.

“Where are you going?” Asked one man.
“Ciudad Barrios” we replied, confidently.
He looked concerned.
“Erm, you will have to go back” he explained.  “Big river, no bridge”, he gestured dramatically.

We were half aware this might be a problem – Google clearly had a river and no bridge. But, Komoot had courageously mapped us straight over the river, and surely it wouldn’t do that without reason?

Going back was going to add around 15km. Or, we could just pop down to the river and check it out for ourselves. The “road” down, was a very quaint, very little used, farmland track. It was also incredibly steep. Not being a professional downhill mountain biker, I had to get off and walk sections, praying that miraculously there might be a bridge at the end of all this effort.

Halfway down we started to hear the river. It was loud, it was raging.

Erm,” I said to Knut. “That sounds like a pretty big river”
“We’ve come this far” he replied.
And so we continued to push our bikes down the mountain. In the end we made it. Guess what? It was a really big river with no bridge.

Knut turned river explorer instantly.

“Maybe we can get across” he implored, wading out into the shallows.

“Konstantin, it’s a really really fast flowing river” I said, head in my hands. “We are not going to be a news article – stupid tourists get washed away in obviously dangerous river”.

We walked along the bank and discovered some wires across the river. Knut played around with climbing them.

“I am hardly going to be able to pull my body across, let alone a 15kilo bicycle” I laughed. Nope, it was back up the incredibly steep path for us both. It was a full on, pushing bikes up effort. Very, very hard work, taking all of our strength.

Suddenly, I heard a rustling in the bushes.

“What the hell?” Something ginger was darting towards me.
The next thing I know, a massive orange guinea pig thing has careered out of the forest straight into my panniers. I screamed and dropped my bike. It darted off over to Knut and into the forest.

“What the hell was that?” I asked Knut, who was doubled over in fits of laughter.
“I don’t know, it literally looked like a mutant ginger guinea pig”. He replied. It really was big, maybe the same size as a cat!

Anyway, so guinea pig attacks aside, we still needed to make it up the mountain! Eventually, we broke through back onto the road – only 500m extra ascent for absolutely no progress!!! But, it was gorgeous!

After all the excitement and effort we decided to cut our day short – I googled a hotel. “Hotel Bella Vista” came up. That sounds nice, I thought, remembering the beautiful cabin we’d stayed in in Perquin. We rocked up.

“Oh no”. I said to Knut, “It’s another dirty sex motel”.

Dirty sex motel? You ask. Yes, an interesting concept we had already unwittingly stumbled upon in Honduras. You drive into a garage, shut the door, go upstairs into your room where there is a little hatch where you can pay for your time – by the hour or by the night. This one was a little more classy then the one we had “enjoyed” in Honduras. But still, a group of teenagers drove past and heckled “sex motel” as we went out to get food. Kinda hilarious!

Anyway, it did have a good view! And, was a good place to rest our heads before another long day of cycling…in theory.

Not learning any lessons from the big river, no bridge incident, we took another “shortcut” which meant walking our bikes 4km along steep cobbles. This, for future reference, never makes a route shorter. An hour later, we were only 5km along and completely knackered! Konstantin wasn’t feeling too great, so we looked at where we could replan to.

About 3km from our new destination I heard a dramatic crunching and snapping sound. I slammed my brakes on and looked for the damage…about six of my spokes had sheered off and were hanging pathetically useless in my back wheel. Bugger.

I’m still not completely sure how it happened, potentially a stick got caught, but there was no evidence of that! Anyway, we had one spare spoke, but it looked like we’d need six. The chances of finding the right size in the small towns we were passing through seemed very unlikely. We were going to have to try to get to one of the big cities.

As we were contemplating our options a guy, literally called Angel, was sent from the heavens. He knew a guy who might be able to help who was just in the next town. He helped us flag down a passing pick up truck who took us straight to the shop for no charge. Jose, Mr Bicycle Man, was completely unphased by my wonky wheel, deftly taking it apart, straightening out the spokes, replacing the nipples and making sure the wheel was circular. He charged $2.

While this was happening Knut was getting more and more vacant. I was sat chatting to the interested Salvadoran’s who had gathered around us, when he leapt up, ran over to a drain on the other side of the road, and threw up everywhere. He was not feeling very well at all…

We checked into a hotel in San Francisco Gotera, and Konstantin lounged about feeling sorry for himself and moaning.

“You’re not being sympathetic enough” Knut whimpered, lying pathetically on his bed and trying not to throw up.

“What do you want me to do? I’ll go out and eat some dodgy chicken if you think that will help” I replied.

The day after Knut’s little brush with illness he was still feeling a bit weak, but we decided to press on. By 50km he was knackered and so we detoured 2km to a hotel that Google safely proclaimed existed. On the way up a lady pulled over and warned Knut that the village we were travelling to was very dangerous and we should be careful. Problem was, we’d already ascended about 170 metres of incredibly steep road by this point and I was quite far ahead. It seemed silly to turn back.

So, we found ourselves at the door of the “hotel” talking to a man who seemed baffled by our request for a bed but was happy to accommodate us. I started to negotiate prices, and Knut pulled me aside.

“Janneke, we are not staying at the house of someone with a gun in his pocket and a load of gold teeth in a town we’ve just been warned was dangerous”.

Okay, so I hadn’t noticed the gun. Small oversight. Suffice to say, we decided to turn back. Turns out the town was home to one of the main Salvadoran drug lords. Whoops.

We plodded on and ended up at another dodgy sex motel (this one complete with lengthways bedside mirror and easy access tissues, so classy).

It had been a long day, Knut was completely exhausted, but I was still feeling quite spritely. We had some dinner, and just before we went to bed, I felt a wave of nausea come over me.

“I’m not feeling too good Knut” I said, running to the bathroom to throw up.
“Uh oh”.

Unfortunately, I then spent the next 10 hours throwing up every two hours. I had a really high fever and wasn’t able to keep down water. At 6.30am I was feeling very weak and not really sure what to do. It’s times like this that you realise you are very far from home.

“I think I need to go to a hospital Knut” I announced tentatively. This wasn’t an easy decision to make, we were at least 40minutes from a hospital, we had all our bikes and luggage with us, so it wasn’t an easy taxi ride, and then there’s just the underlying feeling of, am I just being dramatic?

Knut packed up all our stuff and we made our way to the nearest petrol station to get help. Knut explained the situation to the staff there and they seemed slightly confused by the request – explaining we’d need to get a bus. Thankfully (I think), at that point I got another wave of nausea and sat crying and throwing up into a bag on the petrol station steps – so anything that wasn’t properly being explained by the language barrier became pretty clear. The designated friendly man with a gun at the petrol station (everyone has one!) called his mate with a pick up truck and he took us to the hospital.

The hospital was fantastic. We arrived at the emergency ward with all our bikes and stuff, and the guard at the door took one look at me and was like – “you go in there, I’ll watch all your stuff”. Which he did, for hours.

We went up to the reception and I basically collapsed in tears, barely able to explain why we there, but feeling incredibly thankful we had made the call to come. Knut explained – vómito, mucho, no agua.

They got me into a private room and hooked me up to a drip within ten minutes. I spent the whole day there under observation, I had been suffering severe dehydration and was not at all myself.

Thankfully, two drips later and a bag full of rehydration drinks and I was feeling a lot better and they let us go “home”. This was a really lovely, welcoming hostel in San Miguel just round the corner from the hospital, so it was a great place to rest.

I treated myself to a Netflix marathon and a few days of doing absolutely nothing. Once we felt a little better we ventured out with Moris and Barbara, the lovely owners of the hostel we were staying at. They took us to the volcano, out for beers, Mexican and to watch the football.

After our little brush with illness, we headed on, but via buses.

We spent a few days at Atami – a resort near El Tunco. Knut’s ex-boss has a house there and had opened it up for us to stay. It was bliss. We spent a few days continuing our recovery by lounging in hammocks and exploring the beautiful pools and beaches in the area.

And then….it was time for a change.

So, if you’ve read all of our blogs and are a central-America geography nerd, you’ll know by this point we had missed a fairly major central American attraction – Guatemala. Don’t worry, this was by design. The truth was, we couldn’t face more mountainous terrain in the crazy heat and so had decided to do this a little differently.

It was time for some ‘pannier-packing’.