As it turned out, the hardest place to enter was the one place we wanted to revisit! The breaking bar outside of the estuary where Marina Bahia del Sol is located was calm the morning we were escorted safely in (above). Our number one priority was to pick up some tourist brochures and other supplies for our friends Bill and Jean who are busy promoting tourism to El Salvador. They will be coordinating a boat rally south from Puerto Vallarta next spring. Two big boxes later we had accomplished that task. We enjoyed visiting with local gringos we had met in January, among them Jan Turner, a Canadian who has built her home on Isla Cordoncillo, near the marina. Alice brought her a shoebox of school supplies for her English/Computer classes she teaches the island youngsters. She also hustled and made three new baby quilts for Jan to give to families in need (above).
We also contacted Elizabeth Scoville (sister-in-law to a friend of Alice's in Indio) and her family in the capital city. We enjoyed getting to know them in January and wanted to invite them to the boat. Her husband was working in the U.S., but she came with her mother, son and daughter. Bill took them out for a cool dinghy ride- above. After dinner, Alice rode back to San Salvador with them. We went shopping the next day and ate a delicious lunch mom Dora had prepared. Then we all rode the 1 1/2 hours back to the boat, after which they went to the beach. They even came down one more time before we left~ dear, dear people!
The day of our departure the bar was NOT nice to us, greeting us with a few 6-8 foot waves that made it feel like we were 'surfing the big ones'. Just one week after we left a terrible Pacific storm inundated tiny El Salvador, causing massive mudslides and flooding which took the lives of some 200 people...
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