The bus ride from Guatemala City via San Salvador to Tegucigalpa was fantastic! Day one was a short 4-hour ride to San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador, where we stayed overnight at a 5-star Sheraton, all arranged by the bus company. The hotel is located in the most exclusive area in San Salvador, near the President's palace, the Art and Anthropology museums and a very nice neighborhood which we were able to walk the next morning as the bus to Tegucigalpa was to leave in the afternoon.

The weather in San Salvador was like a perfect Spring- puffy clouds hug over the bright blue skies. The houses and buildings were gorgeous. Most had bright bougainvillea plants growing high and wide and dropping down while hugging a colorful side wall in a majestic way. We decided to end our walk at a high-end shopping mall where Daniel and Kim got their hair cuts as Maria, the "hairdresser" of the family, did not get a chance to trim their hair prior to leaving La Ceiba.

After checking out the 3 hair places in the mall, we settled for the one where we saw men and not just women. At first we wondered why the cost was a bit high given that we were in El Salvador and the hair cuts were for men. Soon after we found out why! First, it took the hairdressers for each Kim and Daniel at least 45 minutes to cut their short hair as they were very meticulous and went around their heads several times to trim anything that seemed out of place off. Daniel was nearly jumping off his seat and wondering when he could get up. After finishing with the hair cutting, the hairdressers each proceeded to give both Kim and Daniel head massages followed by a face massage. By this time Daniel seemed embarrassed but soon nearly jumped off his seat in laughter after the hairdresser put a gel and cucumber-slice mask on each of his eyes, "to relax the eyelids" she said. !! Daniel had never even seen this done on women, let alone on men. A picture of Daniel with the cucumber-slice mask on his eyes is posted above.

We were rather impressed by the infrastructure we saw in El Salvador. Obviously, we saw the nicest part of the country as we rode the main highway and stayed in the nicest part of the city. We realized that there is a lot of poverty in this country that we could not see where we were. It was, however, hard to think that this was the civil war-ridden country of the '80s where the government, guerrillas and criminals committed atrocities against millions of innocent people.