It's now Thursday morning at 0920 and we are already back from the SMALL grocery store just down the road. It gets quite hot here during the middle part of the day that we made sure to take off early before it got so hot. Not a bad walk--maybe 3/4 of a mile but it's much better to do it while it's cool--85 degrees. At least the humidity isn't bad now that we are past the rainy season.

Last night, we were invited to join a group of expats to walk down to a small restaurant for Pupusas and drinks. A Pupusa is a bit hard to describe. It amounts what looks like two tortillas--either corn or rice flour that are stuffed(not with much)with cheese, beans or chicharron(shredded meat) and then pan fried. You can have any combination of just about anything. Add and subtract--you name it. You end up with about a 6 inch in diameter disk and quite flat. Served with Curtido which is fermented cabbage, jalapeños, and shredded carrots. From what we have learned, most El Salvador food is quite bland so they put some spices on the table so you can add what you want. Didn't see any pepper but we had our own. We did find some jalapeño sauce to sprinkle on the Pupusas(I did, not Tracy). About nine of us hiked down the road and sat a picnic style tables with beers and cokes to wash it all down. The restaurant is all part of a really small grocery store and I do mean small--one room but with a good bit to choose from. Everyone swapped stories of where they had been and what they were doing now. One couple got here in April of 2015 expecting to stay a month or two and are still here, exploring all the countries around El Salvador and are loving it. It appears to be a safe place to keep boats but we still lock up when we are both off the boat(better safe than sorry). We had two beers, three cokes, four of the Pupusas and I picked up two 2.5 liter jugs of coke all for $10.40. The Pupusa run about .60 cents and the jugs of Coke are only $1.85. It was fun swapping stories between other cruisers.

This morning, we hiked bit further down the road to the "big" grocery store. All the food is kept behind big steel bars so it can't be stolen, We, being tourists, were allowed behind the bars and into the actual grocery store area. Lots of veggies--carrots, onion, potatoes and lettuce, etc as well as some frozen chicken(sort of a guess as to what is in the frozen lump they came in but we will see when we defrost them. Supposed to be some white and some dark but hard to tell as it's just a frozen chunk. No Tyson Farms down here. I got a couple more jugs of Coke so we have some on board. We officially ran out of Coke/Pepsi yesterday at lunch so the trip to the store was nicely timed. To get to any bigger stores, a bus or taxi is involved so we are looking into that.

I dragged out out breeze box fan and it's up in the main cabins hatch, blowing cooler air into the cabin. Both the cats are sitting on the table under the hatch getting nice and cool. Snowshoe, our white Persian is doing his best to spread his hair everywhere as he's right in the middle of the air from the fan.

On Tuesday, I dropped off our laundry to get it washed(no self serve) and were told it would be back yesterday afternoon. I checked at 1300-nope, 1500--nope and again when we got back from dinner--nope. Since we were out with others and one was one of the managers of the place, they made some calls and it magically showed up about 10 minutes later. We now have nice clean clothes as were both running out since it's been close to a month since the last time they were done. Cost--$1.00 a pound--$23.00 for ours.

This afternoon, if the pool isn't busy, I hope to go for a swim. Nice serpentine pool so no doing laps there but a nice place to keep cool during the hot part of the day.