We have only been in El Salvador for the grand total of two nights but I am starting to see the interest it has for the trickle of travellers that come here for other reasons than to surf (it has according to the surfers the best waves on the planet). It has that intriguing mix of latin and western cultures that collide at unexpected times, you just don't know what you are going to see next.

Last night we didn't expect to see crumbs and curly black hairs in the made bed, especially when the owner seemed to spend all his time cleaning the already gleaming floor. He was a nice man, I didn't have the heart to complain about the bed when he inquired on how I slept. I also didn't want to get into a dilogue with him as he didn't understand us and he was completely undeterred by us not understanding him. People here are very friendly and incredibly patient when we struggle with the language.

We had time to kill so we braved the streets of San Salvador for something to eat. Liz was still still in pain and hobbling so we stopped at the first place we came to which happened to be somewhere called the Coffee Club. It appears that western names are in vogue and pull in the more discerning locals. It is also a good excuse to charge western rates, but it was excellent coffee and panini that they made up specially for us vegies. Liz couldn't comment on the tea she ordered, you have a 50% chance of getting coffee and she was unlucky.

The coffee club was the first drive in place we had seen in Central America. El Salvador has the highest standard of living in CA and the car often takes the role as the safe haven in a reputed dangerous city.

I say reputed as the average visitor is still unlikely to see evidence of San Salvadors scary homicide stats, although Liz was woken in the night by what sounded suspiciously like gunshot. You see the effects of the stats, namely desserted streets at night, lots of heavily armed police and security everywhere. However you mostly see normal things like the first Christmas tree this year, people drinking an alfresco coffee and shopping malls.

We took the easy option of getting a taxi to the airport 18 miles away to the south. First we had to pay the taxi driver so that he could buy some petrol (memories of Nairobi). Going by the car he did seem to be a bit hard up, when it started to rain he had to raise the windows with some string.

The approach to the airport was given away by the increase in the number of bored policemen and strangely enough nuns. We passed one blue nun that was on her knees by the side of the dual carriageway arms raised doing I don't have a clue what. The ones at the airport looked even more hard core with big crucafixes on smock type things. I generally thought that nuns were nuns but seems that I was wrong.

I did try and get a picture of the nuns but it was tricky without getting a picture of the heavily armed police. Police don't like being on pictures and they were everywhere checking passports and searching bags before you even got into the airport building.

Inside the airport you tend to expect some sort of normality. Gone were all the police and nuns but for some unknown reason they were replaced with people in wheelchairs. I don't know how many there were but they were parked up two abreast down the terminal. It looked like the M25 but with wheelchairs.

There was a lot of confusion as to when the plane was scheduled to go. BA told me 14:50 which corresponded to the boarding time of 14:07 however the computer screen had 13:10 and on time indication. We got onto the plane at 14:50 but the pilot apologuised for the late flight. It is wierd I wanted to get to the airport early as I had a feeling about the scheduled time.

Anyway we got into Miami and walked (very slowly) a zillion miles from the plane to passport control. Then we had the usual issues with the information service not having any useful information like where I could catch the airport shuttle. In fact they said it didn't exist so it must have been a figment of my imagination that I ended up at the hotel without paying anything.

The hotel was an absolute bargain. In fact the price might have been related to mixup the hotel mentioned on checkin. They had to upgrade us into a sister hotel.

Liz's toe hurting, some duty free and South Park with a Burning Man Festival theme means that we will be staying in tonight.