Day 17 - woke up around 5.00am to some very loud bangs that sounded very close so a little bit of panic set in especially after what we were told yesterday about El Salvador!! The bangs just keep going so we soon figured out they were not gun shots but instead fire works.

You can freely buy fire works here so people are setting them off all the time which at the start was exciting, but it then quickly became very annoying!!

We had half a day to explore Suchitoto and its artsy culture and then we were on the road again. So we ate some breakfast together and then split off into little groups to explore the town. We found some really cute stores that had quality handmade things and of course I couldn't resist and bought a handmade indigo and beeswax design dress which is beautiful. It's nice supporting the locals especially when they really don't earn much. The average annual income in El Salvadore is only $4000 - crazy!!

After exploring it was time to leave and get to Ataco. Just a couple of hours drive and mostly entertained by conversation and Jason, we arrived in Ataco late arvo. There was a festival going on so the town was buzzing with people, music and lots of street food and things to buy. So we checked in to the hotel, dumped our bags and went exploring.

We walked around and tried to blend into the crowds and just took it all in. The town has colorful murals on almost every wall which was really cool especially as it gave you a sense of a close community that lived there.

As El Salvador is Fernado's home it was clear he definitely felt at home and was a proud El Salvadorian. So he was very excited to introduce us to one of his favorite traditional meals from El Salvadore - the pupusia. The pupusia is basically dough filled with meat of your choice and cheese or just cheese or mushrooms and cheese or jalapeños and cheese - you get the idea... So we went to a pupuseria that actually allowed us to make our own which was really fun and they were delicious!! Will definitely Google it when I get back and attempt to make them!! From that moment onwards we knew we were going to have pupusia's for breakfast and dinner on both days that we were there as we just couldn't resist and had to make the most of it!! It was also decided that a pupusia food truck would be awesome in Australia and all agreed we would invest and call it Fernado's Pupseria!! Slogan - "It's nice and that's it" which are Fernado's most common sayings.

To explain the above, every time Fernado debriefed us, or did his little presentation on each country, he always ended it with either "It's nice" or "That's it" and so of course being typical Australians we gave him a lot of s*** for saying it all the time. Ah sarcasm - we love you!!

In saying that everyone else was doing the same right back at us for our terrible use of the English language. It's amazing how many people struggle to understand us due to how much we butcher the language. So much slang and shortening of every word.

Common ones noticed seemed to be - reckon - "what do you reckon?" or "do you reckon?" no one knew what the "frig" we were saying, or what we meant by that. So then we decided to pull out the inner bogan and just really confuse them / have fun with them. Things like 'crikey' came out, or 'yeah yeah' after everything which Lisa Barkley - I kinda blame you for that one! 'Mate' and 'ah' was said a lot, or when something was really good 'that's gold' was said. Mel's two most common ones were 'Yeah nah' which nobody understood the positive and then negative lol and then when we were really drunk Mel's most favorite saying was said 'cheers f***face' and that went down a treat!! After that, everyone just started to join in. They will all go home and be speaking terrible English thanks to us! Jereon especially loved it and thought it was hilarious and continued to finish everything he said with some form of Aussie slang that he had picked up from us - he was very funny and very whitty and we just soaked it up. At the end of the day we Aussies are very relaxed and laid back people and we can always laugh at ourselves - life is to short to be serious all the time!!

After dinner we grabbed some take away beers and a special traditional alcoholic drink and headed back to the hotel and sat on the roof top drinking and chatting and eventually one by one we called it a night.