Route of the Maya Oat Trip, Dec 2023 - #1 - Holiday Dance, Travel Day, & Pre day Birding Tour

Route of the Maya Oat Trip

San Salvador, El Salvador

7/8/9 Dec 2023, Holiday Dance, Travel 

& Pre day Birding Tour

As usual, we ended the Fall Season with our Holiday Dance. It was extremely small, but fun anyway & we had a little after party. I had bought some bling necklaces for everyone.

Early morning yesterday (5am! ick!) with Lyft to airport & flew through Miami (even had Business class for the 3 hour flight from Miami to El Salvador!). Arrived at our hotel - the Hotel Barcelo San Salvador, last night via a pick scheduled through Chase. Should have been a piece of cake, but there was a traffic accident & he was about a half hour late. But the customs/immigration was amazing - eye scan & basically just walked straight in. Wow! And in contact with the tour company through What's App, so no problem. Our guide couldn't speak much english, but he communicated through his phone with English translation. George figured out how to do it to answer back! They had just sponsored the Miss Universe contest & had put in a string of blue tree lights for the almost 10 mile stretch of road leaving the airport!!! It was beautiful. About a 45 minute drive to the Hotel. Lots of action in the city as we wandered the intricate streets to our hotel. Check in at the hotel was a mess & took forever. Met one of our OAT travelers at the airport. Funny, they had left 30 minutes before we did, but were just arriving when we did. She said the driver had met her & walked her away from the press at the airport & then left her to go retrieve his bus & took forever whereas our guy could just pick us up as he had been running late! Some advantages! Anyway, the hotel check in was very slow because they were trying to figure out how to give us the Premium room benefits we had paid for for the first night, but not the next day & still leave us in the same room. Finally got it done & it was great. Room on the 7th floor & access to the Premium Lounge for free drinks & snacks and a wonderful private breakfast the next morning.

Enjoyed a birding tour today in El Salvador, just outside San Salvador (booked with Tours by Locals. lovely guide) - saw the National bird. Couldn't get a picture, but guide got one & I'll share it later. It was a Turquoise browed motmot, gorgeous! Tomorrow starts the main OAT tour.

Our guide was delightful - Benjamin Riviera.  First to a park on the top edge of a huge Volcanic crater - El Boqueron NP.  Not many folks there & had just been renovated (again for the Miss Universe pageant).  

From the top of the Volcano, we drove down a little way for a View Point at a small restaurant.  It had a beautiful view down towards the city.  They had a very vocal parakeet in a cage.

From there on to Eco Parque, El Espino.  It used to be a Coffee plantation, but was not very successful, so a coop turned it into a Bird watching Eco Parque.  We were probably the only bird watchers there today.  A few other workers there & a small shopping area at the end.  We walked almost 6 miles.  it was a very pleasant day.  Quite warm down below, but since we were at a higher elevation & mostly in the trees, it was lovely.  Benjamin had a spotting scope with him & was quick to set it up & find close up views of the birds.  He was a great audio birder & seemed thrilled that I liked that.  He gained more & more confidence as the day progressed.  He could make an owl sound that would make all the little birds start flittering & talking.  When he did it & I had my Merlin sound on, it would identify the little owl!  Too funny.

Female Rose Breasted Grosbeak

Northern Tropical Pewee

We headed back to the hotel about 3pm.  He wanted to go to another park, but we told him we'd had enough!  Felt like a long day & was definitely getting warmer!  And we were hungry!!  Merry (the lady we met last night) was in the hotel lobby talking to our guide Walter!  We asked for suggestions on where to buy wine & for our evening meal & he was very gracious & gave us suggestions.  Can already tell that we will easily get along with him!  And Merry too for that matter!

Back up to room to find that we were locked out.  There were 2 maintenance men there & they let us in.  Just a quick potty & back down for wine & dinner.  First got our key replaced - that was easy.  Then across the street to Tipicos Margoth, the fast food restaurant that Walter suggested.  He said it was typical Salvadorian Food.  It was a very large mall, but like any mall, there was a Food Court & we easily found the restaurant.  Then we found out that none of them spoke English & there was a huge selection.  We pointed to a combo looking picture to find that there were still lots of choices.  Ooops!  One of the young men ran & got his phone & tried his best to translate.   I didn't get a picture of our food, but sure wish I did.  About the only thing we recognized was a cooked banana & some kind of corn tortilla like thing that had a stuff of something!!!  But it was fun & enough to eat, so we were satisfied.  They brought all kinds of salsa & pickled things to our table & were very accommodating as far as it went without being able to speak each other's language.  Our phone translator was really into Mexican spanish & El Salvadorian is a bit different.  We did establish that a Diet Pepsi is called a Black Pepsi here, so was able to use that the rest of the trip!  And getting wine was easy.  Several choices & all reasonably priced.  So we made it back to our hotel room satisfied! 

We have been watching NCIS at night for quite a while now & George was able to hook up the TV to his computer for us to do that here too!  We settled onto the bed & started watching.  About 10pm we started hearing massive amounts of fireworks.  We had heard a few the night before, but this was HUGE!  We opened our curtains to look out & watched a massive display for about 20 minutes.  It appeared to be coming from the parking lot of the Denny's almost directly across the street!  It was quite exciting & we watched it all.  Folks on the street were just walking around like nothing special was going on!  Then back to our NCIS & finished up my NYTimes games.  Off to bed about 10:45pm.