After a month of zero running in Guatemala I have high hopes for redeeming myself in El Salvador. All things Salvadoran don’t get off to a great start however when I end up hitting the Guatemala / El Salvador border at 9 o´clock at night (number one rule of travelling: avoid borders at night, especially in Central America when all the narco traffickers come to life) and I´m promptly told by more than one friendly immigration / border control dude don’t walk around here alone. Which is actually kinda hard because like you always have to walk across borders. And I’m always alone. The more pressing issue is that most of the local busses stop after dark (if they’re not risking it neither should I really)  and you end up having to sleep at the border in an overpriced place where you don’t want to leave the room. For some unknown reason Mr Helpful Border Man suggests I stop one of the many lorries thundering through from Mexico and ask if I can hitch a lift with them. Yeah that’s a great idea. I head for the nearest hotel and lock myself in til daylight.

After the dodgy start I meet up with a friend and we head to the coast fairly soon… ok we spend a couple evenings drinking red wine, then we head to the coast… and there’s now no excuse not to don my trainers and hit the road. As always it feels good to be back pounding the streets, and I find myself loving El Salvador and the running. Many things are similar… sweltering hot conditions, dusty roads and the obligatory cow eating plastic, but some things are different; fabulous coastal views out along the Pacific Highway (usually its mountains), kilometre markings (now that is handy) and friendly locals shouting adios! at you rather than hola! I love that! Goodbye! is so much more appropriate.

I then found myself in a top surf spot in the whole of Central America (great right hand break apparently… I have no idea what that means) doing absolutely no surfing, but every time someone asks us, with embarrassing frequency, do you surf? my friend insists on telling the world that no we don’t but that her friend here runs about 15kms a day… which is not strictly true but seems to deflect attention away from the fact we are not surfers (ie we’re outsiders). The problem with this is that when people start asking me about my running in more detail and then maybe I mention my blog in an attempt to make myself sound vaguely more interesting when surrounded by way-too-cool surfers, is that when you stumble down to breakfast at 10am having been partying til 4am you have to take the Scottish Girl´s not running today! jeers from the smug surfers who have been up since 6am catching a great swell. Or something. Whatever. I´m just happy to be back running, with surfers laughing at me or not.