Saturday must be market day in Santa Ana. Our taxi stopped resolutely at a busy intersection with the implication that we should get out, even though our destination was about a quarter mile up the road. Vendor stalls, one on top of the next, stretched down the block as proprietors marketed their produce, coffee, and other essentials.
We followed the stream of market-goers and ended up, somehow, at the bus station. Colorful school buses, most imported from the United States, were emblazoned with their destinations — San Salvador, La Unión, the Guatemalan border — and we took a minute or so to find our number, 210, a blue bus headed toward Ahuachapan.
It was far from full, but we paid our fare of about a dollar apiece and waited. The bus attendant, calling out to passersby, eventually signaled to the driver that we should just go. It appeared no one else, save the three older men asleep in the rows around us, needed to head east that morning.
Our journey was delayed by the impassable market. The bus honked and squeezed through narrow lanes that, on any other day, it would have flown down. Eventually we reached the interstate and the driver kicked it into gear. We carefully attended to our Google Maps to make sure we didn’t miss our first stop along the way, the archaeological ruins of Tazumal. Not technically a stop on the route, we planned to ask the driver to just let us off on the side of the road.
He obliged, but not after lecturing us about the difference between a direct bus, like his, which doesn’t stop at random, versus a commuter bus that picks up passengers along the way. We tipped our hats and hopped off, heading down a suburban road toward the historic site. Along the way, I found a cross-body bag that served me well for the rest of the trip.
Just outside the entrance to Tazumal, we stopped in at a quiet restaurant and ordered fried yuca with chicharron, a Salvadoran delicacy. Entering the site, official guides offer their cultural and historical insights — but we had no time to spare. We jogged up and down the stone steps of the temple and surrounding areas, often starting with an attempt to read the Spanish plaques before switching to the English in the interest of time (and competence).
As we headed back to the highway to flag down a bus headed east again, we might have done well to remember the driver’s lecture from earlier: bus after bus passed us without stopping. Eventually, we lucked out and were on the road again.