San Salvador to Tapachula, Mexico - day bus

So very kindly, Tom of Ttortuga Verde gave us a lift all the way back to San Salvador, as he was going anyway but he also helped us sort out our bus tickets and dropped us off at a good cheap hostel he knew. We arranged a taxi to get us to the bus terminal for 5 the next morning, so had dinner and an early night.

Morning came and we where up and at them, the taxi was on time and after some inventive seat jiggling to fit Stuffs boards in we were off. We got to the bus station early and brought our tickets, we were going with a company called King Quality and the buses looked awesome, double decker, swanky, boasting WiFi, TV etc etc, literally the best bus I've ever seen, so we started getting fairly excited about the 10 hour trip. We were due to leave at 6am and at five to the bus fired up its engines and we started to gather only to watch the nice bus pull out and be replaced by a fairly roapy looking coach. Hearts sank and faces dropped, and crest fallen we handed over our bags and got on still in shock and wondering what we did wrong to scare off the nice bus. Never felt so jipped!!!!!

In very British fashion we sucked up the very obvious disappointment and took our seats which to be fair reclined a good distance and were pretty comfy, the shock still apparent as all we could do is look at one another and laugh to save from crying for the next 10 mins. The music playing did not warm us to this impostor bus, i imagine it was titled death by xylophone, and i quickly realised 10 hours of it may make me in to a serial killer and Stuff a rocking, dribbling shell of a man. Fortunately due to it leading to the end of the music, about 20 mins in the smell of diesel fumes spread through the bus, this got increasing worse, which is when the comedy value evaporated, until basically on mass we petitioned the driver to please pull over and do something.

He did, we pulled over on the side of a busy highway and all got out to stand about attracting a police presence whilst Drive rolled up his sleeves and dutifully got completely covered in oil. Whatever he did worked and we got back in and underway, narrowly avoiding a sense of humour failure, the fumes dissipated fairly quickly and thankfully the music did not return.

The rest of the trip to the Guatemalan: Mexico boarder was fairly uneventful, including crossing from El Salvador to Guatemala, besides some very brave (scary) bus driving and some seemingly shady stops to offload weird looking packages from the bus into waiting 4x4s.

Fortunately because we didn't know what to expect we had ordered a take away pizza the night before to bring with us as the refreshments were not in large supply, although we managed to get hold of a chicken tortilla around lunch time.

The driver did an awesome job fixing the bus and drove like a demon, but I would not recommend King Quality for this leg as you get the crapy bus. Apparently the plush bus is used for shorter trips like to central Guatemala, as the fuel consumption is high. Tika bus are very slightly cheaper and the buses look better for this trip but they were full so we found the alternative and it did get us there.

The next excitement was the boarder crossing into Mexico.....

By Things

King Quality?