We have recently been trying to make plans for this weekend. One of the things we want to do while we’re down here is swim the limestone pools in the river at the Semuc Champey and swim through the Grutas de LanquÃn. We really enjoyed swimming through the ATM cave in Belize and it sounds like the caves in LanquÃn have a similar adventurous quality. Both of those adventures require relatively dry conditions, but the forecast for this weekend up there is for lots and lots of rain. We’re still in the dry season here, but the jungle can get rain anytime. So we can’t do that this weekend.
We already have plans for the next couple weekends, but no plans for this weekend. We only have so many weekends here and we don’t want any to be wasted.
We started looking into a trip down to El Salvador. It’s the last and most difficult country to hit in Central America. We have already done all the others except Panama, but that one should be pretty easy. I doubt we’ll ever plan an entire trip specifically to see El Salvador, so if we don’t make it there this time, we may never make it there. That would be unfortunate, but it’s the reality of the situation.
We found a driver who will take us across the border into El Salvador, but finding a place to stay has been tricky. There is also the issue of covid restrictions. Some people have told us we will need a negative PCR test in order to cross into El Salvador. Others say a rapid antigen test will be fine. Our driver said he researched it and found that even though we’re only planning to stay 2 days, we will still need to get two negative covid tests in order to make the trip happen. It seems silly to me that a covid test administered in Guatemala and used to cross into El Salvador wouldn’t be good enough to get us back into Guatemala. It would be within the 72 hour requirement and it would be a Guatemalan test! Whatever. Maybe it’s not really true and it would work fine. I don’t know.
But if a PCR test is required, then we probably can’t go. Several of us had covid somewhat recently, but it is common that you will continue to test positive on the PCR test for 90 days. It hasn’t been 90 days for us. We all recovered and tested negative with the rapid antigen tests (that’s how we were able to fly to Guatemala in the first place), but having to do a PCR test would throw a kink into things… especially if one of us came back positive. So we’re probably not going to El Salvador this weekend, and maybe not ever.
And that brings us back to the drawing board, one day closer to the weekend we have yet to plan.
