Today I got a lesson in just how small these Central American counties are. I got up at 6:00AM to have some breakfast, coffee and pack up. Again, it rained most of the night so all of my gear was wet and muddy (a bit unpleasant to cram back into my panniers). It was nice and cool, about 64ª, at 7:30AM when I left the national park. I had poured over my maps the last two days and decided I was going to head fairly directly to Costa Rica and try to spend 5-6 days there. Honduras and Nicaragua are not the safest of countries and I decided to limit my time there. In crossing El Salvador I had a choice, Highway 1 (the high road which staying in the mountains) or Highway 2 (the low road which follows the coast). I chose Highway 1 because I figured to would mean slightly cooler temperatures. That strategy worked pretty well until about 11:00AM at which time it was 98ª. The downside of highway 1 was that I would have to go through the center of San Salvador (El Salvador's Capital city). Fortunately for me it was Sunday morning and the traffic was very light. Surprisingly, I found San Salvador to be quite easy to ride though. The pavement was perfect, all of the intersections were well marked and the traffic signals were well positioned and easy to understand. The other big city I had to cross today was another story. San Miguel was a sprawling city in which I had to navigate a lot of stop and go traffic and soooo many stop lights. By the time I got to San Miguel it was very hot as well. Most of the way across the county, highway 1 was a meandering rural undivided road with a heavy tree canopy and sweeping views of volcanos and jungle. I could ride at about 50-60 mph pretty comfortably most of time and again because it was Sunday there wasn't very much traffic. It only took me four hours to cover the 150 miles to the Honduran border so I arrived to my hotel by 12:30PM. I'm preparing myself for a long day tomorrow. I'm planning on crossing an 80 mile stretch of Honduras by navigating two border crossings and ultimately arriving in Léon, Nicaragua.