Full of natural beauty with just the beginnings of tourist infrastructure in place, El Salvador fits our style. We tend to shy away from big developed resorts; cities don’t match our current traveling mode; and we love to explore wild places.


El Salvador is small and easily managed. We spent nearly a week in and around the Western Highlands and the Ruta De Flores, exploring some very cool places that made me think of the Wild Women more than once.

Let me try to explain Calera de Los Chorros. They say it is fed by an underground river. There is a cliff wall and the river pours through hundreds of small cracks in the cliff creating numerous bridal-veil waterfalls. To get here you (trespass) cross an electric company’s property which doesn’t seem to be an issue.

The electric company has built retaining walls at the bottom of several stretches of the cliff to collect the falling water. The water is then channeled through a series of tunnels and (presumably, as we didn’t see this part of the operation) used to turn a turbine. In addition to the beautiful cliff walls, waterfalls and pools, part of the adventure here is to go with the flow of the water through the tunnels. The water moves swiftly and the tunnels are long enough that at times you are in near-darkness. It was an experience like none I’ve ever had. We had a blast riding the currents. Chettie swam in the pools, but we didn’t let her go through the tunnels as you had to know where to bail out in order not to get sucked further down.

This was a place where a local ‘guide’ was necessary for safety and for security sake we did not bring the camera along on this adventure. Too bad as words don’t come close to capturing the fun. Perhaps a search of You Tube would turn up some footage.

The next day we hiked from Puertezuelo through the coffee to thermal waters. There is huge geo-thermal activity in this area. Our hike with Francisco, one of the guides from Akwaterra which operates from Puertezuelo, led us to a place where steam escapes from the earth. In some places it was merely a hiss, in others it was jet-engine loud. Here, the energy is lost to the atmosphere as no one is harnessing it; further north in the city of Ahuachapan there is a power-plant that uses the super-heated steam to provide 10% of the county with electricity.

Coffee Worker at Puertezuelo

Coffee Harvest

Francisco with the Venting Steam

The locals, of course, have built a small pool to collect some of the water for their soaking pleasure. We are still laughing about Chettie and her hot springs experience. She was the first one in the pool when we arrived and she stayed in nearly the entire time we were there. She found a ledge to stand on that put the water just at the top of her legs and then she’d plunk herself into the water and take a little swim around. It was hilarious. We enjoyed the water, but maybe not as much as she did.

Chettie taking a lap

Trish and Chettie

Mike and Chettie