Much as we were at home at Puertezuelo, it was time to move on. We said good-bye to our favorite guard, Oscar, who reminded us oddly of an old friend of Mike's. To repay our sharing a cup of coffee with him one morning, Oscar brought us some fresh coffee his wife had ground. I have declared it the best cup I’ve ever had, the bar by which all java will be measured from here on out.

Mike Oscar and Trish at Puertezuelo

We were headed to Parque Nacional Cerro Verde but some advice from a chance encounter with Martin, a native Salvadoran who runs tours from Antigua Guatemala, changed our plans. One of the Akwaterra guides had previously suggested we check out La Palma and Martin concurred. We blew by Cerro Verde with our mantra for things left unexplored: We’ll save that for our return trip.

We had some info on camping in Rio Chiquito, a small pueblo above La Palma and we set off up a 13km road that rises straight up. The grade was incredible, but the Burly Beast rose to the challenge. The place we wanted to stay didn’t work out and we ended up spending one night in a very weird place—not scary, just weird.


The, was he the owner?, lurked around and appeared out of nowhere whenever we stirred. We tried to engage him with our fabulous Spanish language skills, which were great a day before, but he didn’t seem interested. If ever there was someone who shouldn’t be in the hospitality business, it was he. And, we made up all kinds of scenarios that may have led to his current occupation. Perhaps he and his wife owned the place and she was recently deceased leaving him to manage it despite being socially ill-at-ease. We’ll never know the real story.


We departed his odd company early the next morning and decided to explore the Rio Chiquito area before we made the trek down the steeeeeeep road. This proved to be a good decision as we found a great place to camp just below the summit of El Pital, the highest point in El Salvador, on the border with Honduras. We camped 2 nights on a perch with an outrageous view, hiked the peak (okay, if I’m completely honest here I’ll admit that the summit was only about a kilometer from our campsite---the Burly Beast is really the one who climbed the peak), and just generally hung out watching the clouds rise and fall around us.

Mike and the Burly Beast on El Pital

Border Marker atop El Pital

Chet and the Burly Beast at El Pital Campsit

The site more than made up for our strange encounter the night before.

Got to tell you, El Salvador is a great place. I hate to let the word out because we like the fact that much of it is ‘undiscovered’, but indeed this is a great country. The people smile and wave. Many people here have relatives in the US and many have been there. There is a general sense of warmth and understanding.

As we were leaving El Pital we passed a group of college kids who had been camping as well. We stopped to ask if they wanted a ride and they quickly hopped in. We thought there were 3 of them, but it turned out there were six. They piled in with all their gear (Chettie shared her space in back) and down we went. They opted to stay with us all the way to Suchitoto, our next stop. They were great kids and their group reminded both Mike and I of the many camping trips we did when we first got to Colorado. It also gave us a chance to converse in Spanish. When we were dropping them off they presented us with an El Salvadoran flag which now flies in our van.