My last entry was from Suchitoto, El Salvador, a cute little arts town on a very big, man-made lake. The location on the lake seems to be secondary to the charm of the town and the art scene.


We met some of the people who are starting to make the tourist thing happen there, from tour operators to internet café owners and restaurateurs. They all love the community in which they live and want to make sharing it with the world a positive experience for both tourist and resident. This is no easy task, but so far they are doing an admirable job.

Van in front of parque central from Artex Cafe

From here we visited the town of Cinquera, a strong-hold of the FMLN during their civil war and stayed with the family of subsistence farmers who were very enthusiastic to share their way of life with us. Their property had a great view of the lake and we were invited to take a spin on their very home-made zipline. They also gave us a great demonstration on how their trapiche (sugarcane press) works. They involved us in the daily task of working the press and invited us to sample the final product.

Trish about to take a spin on the zipline

Uncle Santo readying the press (We have great movies of this activity but there is no way I can load them at this time)

Leaving Suchitoto we went to Alegria, named the best place to live in El Salvador in 2009. We agreed. A small mountain community with a clean, inviting parque central and, again, the beginnings of tourist infrastructure including a tiny museum and a fledgling tourist office. Our campsite was right on the shore of the Laguna de Alegria, a pretty green lake inside of a long extinct volcano. It was far more stylin’ than I anticipated. We liked it so much we came back and camped there the next night, too.

Our campsite on Laguna de Algeria

Mike holding court with the local youth in Alegria

Then it was time to dip our toes in the ocean again. This time we went to El Cuco and found a spot to camp right on the beach. I mean right on the beach. The high-tide mark was just 5 feet from our slider. We were assured that was as high as the tide would go, but let me tell you, we stayed up till the tide began to recede just to be sure.

We stayed a couple of nights but again found that the beach isn’t the best place for two mountain folk traveling in a van with a dog.

So…..we retreated to the mountains once again, this time to Perquin. This was another strong-hold of the FMLN during the civil war and there is a great museum on the war here. Our guide was in the war and he pointed himself out in a photograph as he took us through the museum. He told us that things were indeed better for the people today. He also told us he held no bad feelings against the US for their part in the war, explaining that in Civil War brothers fight against brothers and that many people he knew had fled to the US during the war.

Roadside politics

We had a nifty little campsite here with our own private waterfall and as with any travel accommodations, it colors the way you feel about a place.

We really covered El Salvador end to end and top to bottom, but still I was a little sad to close it out and move on as I so loved the country and the people.

Next we headed to Nicaragua, but not before crossing Honduras in a day. No pictures, but I´ll post the play-by-play soon.

Still live and kickin'

Dear Friends and Family,

No, we haven't been eaten by a tapir or driven off a cliff.

We tend to travel in off-the-beaten-path kind of places and while we may come across internet access (not always) it is often so slow that posting a blog, with pictures, is not possible.

I have several posts ready to go, to catch you up on our travels, and just as soon as we are in a place that makes it practical to post I will do just that.

Meanwhile, thanks for all the emails and appreciate you still being interested in our adventure. We are well and having a lot of fun. It's actually hard to put the whole experience into words.

Best,

Trish

I'll show you my kitchen if you show me yours

On one of our outings we stopped in Ataco, a town along the Ruta de Flores. We fell in love with the town...you know the story by now: it had the right vibe.

We bought coffee, shopped in the mercado for fresh veggies and stopped for an afternoon pupusa, one of the national dishes.

Mike, who makes friends where ever he goes, chatted it up with the ladies making the pupusas, telling them about our trip.

Remember when I told you it's kids who love the van the most?? Well the ladies were like kids as Mike gave them the grand tour. A fridge! A stove! A sink! Two beds! Lights! They were truly amazed.

Mike with the pupusa ladies in Ataco

They loved Missy Chettie, too. Her hair! So curly! It was fun to watch as our van and our dog made friends for us again.

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. 

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

Ahhhhh….having completed our rendez vous with my brother, our travel schedule has eased considerably. Gone are the days of 150-200 mile drives.



On our last day in Antigua we said goodbye to Earth Lodge, made the long walk out one more time and connected with some friends Mike made when he was in Guatemala in April. We spent the day with Rosa y Daniel enjoying the city, eating and taking in the sights.

Mike and Chettie Making the Long Walk Out of Earth Lodge

They invited us to stay with them in Guatemala City, and although Guate City wasn’t on our itinerary, we so enjoyed their company we decided to head that way.

Our Westy in Guatemala City

We followed them into the city and spent the whole next day exploring the city, touring the National Palace and National Cathedral. It was a Sunday and the city was abuzz with people from across Guatemala who come to Parque Central to eat and listen to music for the day.

Mike Rosa and Daniel in front of the National Palace

As with our time with my sister-in-law Patty, there is no better way to see a place than with locals. We got a glimpse into Rosa y Daniel’s lives in Guate and met some of their friends, including Salvador who cooked breakfast for us, gave us helpful information about the border crossing with El Salvador and guided us to the road out of the city when it came time to leave.
We went to Monte Rico on the coast as a way-stop before our next border crossing and we spent one final night in Guatemala at Erhco Park, just outside of Chiquimulilla (which is a really fun word to say).


Into El Salvador we came. The border crossing was a bit of controlled chaos combined with confusion but Mike’s patience served us well and we were proud we didn’t pay one of the tramitadores who will help you cross the border for a fee.

Our first stop was Parque Nacional El Imposible—the largest of 4 national parks in the country. It was a near-perfect spot for our first few nights, and we shared the park only with the guides and rangers.

I hiked to the top of Cerro Leon with Rosa, one of the local guides. Hiking with a guide is required and for me it was a great way to practice my Spanish as she spoke no English. We both shared a love of nature and some things do not need words. The only downside is that dogs are not allowed on the trails, so Mike and Chet hung out in camp while I hiked.

The park is so named for a deep gorge in which many people died while bringing their coffee from the farms to the markets. Eventually a bridge was build and the trip was declared no longer ‘impossible’.


From there we decided to dip our toes in the ocean, and off to Los Cobanos we went. This is an area known for its beautiful beach, but no surf. The water is strewn with big rocks, deposited during a long-ago volcano. It was great for swimming and all three of us enjoyed a day at the beach. We camped at a small hotel on the beach.


And then I had a little mishap. We went to a roadside restaurant for dinner just a couple of blocks from our camp spot. After ordering I decided to go back to the van for some bug juice as the mosquitoes were getting ready for dinner, too. I came face to face with a small pack of dogs defending there territory and when I turned to retreat, one of them bit me. Twice. Hard.

It was scary in addition to painful. The locals were all very concerned and I got the feeling that dogs are a bit of a problem in Los Cobanos. Wish I’d been warned in advance, but alas. If I wasn’t so shy, I’d post pictures of the black and blues on the back of my upper thighs as they are pretty impressive, but that being my least favorite body part, you’ll have to use your imaginations.


We retreated to Juayua, a small town in the mountains where we knew of a Coffee Finca (farm) we could camp at and where there is also a health clinic at which I could get the rabies vaccine. Gabby and Julio, the finca owners, couldn’t be nicer and we have settled in for a few days.

Before leaving Colorado, I was referring to this journey as a Discovery Tour. Part self-discovery and part curious traveler, we knew we’d learn things previously unknown about ourselves and other countries.

One thing we have discovered is that we prefer the cool, high-country to the sweltering coastal areas. While I love the ocean, the climate at altitude suits us better. Chettie loves the waves, but even she seems taxed when we are in the intense heat. Remember, we are sleeping in our van….no air conditioned hotel rooms for us.

And so, we have used Finca Puertezuelo as our head-quarters as we explore the western highlands of the country. This also allows me to return to the clinic for follow-up shots. Chettie is happy here as she can run and roam free. There are thermal waters on the property and we’ll hike to them later in the week. We’ll hike to Los Chorros, an underground river that exits out of many cracks in several cliff walls. Again, a good activity for all three of us.

Another thing we’ve discovered is that kids love the van. Adults are interested, and generally nod with either an ‘I could to do that’ or an ‘I’d never do that’ look, but kids are fascinated. It has everything their home has, only in miniature; it seems the perfect play house.

Sofia, Gabby and Julio’s daughter, was no exception. She is six years old, smart and curious. She instantly made herself at home and had the most interesting questions and observations about our ‘carro casa’. After taking inventory and inspecting every nook and corner, she proceeded to give me a paper towel when I sniffled and got the scissors for Mike when he asked, washed her hands in the sink, and climbed up to the top bed over and over again. She taught me that ‘bunk beds’ are ‘camarotes’ and informed us that we needed an ‘escalara’ (ladder/stairs) to get up to the top bunk.

Rosa y Daniel in Parque Central

Daniel Rosa y Mike above Guate City

Rosa y Trish After the Hike up Cerro Leon

The Impossible Gorge (Notch along ridge top)

Sofia in our Carro Casa

Funny thing is that Mike and I are just as just as intrigued with how our little home was designed. We imagine the engineers who worked on the many proto-types, grateful for their clever innovations. In many ways they were ahead of their time. Some day when I have way too much time on my hands and reliable access to a speedy internet connection, I’ll treat you all to a tour of our home via a ‘van-cam’. I bet you can’t wait.

Antigua Guatemala

Every day we have encounters and experiences that make us smile, confuse us or enlighten us and we say, ‘That would make a great blog’. But maybe we don’t have time or maybe we don’t have an internet connection or maybe we don’t have the motivation at the end of the day. The next day there are new encounters and experiences. Eventually these encounters and experiences sum up to form an overall impression of a place.



Guatemala is a beautiful country with many nice people. Though we know there are crime problems we have not been bothered in anyway. The local people are dismayed by the crime and, of course, don’t want that to be our impression of their country.


Here is a (very) brief overview of our time in Guatemala so far:


We crossed the border with no issues on December 28, 2009 at La Mesilla. We stayed one night on a private farm in the western highlands and then headed to Antigua to meet my brother and his family.

John, Patty, Mike, Miguel and Trish

Patty's Grandmother, Patty, John, Patty's Brother Eswardo and his wife

Trish, Miguel and John

We spent nearly a week in Antigua with my brother and his family. Seeing them and having a personal tour guide was a great change of pace from our previous travel schedule. Camping opportunities in and around Antigua are not great and we eventually checked into their hotel. We actually missed our van, which has become our home.

One of our goals for this trip is to improve our Spanish skills and we intended to study at one of the many schools in Antigua. Patty, my sister-in-law tried to no avail to help us find adequate housing for the week we’d be in school. Feeling the school thing in Antigua was not meant to be we headed north toward Coban with the intention of studying there.

Again our plan was thwarted when the schools here did not meet our criteria. We spent several days in what is known as Alto Verapez with the highlight being a trip to Samuc Champey.

Trish at Pedro's Farm

Samuc Champey is a place that is difficult to describe and though I had read about it in several guide books I could not begin to imagine the uniqueness of the place. Here the raging Rio Cahoban plunges underground and is covered by a 300 meter natural limestone ‘bridge’ on top of which lots of pools form that are great for swimming. Downstream the river reemerges with all its fury and continues on its journey.

Pool at Samuc Champey

Rio Cahobon before it heads underground

Still determined to set up Spanish language lessons we made a plan to return to Antigua and to stay at Earth Lodge, a hostel in a spectacular setting. We had stayed there one night before meeting my brother and really liked the vibe. It is a 40-acre working avocado farm with several small A-frame cabins and a couple of dorms. This is a place swarming with young, international travelers that make you wonder why you haven’t traveled more. There is a Spanish teacher who comes to the lodge to work one-on-one with guests. It is also a place that works well for Chettie. There are a couple of other dogs, plenty of people around for her to interact with and she can hang out while we take our classes.

So back to Antigua we came. We checked into Earth Lodge on Sunday and have stayed in a cabin for the week. Clearly, we are the oldest people here—perhaps the oldest people ever to stay here---but we’ve loved interacting with the other guests who are from Holland, England, Canada, Isreal, Switzeralnd and New Zealand.

Evening View of Volcan Pacaya from Earth Lodge

View of Volcan Pacaya from Earth Lodge

Luis, our teacher, suits our style perfectly with a combination of casual conversation and structured grammar lessons. Yesterday we spent the afternoon with him in Antigua as part tour guide and part Spanish teacher.

Mike and Luis Studying Spanish

We have our final lesson this morning and this afternoon I am hiking the Volcano Pacaya. It is an active volcano that is visible from the lodge. Hiking it is one of the popular activities when visiting Antigua.


From here we will start making our way toward El Salvador. We have not nailed our route yet but have done a fair amount of research into places we want to visit while there.