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After only 18 hours in La Palma we were standing outside our hotel at 7am to flag the San Salvador bus down. El Salvador is a small country and it seems that wherever you want to go you must go there via the capital. Our bus seemed like it was never going to make it as it crawled up the hills in first gear. When we finally arrived in the capital we caught a taxi across town, as we weren't sure how safe the city buses were, to the correct bus terminal and then two more buses to the small town of Juayua on the Ruta de las Flores (The Flower Route). Unfortunately our timing wasn't great as it was not flower season but the area still had beautiful towns, volcanoes, waterfalls, art, coffee and food festivals to keep us busy. We stayed at a fantastic little place called Casa Mazate, which felt more like a home than a hostel, with big sofas, dining tables, a fully ladened kitchen, a dog, a puppy and a very friendly owner called Darren from Ipswich. We chose a room on the other side of the garden with our own private outside area with an outside shower and toilet. Unfortunately the hostel was booked up over the weekend so we could only stay two nights; so after lunch we found another superb hostel and reserved a further two nights for Friday and Saturday night. The rest of the day was spent exploring the town and that evening we watched a film (Rum Diary) on the hostel's massive TV.
The next morning, we started late and caught the bus to the nearby town of Ataco. We wandered around taking photos of the street art and looking at the local art. It was surprising that we only saw two other foreigners, but this has been our El Salvador experience so far. After lunch we visited a coffee plantation outside of town and were shown around by Hector who said he had only studied English for the last four months but he seemed very competent to us. We really enjoyed learning about the process (much more than we thought we would). The machinery was all original from the 1930s and processed only local coffee to sell to Starbucks and other European sellers - it tasted really good too. That evening we ate very large, very cheap and very tasty pupusas - cornmeal dough stuffed with cheese, beans and meat.
On Friday we got up early to go on a local hike called the seven waterfalls. This involved scrambling through the jungle for hours but gave us great views of the nearby volcanoes and of course many waterfalls - more than seven. We rappelled down one of the waterfalls, which we thought might include a harness but it didn't so we just held onto the rope tight. To be fair it wasn't a vertical waterfall and the hostel's dog, who came with us, and the guides managed it without a rope. We ended the walk at a waterfall where we could swim and the guide took me (Simon) into some of the tunnels. These were man-made for moving water towards the hydroelectric plant, so I would have never gone into them alone. They were pitch black and only had a little space to breath above the water line. After the walk we moved our bags to our new hostel and then went back to the first one to watch the footy, Brazil vs Columbia. In the evening Katy and I celebrated our two year wedding anniversary (a few days early) in the town's best restaurant where I got a large surf and turf steak for only $10.
On Saturday, our last day in Juayua, we ate lunch and dinner at the town's weekly food festival. This consisted of twenty- odd BBQs serving similar but delicious meat platters. We were told that iguana and guinea pig were available but the only 'exotic' item we found was frog. We spent the evening enjoying the surroundings of our lovely hostel which had a nice garden and was full of local art works.
Simon
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