El Salvador and Honduras

EL SALVADOR

The border crossing into El Salvador was very chop-and-change. We started by catching one of the "chicken buses" from Liberia to the Nicaraguan/Honduran border. A "chicken bus" is an old school bus from the US (the yellow ones you see in all the films), which have been decommissioned in the states and then shipped over to Central America to serve as local transport. More often than not they've been pimped up and resprayed lots of different colours. This ranges from garish, multicoloured cartoon characters splattered all over the vehicle, to more tastefully subtle colours, and sometimes they just keep the yellow but cross out the name of the school. The seats are pretty darn uncomfortable, with huge chunks of foam missing from the edges. These buses are all over central America, and by now we had become accustomed to catching them. As with all types of local transport in Latin America, they cram on as many people as possible, and all cargo just gets thrown at the back of the bus and in the aisles.

During this particular trip James and I were relegated to standing at the back of the bus alongside a stack of swaying boxes, several baskets containing fruit and veg and our oversized backpacks. I had just finished saying to James, "Latin American babies are so cute that they make me feel broody" (don't get excited, mum), when the bus pulled up next to a woman with a double pram. She clambered in the back door and propped herself up on one of the boxes, and one of the bus guys threw the twin boys into her arms before trying to ram the fully extended pram into the back next to us. I asked her if she needed any help, and before I knew it I had a little baby with a mop of black hair in my arms! She willingly gave her second child to a woman sitting near us, and the man sitting next to the second lady gallantly gave up his seat for me. For twenty minutes I had a huge pair of brown eyes staring serenely up into mine, and he happily bounced up and down on my lap as if I was a long-time friend of the family.

Two border crossings, another chicken bus, two minibuses and a tuk-tuk later and we finally made it to San Miguel, our first stop in El Salvador. This wasn't a scheduled stop, as were hoping to press onto a small town called Alegría. However, the journey and border crossings had really taken it out of us, so we halted our day's journey here. San Miguel doesn't have anything sight-seeing worthy, but we did walk the town and do lots of people watching.

The first thing that struck us as we crossed the border was just how incredibly friendly all the Salvadorians seemed to be. Everyone wished us "Buenas tardes" and fell all over themselves to help us, even when we didn't particularly need it. During our entire time in the country it seemed that every Salvadorian who spoke a little English was eager to strike up conversations with us, and seemed genuinely happy to have us in their part of the world. We even had one guy stop his car, shake us by the hand, and thank us for coming to his country. We officially felt extremely welcomed.

After spending the night and refreshing ourselves, we set out to Alegría. It wasn't easy getting up to this tiny mountain town, as we had to catch two "collectivos" (mini-bus taxis that get stuffed full of people going in the same direction) and a local bus. We had serious doubts that this last bus would get us there, as it was the most beat up vehicle that we'd been in all trip, but it slowly chugged it's way up the winding road. James and I were discussing our plans in El Salvador, when one of the locals tapped me on the shoulder. When I turned around he smiled broadly and simply pointed over his shoulder and out of the window. Below us was a sprawling valley which was very pretty, this is something that we would probably have missed if it hadn't been for the man's kindness.

We were dropped off in the town's small but immaculate main plaza. Our guide book told us to ask about accommodation at the tourist information desk, which turned out to be a local girl on a stall selling snacks. When asked for places to stay she pointed out a few places that we could try, and we settled on a place right on the square. After having a chat with the very friendly and helpful owner (good job we know a bit of Spanish!), we set out for the areas main attraction, a crater lake.

As we walked through the town we had a lot of attention for the locals, but in a really nice way. They greeted us cheerfully and would ask us where we were going, pointing us in the right direction. We couldn't believe that every male over the age of twelve was carrying a machete and wearing a cowboy hat, like it was a uniform they dished out to them at school.

The cobbled path coiled up the side of the old volcano, but it wasn't too steep so the walk wasn't strenuous. We were accompanied by the distant sound of thunder, rumbling like a belly that hadn't been fed, but in the meantime the sun was still shining down on us as we strolled along. We passed a few farmhouses with chickens busily tending to their baby chicks and an endless sea of coffee plants rippling in the breeze.

As we dipped down into the entrance of the park we were met by a little old man who charged us the princely sum of 25 cents. We continued down and as the tree line broke we found ourselves next to the crater lake. There was something mystical about the place. We were the only ones there, and it felt as if we had been the first people to discover it's existence. The air was still, and we could clearly hear birds delicately singing in the trees all around us. We found a large, flat stone which served perfectly as a bench, and there we sat, talking is the peace and tranquility around us.

We must've been there for a while, as the clouds began to creep up over the rim of the crater, and started to worm their way in towards us. We also noticed that the distant rumbling we had heard earlier was starting to sound a little more threatening, so we peeled ourselves off of our stone and started to make our way back down into town. By the time we'd reached the bottom the heaven had opened and huge warm splodges of rain were coming down on us.

That night we were tucked up in bed and sound asleep. I awoke with some movement, it felt as if someone was shifting the bed from side to side, which stopped as abruptly as it started. I began to think that I been dreaming in a half awake state when James asked me in an urgent voice, "Did you feel that?!". We quickly realised that we had probably just experienced an earthquake. It wasn't at all like the small tremors that we'd been awoken by in Britain, this was much more powerful, and felt like the whole room was swaying. We later discovered via CNN that there had been a large earthquake just north of Honduras and that sadly 5 people had lost their lives.

We disappeared the next day to go to the capital, San Salvador. Coming from the bus station it was obvious that a lot of money had been spent on developing the long avenue of Los Heroes, as huge fast food places sprouted at the side of the street in abundance, and there was a massive shopping mall dominating one end of the road. It was this area that we chose to stay, as it's deemed as the safest. We settled into our hostel, which was brimming with US Peace Corp volunteers, and walked the short distance to the mall, grabbed an iced coffee and did a bit of window shopping.

That afternoon we ventured further and walked about 5km into the centre of the city. As soon as we drew closer we could see how more run down it began to get, and by the time we were in the heart of it we were stunned by the contrast. The whole centre seemed to be one giant market, with stalls flanking both sides of every street, and eardrum-bursting music blasting from every angle.

We also notice that Salvadorians had an essential accessory; firearms. We couldn't believe the amount of security guards and police that we saw, everyone of them sporting pump-action shotguns. Regardless of this we felt pretty secure walking around, until we reached the main plaza. We decided to perch ourselves on the monument in the middle, as we had walked a long way and it was ridiculously hot. One of the few locals sitting near us asked us for a dollar (they deal in US currency here), which was a request we were getting fairly used to. Before we knew it an armed police officer moved him off, along with all the other locals around us. We looked behind us and realised that we had no less than three armed policemen standing guard behind us. The interaction with the local man had not unnerved us, but the reaction of the police had made us feel unbelievably uneasy. We caught a taxi back to the hostel almost straight after.

The second day we took a trip North to a town called Suchitoto (which I hysterically pronounce Suck-your-toe-toe). It's a cute little cobbled town with a sweet plaza and a relaxed atmosphere. We set off on a walk down to lake Suchitlan, which really was quite a drop from the town. On the way we passed a tree which had collapsed onto a power line. There were several local men standing around, machetes unsheathed, ready to start hacking away at the huge trunk. We weren't entirely sure that the cable had been isolated, so we scuttled past quickly.

The lake was quite large, with a small walkway on one side and benches shaded by trees. Here we sat scoffing our lunch down, with ants scurrying around our feet to pick up our stray crumbs. The climb back up was hot, so we stopped for a ice cold drink at a restaurant with a fantastic panoramic view of the lake.

Once getting back into town we walked in the opposite direction towards a waterfall that our guidebook had told us about. The instructions weren't clear, and we wondered whether we had missed it completely, until we asked a local who told us to keep walking. When we reached the sign we continued to be puzzled, as it appeared to direct us onto private property and there was no-one around to ask. We climbed through the fence anyway, and walked along an over-grown path through some trees. This lead us to the top of a very peculiar waterfall. The water itself wasn't the main attraction, it was the rocks which made up the falls that were quite spectacular. They were huge, black, hexagonal columns, all propped up against one another, with pieces of hexagonal rocks scattered everywhere. James made his way down to the bottom to admire the view whilst I carefully skipped my way into the centre and cautiously peered over the edge. This phenomenon was apparently caused by volcanic activity, but quite how the stone got to be such angular, uniform shapes was beyond us. After this we climbed our way back up into town and caught the bus back to San Salvador.

We had decided to visit the town of Santa Ana, but on the bus on the way there we started to do a little calculation. With only a few weeks left and still five countries to go, we realised that we needed to get a wriggle on. We only stopped in Santa Ana to grab something to eat, and caught the bus straight out to a place called Metapan, which was heading towards the Salvadorian/Honduran border. We stopped in this tiny and very sleepy town for the night to recharge the batteries to make the border crossing the next day.

HONDURAS

So we decided to group this together with El Salvador as we only actually spent two nights in the country! The first day was pretty uneventful, as it was spent traveling across the border and getting to Copán. We'd begun to miss the ease of South American transport - although on the whole it was a lot longer, it was generally more comfortable and you could always get an overnight bus and wake up at your destination in the morning. Here in Central things are so much more bitty, and everything is done during the day.

The second official day in Copán was dedicated to the reason why travelers go there; for the Mayan ruins. As we entered the site we were greeted by five brightly coloured macaws, perched on the fence and squawking away to each other. As they spread their wings and flew through the air the dramatic flash of rainbow colour was breath-taking.

We spent a few hours at the ruins, which were more extensive than either of us were expecting. Whilst the pyramid in the main plaza wasn't all that grand for Mayan ruins, it was the exquisitely carved stelae which are scattered amongst the site which are a real attraction. Through intricately carved hieroglyphic text, they tell the stories of past Mayan kings who were influential in building the city.

There was also an incredibly impressive hieroglyphic staircase, which was very long and would've originally been quite magnificent. Apparently this, along with many of the other buildings there, have been built over the top of older edifices. This was common practice in the Mayan world, as new kings would not destroy the work of past kings, but would simply build directly on top of them.

We followed the tour with a walk around the nature trail which was also in the national park. This was only about 30 minutes, but was great for watching wildlife, particularly for a very vocal little bird related to our magpie. It lets out a call which is so unusual that it sounds like a synthesizer. The trail also wound around many mounds of earth, covered with vegetation. We discovered that these were Mayan buildings that had not yet been uncovered.

Once out of the park we walked a further 2km down the road to see part of the same settlement. Whilst the area we'd seen earlier was for public gathering, rituals, ceremonies, etc. this part was where the Mayan people actually lived. The buildings weren't on the same scale as the ones we'd seen in the morning, but it was interesting to walk through the small plazas and into the houses of everyday Mayan folk.

After this we walked back into town and prepared for the trip to Guatemala the following day.