Right - new article, new country: Bienvenidos a El Salvador! It`s a relatively small and well-developed hub in Central America… also it`s supposed to be the most violent country in the region - sounds like fun! ;) It seems like there aren`t too many tourists here (apart from the beaches) but nonetheless there`s plenty of stuff to do, so let`s take off…

The border crossing between Guatemala and El Salvador (known as Anguiatú) was the most intriguing until now. While crossing, loads and loads of questions ran through my head: “Why am I being let through without trouble?” , “Where are the 25 bicycle-taxi-guys that try to run off with my bag?” , “Where are the regular 50 money-changers?” , “Why is nobody trying to rip me off in general?” and “Why is the migracion-guy not trying to make me pay some non-existent tax?”. Very strange. A little scary, even.

Once I got into El Salvador it was another walk to a point where buses (to Santa Ana) would pass. Fortunately I ended up in some funny watering hole; while waiting for the bus I got into a talk with a guy that threw about half a month salary into the jukebox, only to hear this song over and over again. Welcome to El Salvador - woo-hoo! :)

I decided to hit the western highlands first, in an area called “Ruta de las Flores”. That`s right: lots of flowers, but no hippes. Crashed down in a town named Juayua, which is mainly famous for its food fair. You could probably guess: I stuffed up quite a bit! Next day decided to rent a bike and visit the following spots:

Apaneca: A nice climb up (what the hell happened to my physical condition!?) - the town is quiet but nice. Had fun watching a colourful procession with locals - after all it was Semana Santa!

Laguna (not so) Verde: Crater lake in a volcano, just outside Apaneca. Nothing verde about it as it was blue :) Makes a nice ride though and chatting with locals was - as always - fun!

Concepción de Ataco: Upon entering the town I instantly noticed one thing: everyone was smiling! It took an instant to realise why; never seen so many colourfully painted houses together. If you´re in a bad mood, go here - a cure is guaranteed! Even I was smiling at the end :) Trivia: Missed the entrance to town and as a result had to bike an extra 5km uphill. Could use the exercise though!

Next day agreed to climb a waterfall - something different from all the swimming, right? :) My assumption the climb would be up proved to be wrong; we went down instead! No secured ropes, belts or other gear, it was all bare hand- and foot-work for the 15-20m difference in height. One word: amazing! Later on my guide told me he was one of very few people that were allowed to guide this tour, and even then not many people did it. I asked him why and the answer was as simple as astonishing: A short while ago a large group of guides and tourists got killed down there. Ever since it`s been quiet… even though locals figured out who did it and “took care” of the problem. I don`t want to know any more details…

As Easter weekend was approaching, which basically means all of Central America`s infrastructure gets jammed, I decided to chill out at a spot I really miss: the beach! Playa San Diego became the place of choice; not too crowded, nice waves and a really cool place to hang out!

As this trip continues, I moved back to the mountains, slowly digging into El Salvador`s history. Stay tuned for more news… soon!

-René

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Juayua - heart of town

Biking material

Procession Apaneca - nice dresses btw! :)

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OK, short one this time - no too much text, lots of photos… just the way you like it right? :)

It´s been a while already, thus high time to update this site! So after leaving Merida (and with that, Carnaval and the heat) I got to San Cristobal de las Casas. (Yet another) colonial town, but with the difference that it´s in the middle of an area where indigenous cultures and traditions are strongly mixed into daily life! Besides it´s in the mountains (at 2100m altitude, so it´s C-O-L-D at night!), which means there´s lots of opportunities to be hyperacctive for a bit, which was just what I needed!

So here´s a little rundown; after getting off the nightbus (= 1 hour of sleep thanks to snoring Mexicans) I decided to go on a litle hike, just for the heck of it. It was fun though :) The next days consisted of cruising around town, visiting indigenous communities (San Juan Chamula, amongst others), finally (!!) going to a cave and … sigh … visiting a waterfall, which was really massive by the way! As for the Disneyland-factor (after all I was on a popular tourist trail, bumping into the same people over and over again :)), I visited Cañon del Sumidero; a nice-looking canyon but a huge tourist-trap (though a cheap one ;)). In light of being realistic (as I always am!!), see below for a picture of what was to be found “around the corner” once we went in.

Anyway, no complaints; it´s been great out there! Right now I went on to Xela (aka Quetzaltenango, Guatemala) - yet another good spot to be hyperactive so expect another article soon!

Take care!

Rene “where´s my backpack again” Miltenburg

Update 09-Mar: Cosmetics are done!

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San Cristobal´s main cathedral

Wanna see a church? WORK FOR IT!

... and this is the reward ...

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Preliminary notice: female visitors should stay away from reading this post!

Just kidding! As I said before I was going to take a couple days to enjoy a deeper splurge into “culture” - no better way of doing it than this way I guess!? Anyway, place of action: Merida. Theme: movies. Temperature: 30C (35C around parades). Atmosphere: relaxed though intense. People: diverse, really nice and fun-loving. Music: all sorts. Personal level of energy: normal (= severely hyperactive). Dancing abilities: bad as ever. Stamina: getting worse by the day… Summarising: All systems go!

The reason I have once again backtracked was because Merida was “most accessible and diverse for a celebration such as this one” - Muhaha! Besides I needed my kick of non-logic since things had been going straight for too long now ;) So basically there`s not a lot to this carnaval that you don`t know from TV yet; parades are colourful and all about the demonstrations, there`s stages throughout the entire city center hosting bands, DJs and whatnot playing all kinds of music. Add about 200.000 visitors (daily average) to this scene and it all evolves into one big, cool party. Viva carnaval!

Since carnaval is all about the demonstration I guess the pictures below should tell the story, so have fun viewing them while I am going to spend 14 hours on a bus heading off to San Cristobal de las Casas, up in the mountains. Yes -it`s time to get cold again (why am I doing this to myself!?) and do some hiking, climbing and whatever else can be done up there! Till soon!

-Rene

PS: Before heading back to Merida I visited two nice waterfalls too - so pics of those have been added as a little appendix :)

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First arrival - still fresh despite the temperature!

Not sure which team they were supporting

This stuff is heavy...

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Hello once again and sorry for not updating the site for quite a while! During the last couple of days I´ve been pretty far away from any PC with a (decent) internet connection so it had to wait ;) On the other hand, it´s not like I didn´t do anything either of course!

First went to Monteverde / Santa Elena to visit its cloud forest reserves. Also ended up doing a canopy zipline trip … sure, this has nothing to do with wildlife watching (everything looks like broccoli and matchsticks from that far up anyway) but racing down a 750m steel cable over a valley is fun (pics are yet to be received, sorry!). Also walked the hanging bridges over the cloud forest, did a little hiking during both day- and nighttime (quite a difference) and eventually ended up in a bar with some friends I made locally (Hola Oscar, Chris, Otto, Chancho, Mayor!).

Next up was another thing on my to-do list… rafting Rio Pacuare, supposedly one of the best rafting spots on the planet or so… whatever, it was fun once again! If you´re browsing through the pics… I´m on the right-front position in the boat ;) Also explored some waterfalls around Turrialba and subsequently went down to Cerro Chirripo, a 3820m-high mountain. Still being disappointed with my Volcan Baru experience I just had to climb something else, preferably higher ;) Anyway, MISSION COMPLETED! It took a full day to reach the base camp and another (very long) day to reach the summit and get back down. We finally ended up walking a steep 3km through cloud forest in the dark… quite an experience! Oh and by the way… all European visitors can now stop complaining about the weather from now on, as it was freezing on the summit so I´ve probably been colder than most of you… HA!

Now taking a little break to recover - tomorrow I´ll try to get to Nicaragua and go down the Rio San Juan to the Caribbean coast. The area is pretty unexplored (which means there´s no electricity in some places, as I heard) so you might not hear from me for a while again. Enjoy the pics however!

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Cloud forest vista (Santa Elena)

Hanging bridge (Santa Elena)

Something different during a night-walk (Monteverde)

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Time to gear up a bit after a few days of relaxing on the beach… Again, here´s a brief summary of the stuff we did. We might just be kidding ourselves but our assumption is that you prefer looking at pics over reading text anyway ;)

So after staring at palm trees, now and then with monkeys flying over our heads, we decided to do take a more active approach and go to Manzanillo by bicycle. Easy ride, nice stuff to see and the ´hike´ in its park was quite something different, though we did blend our walk with a lot of breaks on the beach (hey - what would you do if beach and road were parallel!?)

After Manzanillo it was time to have a fun traveling day, going a bit up north to Tortuguero. What´s in a name, the place is all about sea turtles topped off with some other wildlife as well. Again, see the pics to get an idea on the place. Here´s a brief description; no roads, hardly any people (believe it or not), lots of canals and an empty beach. We did see nesting turtles on the beach though it was a bit outside the season :) along with this experience we got soaked but the good part is Mayo has now overcome her fear of severe thunderstorms ;)

24 hours of Tortuguero is enough to cause claustrophobia, so we went on to Turrialba. Primary target: rafting Rio Pacuare (class IV-V). Unfortunately elements weren´t working in our favour but we did see some nice ruins instead. Due to time constraints we left Turrialba the day after, but plan to come back here to execute the rafting plan :) After Turrialba (and yet another day of bus rides) we arrived in La Fortuna, next to the infamous Arenal Volcano. It´s that things that is supposed to spray ash and lava all the time, and we´ll see about that tomorrow. So far we visited a waterfall (La Catarata de La Fortuna) and some hot springs, which were so incredibly fake we didn´t even bother taking pictures of them (couldn´t avoid visiting, stuff was included in our deal with our guy at our cabina…). Again, see pics for further impressions!

If you´ve come all the way down here by reading - congratulations! If you didn´t… thanks for visiting and have fun viewing another batch of photos!

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Mayo on beach...

Secluded beach - there´s something behind the trees which we managed to hide away :D

Yet another friend

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