Utila

Pine tree on the public beach in Utila

Utila

Dirty plastic debris on the North Shore of Utila

Today is our 4th day on Utila. We've completed our advanced open water PADI certification and we have a day off. We leave tomorrow on the 6:20am ferry back to La Ceiba. From there we are going to take a bus to Tegucigalpa, then continue on by bicycle to Nicaragua the next day. We decided to take a bus because there is no direct route to the capital that is safe and doesn't involve mountains and dirt roads. The buses backtrack way North before heading South again to Tegucigalpa. Also we are beginning to be in a bit of a time crunch as I am planning on going home in 7 weeks for my Alaska job, and we have to get all the way to Panama City in that time (another 900+ miles depending on our route)!

I've enjoyed being back on Utila. I came here 4 years ago to this same dive shop (Alton's Dive Shop) and got my open water scuba certification. I always thought I would come back here, and I still think I will again sometime in the near future. I would like to take the divemaster and instructor training course and work as a scuba instructor for awhile. Maybe that will be my next move when I finish out the season in Alaska.

When we got here, there were no rooms available because a giant German school group was here occupying most of the rooms. So for the first two nights, we camped on the beach. It wasn't so bad, cause we had access to showers and it gets pretty cool at night. It was the first time we've used the tent on the trip. We never feel like camping after a hot sweaty day of biking. We camped two nights, the last two nights we've been in a dorm room, which we've had to ourselves. And good thing cause it poured both nights, very glad we were no longer camping! The downside of camping here was that each night a dog came, while we we in the tent sleeping and peed on it!! The first night we didn't realize it, just saw residue on the outside of the tent and wondered what it was. The next night we were awoken by the splatter of pee misting us and actually saw the dog! I was so angry! I believe the dog belongs to the owner or someone else who lives here. When we told the owner about it, he had no response, didn't seem surprised at all or offer us a place to clean up the tent! Now I am stuck with a smelly tent. I doubt the smell will go away on this trip with the tent being tucked away in its stuff sack baking in the sun on our bikes for another 7 weeks! Grrr!!

The dive course took 3 days. On the first day we took a refresher dive, since it had been 4 years since either of us had gone diving. Upon entering the water, I panicked, it's very strange wrapping your head around the idea that you can actually breath under water! Because I was so focused on breathing I didn't equalize the pressure in my ears and one ear filled up with water, so I had to sit the first dive out on the boat. On the second dive I did better and felt comfortable and ready for the advanced course.

On the second day we did two dives. We worked on buoyancy, which involved swimming through hoops, floating in place without hitting the bottom and knocking weights over with our face while swimming along the bottom and trying not to hit the bottom. I hated this. It was so hard! I had a mask that kept filling with water and hurting my nose and I coulding seem to get the floating down! No one was very good at it, but it made me mad that I wasn't, I like being good at things! The second dive involved underwater navigation which I also didn't like much because we had to do underwater navigation exercises in groups and it was really hard understanding what our instructor wanted us to do when he was giving hand symbols underwater! I also don't feel like I really learned much from either class.

Yesterday was our third and final day of diving, and it was awesome! We did a deep dive (32 meters) to a ship wreck! It was really neat, we got to swim through it and saw giant Snappers underneath it. Tomas our instructor brought down a plastic coke bottle so we could see how it compressed flat under such pressure, he also brought a bunch of different colored bottle tops, so we could see how the colors changed in the absence of lots of light. He brought an egg as well, which he cracked on the bottom. The pressure holds the egg together, but we didn't get to see it for long, cause some fish swooped in and ate it just about immediately! The second dive that day way called drift dive in which you swim with the current through multiple dive sights. The boat drops you off and then picks you up at the other end. It was really neat cause we got to cover a lot of area.

Today was a bit on the rainy side but it cleared up by mid afternoon, so we went for a bicycle ride around the island.  It was a ton of fun.  We saw lots of pretty beaches and rode just about every road on the island.

Fish swooping to eat the egg, I didn´t even get to see it

Halliburton shipwreck   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

bicyle near the wreck, who knows why it´s there

Fish on the reef

Some neat plants of the reef

Bubbles, one of my favorite things about diving! Lots of fish in background too.

For some reason this picture loaded sideways, but I´m not fixing it!

None of the pictures of me came out very good :(

It´s difficult getting out and walking with the tank attached

UPDATE:
We decided to go out to the bars for our last night.  It was my first time drinking since before I left home.  Craig and I both were drunk before we got to the bar and had two more drinks after arriving.  The bar we went to is called TreeTanic and is really neat.  The actual bar is in a tree house, and the surrounding area is very artsy with lots of mosaic work, a lot of which incorporate bottles.  Super cool place.  We left that bar and went to another on the water which was absolutely packed because they had $0.50 tequila shots that night!  As soon as we got there we found Simon and Astrid, two Austrians that we have been running into off and on since Belize (since Mexico for Craig).  Craig talked with them and I went to the bar to try and get us another drink, which really we probably didnt need!  There were so many people trying to get the attention of the bartenders that I had to wait forever.  In the mean time a large black local guy started talking to me.  He asked if I was married, I think, the conversation is a little fuzzy now.  I just know he was speaking weird island english to me and I was responding in Spanish.  Then his next question for me was: Are you pregnant?!  I have always had a little belly, but never enough to lead anyone to belive I am pregnant!  I said no and he proceeded to rub my belly!  It was so weird, it didnt even occur to me to tell him to stop, cause in my head I was laughing about it.  Craig came to look for me while all this was happening and told the guy to stop and the guy proceeded to punch Craig in the face twice, before I grabbed him by the arms and held him back!  The rest of the crowd in the bar was on our side and helped shove the guy further down the bar away from us, but he didnt get kicked out! I couldnt even believe what had happened, it was unreal! I hate fighting. So we left the bar shortly after and went back to the dive shop and passed out.  I have no idea what time we went to bed, but when our alarm went off at 4:45, I apparently turned it off and have no recollection.  A half hour later Craig managed to get us up, we were both still drunk and had to scurry about packing and get down to the ferry.  It was awful.  We made the ferry and I passed out on one of the seats for just about the whole ride.  When we got back to La Ceiba, we had to bike 8km to the bus station, then wait around for over 3 hours for the next bus to Tegucigalpa.  The hangover was setting in and I dont know if Ive ever had a worse hangover!  To pass the time, we ate a giant typical breakfast in addition to a giant baleada!  Usually food makes me feel better but this time was not the case.  :(  I proceeded to sleep nearly the whole 8 hour bus ride to Tegucigalpa.  We had the nicest luxury bus with seats that reclined farther than Ive ever seen!  Getting into Tegucigalpa, we found the nearest hotel to the bus stop and went to bed early in preparation for the long 2 days of biking ahead.

Treetanic Bar, Utila

Giant baleadas can cure any hangover!

Utila, Bay Islands

Yesterday we rode about 110 km from Tela to La Ceiba.  We started out at 5 am to ensure we'd have as much time as possible out of the heat.  The stars were out when we got going and the road was very smooth and had a nice shoulder, it was also well lit, as civilization continue for quite a ways down the highway.  We probably could have left even earlier, but we didn't know what conditions would be like.  By 5:30 there was enough light for me to turn off my head lamp.  We rode though mostly cow fields, like we always seem to do, but they were especially pretty in the morning light, everything was covered in dew and appeared silvery in the dim light.  The sunrise was very pretty.  We also contined to go though palm tree fields and towards the end, there were miles and miles of pineapple fields!  Pineapple bushes look a lot like agave with pointy fronds.  We got a pineapple when we got to La Ceiba and it was probably the best one we have ever had.  The road was flat almost the whole way, with slight ups and downs here and there and only one breif area where there was a few small hills.  We were able to keep up an average speed of 17km per hour, which is amazing for us!  With just two short breaks, we were all the way to our destination before noon!  We headed straight for the pier where the boats for Utila leave from.  We decided there was no point in staying in La Ceiba there isn't much to do there, it's better know as the gateway to the Bay Islands.  We were there several hours before the boat left, but that was ok, because we were in the shade resting during the heat of the day.  The boat cost over $20 each way, and they added on $5 for our bikes. :(  Sucks but there was no way around it.  The boat a small catamaran type thing and  rather bumpy and made me feel a bit seasick, being overheated, tired and hungry didn't help.  But we made it in one day, and that was by far the best biking day of the trip!

We are staying right on the water at Alton's Dive Shop and are enrolled in an advanced open water dive class.  We'll be here 4 more days, I'm excited!

Field at sunrise on the way to La Ceiba

Pineapples!

Dock at Altons Dive Shop

Our camping spot on the beach

La Entrada - Tela (208km) 129 miles

Biking Day 1: La Entrada to San Pedro Sula

I woke up feeling really good and with lots of energy.  It stayed cool for us most of the day and the roads were lined with big trees and lots of shade.  We also had nice shoulders to ride on.  We had similar scenery to what we see on most of our rides, big grassy fields with scattered cows and some agriculture.  We also got to be alongside a river a lot of the way, the Ulua River.  For about the first hour we had a very slight downhill, but then of course the hills hit!  They weren´t so bad though, and we had more downhill than we had uphill.  It was very nice conditions for riding, but we had over 100 km to ride and around the 70 km marker I tired out.  We made very good progress up until that point, then we started having to take lots of breaks.  At about 100km I was ready to drop dead and we came to the junction with San Pedro Sula.  Our plan had been to bypass the city, but we couldn´t tell which way to go and no one gave us any good directions.  We were already almost inside the city when we realized what was happening, and we decided to just keep going, cause I was way to tired to backtrack.  Our hotel only cost us $7, and the area of town we were in way surprisingly nice and I felt safe there.  We found a Dispensa for me!  And I found a mutant siamese banana, that was really cool, since I didn´t even know they existed!  We also found a block full of fast food for Craig, Pizza Hut, Dunkin Donuts, Burger King, Wendys, Popeyes, Churches Chicken and KFC! Our detour into San Pedro cost us about 15 km, putting our total for the day at 115 km! :(  My knees hurt quite bad, it hurt to go up and down the stairs of our hotel, and I was so tired I fell asleep at 7:15!

Just one of many overpacked trucks we have seen.  This one on the road to San Pedro Sula.

Ulua River just outside San Pedro Sula

The critical point at which we should have turned right, instead of left into San Pedro Sula

A siamese banana!!!

Biking Day 2: San Pedro Sula to Tela

I did not awaken with the energy I had the day before!  We set out at 5:45am, and had no trouble getting out of the city in the semi darkness.  I still felt very safe there, which was nice, cause I didn´t expect it.  We took a main highway out of town with a shoulder as big as a lane for cars and we also lucked out with the first 40 km being slightly downhill!  My butt, knees and hands hurt as soon as I got on the bike though.  We of course hit hills, as we always do, and they were mostly tiny hills, but they were enough to wipe me out.  We finally got to the flats with about 20 km of the almost 100km to go.  It was strange seeing enless flat, not something we are accustomed to!  It never got too hot today, the sun was behind the clouds for a lot of the day and we had lush tropical scenery to enjoy and tropical agriculture, like palm tree farms!  Had we not already been tired from yesterday, today probably would have been our most enjoyable yet.  But instead I arrived about to drop dead.  By the way I have been wearing the same outfit for 4 biking days in a row and ran out of clean underwear, so today for the first time in my life I wore yesterdays underwear inside out!  Ick!  A shower has never felt so good. :)  Very excited to do laundry tomorrow...

Our plan is to spend tomorrow enjoying the beach and the Lancetilla Botanical Gardens then continue on to La Ceiba, another 100km

On the road to Tela

Palm tree fields on the road to Tela

More palm tree fields on the way to Tela

Flat road!!!  

Tela

Tela

Tela

UPDATE: The botanical gardens were rather sucky.  No visitors center and nothing was labeled so we had no idea what we were looking at, and it cost $8 to get in!  And it took so long to find the place that we ended up staying an extra day in Tela so we could go to the beach.  And I am glad cause I needed another day of rest from the bike!

Copan Ruinas

We rocketed downhill from La Palma to the Honduran border.  The border crossing went smootly and we continued on to Nueva Ocotepeque where we caught a bus over the mountains to La Entrada.  We were completely ripped off on the bus because of our bikes, paid at least 4 times the regular fare, but that seems to happen to us often.  We stopped at La Entrada so that Craig could visit Copan Ruins.  La Entrada is a middle of nowhere town that most tourist would just ride through on the bus.  We are staying at the classy Hotel Central and have everything we need within walking distance, Sarita (ice cream), Dispensa Familiar (groceries), Comedor Karen (good food!) and even night street vendors.  We went outside last night around 9 for food, not knowing what we´d find.  There were a few food stalls set up along the road side.  We picked one selling baleadas, which are white flour tortillas with beans and cheese. The ladies had a whole bucket of tortilla dough, with perfectly portioned balls ready to be made up.  So we got to watch them hand flatten the tortillas and cook them, it was neat to see.  And the food was good!

I didn´t plan to visit the ruins since I´ve already been and it´s rather expensive.  I figured I´d die of bordem if I stayed in La Entrada the whole day, so I decided to take the bus with Criag out to the town also called Copan Ruinas.  It´s very touristy, lots of old white people on organized tour groups.  But the town is cute with cobbled streets.  I did some reading, souvineer shopping and snacking while I waited the 2 hours for Craig to be done.  When he was back we went to a restaurant to try a local food called, anafre, which is similar to fondue.  It comes in a clay pot and has beans, cheese, sausage and tortilla chips.  I was very excited to try it.  As soon as we ordered at the restaurant, a huge group of local students (who I assume were on a field trip visiting the ruins), came in to have lunch.  The resturant turned into chaos at this point, and I think we may have been forgotten about as we waited close to an hour for our order, which is only an appitizer.  We ended up walking out before they ever brought it out, which isn´t something I´d normally do.  We walked down the street to a market where I´d seen a bunch of Comedores (local food restaurants).  We were excited when we saw a sign for empanadas (meat/cheese/bean filled turnovers that are fried), since we haven´t had many so far on this trip.  What we got however was not empanadas, it was pupusas!  We were rather disappointed, but ate them anyways.

Tomorrow we continue biking, it will be a two day ride to the beach town of Tela.

La Palma

Cashew tree and its fruits along the side of the road!

It was our intention to leave Lago de Coatepeque early yesterday, but that did not happen.  We over slept our alarm by an hour.  And then we had to deal with the problem of getting our bikes out of the steep crater.  The first bus wouldnt take us.  We ended being able to hitchhike in the back of a pick up truck.  They took us into El Congo. We offered money, but they wouldnt take it, so far hitchhking no one wants our money!  We started biking from El Congo around 9 am and it was already getting hot out.  We had 60 km to go to our decided stopping point of Aguilares.  The road was in really good condition, but of course was hilly.  It really wasnt too bad though.  There were a few hills I had to push on, but mostly to save my knees.  It was a dry heat with a breeze, so overall pretty pleasant.  It was about 5 hours of riding.  We had planned on staying in Aguilares for the night and figure out a ride into the mountains the next morning. Instead we made attempts to get on buses to La Palma when we got there, but each bus that went by was jam packed with people who either got on in San Salvador or somewhere along the way. The buses only seem willing to take us with the bikes when we get on where the bus starts.  So this was not that case and no one would pick us up.  So we biked a little ways down the highway and tried to hitchhike.  Tried for over half an hour and was getting discouraged.  One guy stopped and told us he would have picked us up but that he was only going a few kilometers up the road.  Finally when we were about to give up, a young couple in a truck stopped and said they could take us 20 km up the road.  When we got to the next major town, the guy got out and said he decided he was going to La Palma after all, and he proceeded to drop his girlfriend off at her house and drive us the rest of the way!  Dont know what changed his mind, but we were grateful.  We rode the rest of the way in the cab of the truck with him.  He was a nice guy who has spent quite a bit of his life living in the US, he still somehow didnt know much English.

We have been noticing a ton of tire repair places along the road sides during our biking and last night we figured out why.  Our driver kept saying there was something wrong with the tire, so we pulled over at one of the many Pinchazos (flat tire repair place) and discovered that the front left tire was completely bare and the others didnt have much more tread.  The front left one was about to rip open it was so worn out, so we watched as 2 repairmen replaced the front tire with one from the back and put the spare on the back, all for the price of $2!  So people use their tires until they basically blowout and then pullover at one of the millions of repair places and get a new one, just in knick of time!

The guy dropped us off in the Central Plaza in La Palma and refused to accept any money from us!  We were amazed!  We have encountered nothing but really nice people here in El Salvador, so many people have gone out of their way to help us!  We pushed our bikes a short way to the nearest hostel very glad that we were able to cut a day out of our travels.

Today we hiked to Cerro El Pital, which is the highest point in El Salvador.  We had to take 2 different buses to get to the trailhead, which took about an hour.  There is a road all the way to the top, as someone owns the top of the mountain!  It cost us $2 to get into the private property, which is filled with a combination of farmland and campgrounds.  It would have been a really nice place to camp.  The summit itself wasnt too exciting, it was a little foggy/misty when we got there and lots of trees were blocking the view.  We did the hike with a French couple we met at our hostel, they were very friendly and that was nice, as I feel most French people hate Americans.  They left shortly after we arrived at the top to get back to town and onto their next destination.  We continued on to Pena Rajada, which was briefly mentioned in the Lonely Planet as having something to do with a sketchy bridge crossing.  We couldnt find the trail and ended up on anther part of the summit with a fenced in cell phone tower.  A guy popped out somewhere inside and offered to show us the trail.  His name was Esteban and he wound up doing the whole hike with us, and its a good thing he did cause we wouldnt have found it ourselves.  We walked through cloud forest with huge trees that were covered in plants and orchids, they were very impressive.  We came to a narrow but very deep canyon and the bridges we read about were trees that were pushed over the gap.  There were 2 bridges, each having a wire above it for balance.  It was a little scary but very pretty.  Esteban stayed with us the whole time and took pictures for us and even took some with his cell phone camera for memories! :)  Yet another nice person we have met in El Salvador.  He led us on the right track back to the main campground and we said our goodbyes.

We got back down road in good time and didnt have too wait to long for the first bus.  When we got back to the main highway to catch the second bus, we were only about 3 km away from La Palma, so we decided to just walk and see if we beat the bus (even though we knew it would be uphill).  We were walking for about 30 seconds when a truck began to approach us and I put my thumb out to see if we could get a ride.  They pulled over immediately and we hopped in the bed.  It was a truck full of men going to a construction site not far down the road, and one guy in the back seat popped his head out the back window and told us in English that they werent going far, they just wanted to see my legs!! :)  Guess they liked my cool tennis skirt, we cracked up, haha!  So they took us about a km and less then a minute later a bus picked us up.  What an awesome day! :)

Tomorrow onward to Honduras!

View from the top of Cerro El Pital

Another view from Cerro El Pital

Bridge over Pena Rajada, maybe 100 ft drop below us?

What the drop looks like from inside, basically two separated boulders

Orchid covered trees, not many flower right now but still very pretty

Cerro El Pital from below, with Pena Rajada rock all the way to the left

Lago de Coatepeque and Volcan Santa Ana

We were up before dawn on Monday trying to get on an early bus. We had decided not to bike it due to lots of elevation gain. I was up all night being sick again. I had horrible stomach cramps which didn't allow me to sleep. And I had fever, headache and just felt weak and exhausted the whole way to Lago de Coatepeque. Riding buses was not fun for me. We were left behind by the first and second bus because there wasn't room for our bikes. We ended up getting on a truck that had a rack for our bikes. We had to stand the whole way to Sonsonate where we would switch buses. I thought I was gonna either vomit or pass out the whole way. Then we got on a bus in Sonsonate which would take us to El Congo. I slept that whole ride, don't know how long that was, but my neck was killing me yesterday because of it! When we got off at El Congo we had 6 mostly downhill kilometers to ride down into the crater where the lake is. The first 2 km were uphill and were excruciating, and the downhill was surprisingly even worse, because it was potholed so the bouncing shook my headache around in my head, jiggled my cramped stomached and made me want to poo! I was so grateful when we finally arrived. I slept most of the rest of the day and evening. I ended up taking some antibiotics cause I didn't seem to be feeling any better after all the sleep.

Yesterday I was feeling a little better, so we decided to hike Volcan Santa Ana (still an active volcano). It is located just across the lake from us in Cerro Verde National Park. It was a short bus ride to get there. The hike started at 11 and was quite a bit easier than I expected it to be. During the hiking though my headache returned as did the stomach pains, so that was unpleasant. It was a mostly clear day though and the scenery was pretty, lots of agave along the hike. At the top we got to see the lagoon inside the 4 layer crater. It was mint green and very pretty. There crater itself was 1.5 km across and very impressive. From the top we could see Volcanes Izalco and San Salvador (the other 2 active volcanos in El Salvador). We could also see Cerro Verde, Lago de Coatepeque, and several surrounding cities. It was very nice. We spent about 30 minutes at the top, so I reclined on a rock and got a sports bra tan, which turned out later to be a burn! My headache and cramps got worse and worse on the way back and the neck pains from sleeping in the bus started to set in and I had blisters on my feet! So by the time we were back in El Congo, I was in sad shape! We managed to find my favorite store, La Dispensa Familiar, and I got some yogurt and a banana and oatmeal cookies. I should have been more hungry after 5 hours of hiking but I was ill again.

Volcan Izalco

Me with Lago Coatepeque in the background

Me at the Dispensa Familiar having an aloe yogurt!



We are staying at Amacuilco Hostel. It has a huge dock in the back. The water here is very clear, clean and refreshing for swimming. One of the reasons it's so nice is I don't think people are allowed to bathe or do laundry in the water! I'm on the dock now having occasional swims and trying to even out my biking tan lines. The views here are amazing, the lake sits in a volcanic crater, and directly across the lake we can see Volcan Santa Ana. I'm feeling lots better today. Back to normal, but now Craig is feeling sick, don't see how this keeps happening at opposite times.

Tomorrow we start biking again. We head toward La Palma, our last destination in El Salvador before we cross the border. It should take us 2 days and I hope for the sake of my knees that it's not steeper than we think it is.

Juayua and La Feria Gastronomica

We came to Juayua specifically for the food fair and even slowed down our travels so we could be here on the right days. We had high hopes of finding an insane variety of foods and had really hoped to try iguana or other strange things we had heard might be here, like armadillo. I thought it would just be a labrynth of food vendors and that we wouldn't even know where to begin. We were sadly disappointed. The food was set up mainly in the one square block radius surrounding the park and there were probably 20 vendors at most. They were mostly all selling the same or similar plates of food, argentinian style ribs seemed to be popular. We had a few good snacks. Panes (which we didn't need to go to the food fair to get, as every lady on every corner sells them) are basically a grilled sandwich, similar to a Mexican torta, and I can compare it to tasting like a taco bell soft taco, it contains lettuce, avocado and seasoned ground beef. We'd been seeing these sandwiches around but weren't sure what they were and were afraid to try them as they looked like hotdogs because of the bread shape! We also tried Riguas at the fair and they were really good sweet corn cakes, something I'd like to learn to make at home! We didn't eat much else at the fair, we ate a ton of baked goods at this pasteleria (bakery) we found and ate all our dinners at the comedor (local homemade food). A typical dinner here contains bread or tortillas, eggs, refried beans, spicy sausage (longaniza), sour cream, fresh cheese, plantains and sometimes avocado. We were amused by the different price of the meal each day, $2.90 the first day, $2.30 the second and $3.10 today! We will be leaving here feeling quite stuffed as we have way over eaten during our stay.

We have been buying fruits and vegetables at the street markets and have been making avocado and queso fresco sandwiches for breakfast, this way we get some nutrition in our diet. I love the local markets for fruits, so far we haven't gotten one bad piece everything is always perfectly ripe. Today we couldn't resist and bought 3 monster carrots! One of them is as big as my forearm!

This morning we hiked to some waterfalls (chorros de las caleras) just outside town. It was planned that these falls would be used to generate electricity, so they are connected by man made tunnels. We got to go in one which was neat but also a bit creepy, as it got pitch black inside. Don't think anything ever came of the electrical project. In the afternoon we took a bus to the neighboring town of Apaneca and did 2 hikes, Laguna de las Ninfas and Laguna Cerro Verde. Neither lagoon was anything worth seeing, but the hikes were nice. We had really pretty views of the mountains, of Juayua, Apaneca and even Ahuachapan. Coffee farms surrounded us most of the way, and we even saw one farm that is a grower for Starbucks. The coffee farms are a pretty sight to see on the hillsides, as they are arranged in a perfect waffle pattern. The waffle outline you see from afar are the large trees used to shade the coffee plants. We did a bit of walking around Apaneca after our hikes, wasn't much to do, but a lot of the buildings were painted with lovely brightly colored murals.

We've now been in Jauyua 3 days and our time here is up. We leave early tomorrow morning on a bus headed to Santa Ana. From Santa Ana we will bike the rest of the way to Lago de Coatapeque. The reason for the bus is that there is quite a bit of elevation gain on the way to Santa Ana, and the hills have been really hard on my knees We we will wish for it to still be fairly cool out when we start biking. A storm appears to be rolling in so perhaps we'll get some rain to keep us cool.



Chorros de Las Caleras



One of the tunnels at the waterfall



Laguna de Las Ninfas



View of Apaneca from hike to Laguna de Las Ninfas

Fallen tree on a coffee farm along the hike

View of Ahuachapan

Laguna Verde

Coffee waffles above Apaneca



Riguas at the food fair, they´re cooked in banana leaves!



Pasteleria!

Traditional meal