Suchitoto to the Pacific coast

Back on the road again. This morning started at 5:30am for a quick trip out to a lake for a sunrise kayaking for an hour around a river delta doing some bird watching. It’s been a minute since I’ve kayaked.

Suchitoto, El Salvador

This is a beautiful town. But we just found out that there are elections soon, and by law in El Salvador there are no alcohol sales, and alcohol is prohibited in public for the next 3 days, and tomorrow we head to the beach.

So logically we are all drinking enough now to get us through.

Next up: 3 countries, 1 day

Tomorrow we cross the border from Honduras back to Guatemala for a short while, and then into El Salvador.

We’re not particularly excited for the border crossing into Guatemala as it’s the same one we went through a couple of days ago and it took a long time. 

It’s an absolutely delightful and thrilling 7 hours on the road tomorrow, where we end up in Suchitoto El Salvador.  The apparently as a reward for surviving the trip we get to make our own dinner — a cooking lesson in making Pupusa. 

Footnote: I booked the Intrepid 30 day Ultimate Peru, Argentina, Brazil trip today (special ends tomorrow), going from Lima to Lake Titicaca to Machu Picchu to Amazon Jungle, then fly to Buenos Aires, then fly to Rio de Janeiro. More on that trip later.

I had this concoction tonight, it was like a Bloody Mary, but with beer instead of vodka. Surprisingly nice.

Copan Ruins

Cesar, our local guide for the ruins

Today, our full day in Copan, we visited the Mayan ruins. I can’t do justice to the story, but I will say I was quite interested in them, our local guide (for the ruins) was most engaging and kept our attention. It was fascinating that the site was built layer upon layer, each dynasty built upon the temple layer of the previous. They built on the wisdom of their ancestors — literally. 

Hola from Copan

 Copan had no internet or cell service most of the day, it’s just come back on. A lot of people in the group spent a lot of time trying to get connected. 

I’ll post my thoughts on Copan in a couple of days once there is semi decent internets.

On the road to Copan, Honduras

 8 hours on the road in a bus. At least we will have rest stops on the way.

In case you think “oh you’re smart, you’re at the back and can stretch out — well, you’re kinda right, but I am sharing the back…

Antigua, Guatemala

I’m sitting here in a park in Antigua, Guatemala, admiring that I have “5G”, but it takes 2 minutes to load this blog entry with no photos. (Update: I have some wifi)

So instead you’ll have to deal with my poor vocabulary of adjectives to describe this beautiful town. The streets are literally cobblestone, all of them, and the maximum speed a car is able to drive over them is 20kph — any faster and the car is disassembled faster than any car “chop shop” on the planet.

There’s a rather large conical volcano that dominates the view from pretty much anywhere here. Look south and there it is. It becomes very clear to me how Pompeii happened.

The town itself has a Spanish Colonial/South American blend (unsurprisingly), with a regrettable modern west influence — I’ve seen a Starbucks, a Subway, and a Wendy’s. At least they have the common decency to keep with the local aesthetics and not plaster gaudy neon lights and glass windows everywhere. 

The hotel I’m staying at is quite lovely, it reminds me of some in Nepal.

This afternoon I meet my group and find out what the plans for the next two weeks. In the meantime I’m going to continue to explore, and keep an eye out for pyroclastic flows.