El Salvador

El Salvador is a richer and more developed country than Guatemala with fewer tourists and a smaller indigenous population. The people are impossibly kind, the friendliest we have met on all of this trip so far, and we are wondering whether we should have stayed longer...

The relative prosperity of El Salvador is attributed to US aid (in exchange for Salvadorian troops in Iraq?), the huge number of legal and illegal of Salvadorians sending money home from the US, and the hardworking mentality of Los Salvadoreños, although Guatemalans appeared to be equally hardworking as far as we could tell.

We saw a insightful film, "Voces Inocentes", based on a real story about the civil war in the 1980s from the point of view of a 12 year old boy who is trying to avoid being recruited by the military.

Juayua is a small mountain town where we went on a day walk to "Siete Cascadas". The walk passed through coffee plantations and small trails through forest. We were impressed that it also involved walking in rivers with ropes (!) and ended with a swim here:

Roger at one of the Seven Cascades

Next we headed to the Pacific Coast where we again found immaculately clean accommodation for US$15 a night on the beach. Roger spent hours surfing the right-hand point break with another Aussie while Luisa talked to the pet birds.

Macaws

Grasshopper

Since we were eager to cover some territory and head south we went to Honduras in a day involving a taxi, two buses, a pickup truck, a bus and another taxi. This left us in the sweaty town of Choluteca where things felt distinctly more tropical. In the morning we enjoyed a typical breakfast of cheese, eggs, friend plantains, beans, avocado and tortillas. The food here is bland compared to the spicy delights of Mexico, but we are not complaining.

Back of a pickup to Honduras

Typical breakfast