Jess and Stacey’s Travels

Click on photo for more El Salvador pix

We flew from Panama City to San Salvador where we were met by Stacey’s friend from Peace Corp, Cynthia and her husband, Luke and 20 month old daughter, Elana. They are living in Santa Tecla (just outside of San Salvador) because Luke is teaching at a school there. They provided wonderful hospitality and Jess got some much needed “baby time” with little Elana.

Cynthia and Luke borrowed the car of a friend and took us up to the top of a volcano where we could overlook the area. Elana enjoyed picking coffee beans on the walk up. We also went to a town called Suchitoto, about 1 1/2 hrs away. We all spent one night in Suchitoto, which has a beautiful lake with many small islands but only one of which is populated by lots of birds — it’s a bit of a mystery why the birds picked this particular island.  We went on a horse-riding tour with a guide from a local village up to an area where there was a guerilla camp during the war here.  We saw a crater where a bomb landed during the war, lots of small caves where people used to hide, the ruins of a church and school which were destroyed during the war (there was a small community there, but they all fled and now mostly live in nearby villages), and a small cemetary of 14 ‘combatantes’. 

Click on photo for more El Salvador pix

We enjoyed Christmas with Cynthia, Luke and Elana. On Christmas morning Elana came into our bedroom as we were waking up to spread her Christmas cheer in little elf booties and Santa-meets-Heidi hat.  Thanks to Cynthia’s idea, we had all purchased stocking stuffers for each other in Suchitoto so we all had somethings to open. Later, Cynthia made Christmas dinner for us all, including some other friends and colleagues of Luke. It was a really nice day spent with new friends.

On the day after Christmas, Cynthia and family took us to a club that they belong to at the beach. We enjoyed a half day at the water and then they dropped us off at the bus station to go to the town of Juayua (pronounced Why-you-ah. We stayed at Hotel Anahuac which we’d recommend. Nice folks and good accomodations. In Juayua, we went to some waterfalls, explored the town and also visited a neighboring town, Ataco. Juayua has a food fair every weekend in the central park which we wandered around in. We also ate the best pupusas there at a pupusaria where Jess can be quoted as saying “I think I’ve turned the corner, I am liking the local food now.” You can imagine how good the pupusas must have been for Jess to finally say that after 10 months.

We left Juayua on the 31st to go back to Antigua, Guatemala. We had no problem with the buses or the border crossing. We arrived in Antigua that afternoon and we were greeted by Olga.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 12th, 2008 at 3:08 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.