After a quick stop in Washington DC to see the White House, the Washington Monument and the Holocaust Museum, I met up with the hubs and our friend Megan in El Salvador. Megan had been there a week and a half already, Leighton joined her on Feb 24 and I flew in the night of Feb 27.

The two of them were settled in the beach house that would be our home for the next 3 nights until we left for 6 days to Guatemala.

Megan, as usual, had done brilliant research on how we were going to spend our time in El Salvador and Guatemala and had made contact with a local woman, Vanessa, who would be our private guide for 4 days (2 of the days I was there and 2 days prior). So the very next day we headed out with Vanessa. Our first stop was to meet her dad to learn about falconry – definitely not something I would have pegged as my first activity in El Salvador! But it was fantastic – super interesting. It’s one of those things I’ve always wanted to read up on since I met someone else a few years ago who was really into it, but never got around to. Essentially falconry is the hunting of wild animals in their natural state and habitat by means of a trained bird of prey, in this case a Harris’s Hawk. Vanessa’s dad is a trained veterinarian who specializes in animal behaviour and he also has two beautiful Weimaraner dogs too. His English was impeccable and we spent a couple of hours learning about him, the birds and the dogs!

Our next stop was a local market for lunch and to pick up some groceries (mostly fruit and veg) for the house. After a leisurely lunch we went for coffee and ended up sitting there for more than an hour just peppering Vanessa with questions about El Salvador. Unfortunately, our day got a bit derailed and our other major stop, Los Chorros water park, didn’t happen (partly because we didn’t realize it closed at 4pm). The other reason we didn’t get as much accomplished as we wanted is the traffic in San Salvador, by the time we’d made two more stops (at a restaurant for takeout Salvadoran food for dinner and a mall for more groceries) we were ready to go back to the beach!

The following day was a beach day for Leighton and I/work day for Megan. We also did some research on what our plan would be for our next day with Vanessa. We knew we’d be exploring the Ruta de las Flores but there’s so much to see and do we wanted to make sure we covered the most important things! The Ruta is a historic, cultural, gastronomic and natural route through 6 different towns northwest of San Salvador. We essentially made it to one town, Ataco, one waterfall and a rainbow slide. And we got to make the national dish, pupusas, in Ataco (which also happens to be Vanessa’s grandparents’ home town).

We have a bit of a running joke about walking/hiking in Central America. What is often referred to as a ‘short’ hike or walk mostly never turns out that way and our quick walk to Los Chorros waterfall was no exception. It may have at one time been a straightforward walk in on a partially cobblestone path but apparently the falls are on private property and access has been restricted to only those with a local approved guide. So we were about to walk right by the guy standing nonchalantly on the side of the road when Vanessa started talking to him and he explained that we needed to pay him 5 USD per person to have him take us there.

Now since the easy path is closed, we now have to hike up and down the side of the mountain on a narrow path. And as usual, it’s really, really hot! So instead of a quick 1km walk in, it’s probably twice that and it’s hard! Our quick 1 hour stop at a waterfall turns into 2 and a bit hours! But it was stunning! And the water was especially refreshing!

They have this thing in El Salvador that I hadn’t seen before (but probably exists in a lot of touristy places) in two locations – it’s a ‘rainbow’ slide that you tube down – no water involved, just tiny plastic rollers. At the same adventure park, they also had zip lining, a zip line you could ride a bike across, a labyrinth and an aerial swing. We opted for just the rainbow slide since we figured one ‘influencer’ activity for the day was enough 😆. It was super fun but not nearly long enough!!!

Next stop was the charming town of Ataco for lunch. Not exactly local food this time but really exceptional Italian food in a beautiful garden setting – somewhere Vanessa had been many times.

At the end of our day with Vanessa, we met Carlos in San Salvador who would be delivering our rental car to take to Guatemala. Again, Megan’s resourcefulness was a lifesaver – apparently it’s difficult to find someone in El Salvador to rent you a vehicle to take to Guatemala but Carlos had everything organized including paperwork from his lawyer (now that we’re back I’m glad we didn’t have any reason to see if that paperwork was actually legit 😆). Driving through San Salvador back to the beach at night was a little stressful but nothing like what was to come!

The next day brought an uneventful drive from El Zonte to Antigua, after which we were happy to just go for a walk to dinner. We spent an entertaining hour at a roof top bar where the 3 stooges were bartending – long story short, we kept getting extra drinks because these poor guys had no idea what they were doing and they were repeatedly wandering around trying to figure out where drinks were supposed to go. So instead of them getting poured down the drain, we helped out and drank them!

Vanessa had recommended a ramen restaurant in Antigua so we had to check it out! The ramen was not the best I’ve ever had, but enjoyable!

This photo gives us lots to unpack. First and definitely most noticeable is the ‘chicken bus’ which is how they’re referred to by tourists and not the locals who actually use them for daily transportation. These are ubiquitous all over El Salvador and Guatemala and always brightly decorated by their drivers. Leighton got this shot from the terrace of our super cute heritage house. Still lots of overhead power lines in this old colonial city. Also notable are the cobblestone streets, the purple flowering tree (Jacaranda) and the tree covered hills in the background. The views in Antigua are stunning!

Day one in Guatemala saw us checking out a winery/avocado farm. Another entertaining excursion for sure! First we passed through a high mountain town with lots of traditionally dressed locals. Then we arrived at the winery where the tour was just about to get underway. Despite the website being in English and all the wines being labelled in English, no one there spoke any English. So we joined the tour in Spanish. I nearly broke my brain trying to understand but could really only pick out random words. Megan is far better after a few months of Spanish immersion in Nicaragua and some online tutoring! But there’s lots of obscure vocabulary associated with wine making so it was still difficult. All was not lost though, we saw avocado trees, took some cute photos, tasted some (pretty terrible) wines and had a nice lunch on a scenic patio!

I should mention in reference to the quality of the wines, that it’s the only wine tasting we’ve ever been to where no one bought any wine!!! And $70CAD for the best wine there was way out of our budget (and completely unreasonable)!

I should mention here, that I obsessively (I’ll admit it) did all of the driving after we picked up our car in El Salvador. I really enjoy driving (usually) and I also really enjoy being in control 😆. Megan navigated and Leighton was designated as ‘photo journalist’ on our road trips. So you’ll see him credited in lots of my photos on this blog.

On the way back from the winery we took the opportunity to try to capture some photos of the locals. Leighton did pretty well while I maneuvered the streets and we both coached him on the upcoming photo ops!

We stumbled on these beautiful creations as we left town on a sunny Sunday morning. These ‘carpets’ are actually flower petals meticulously placed on a bed of sawdust directly on the main roads in Antigua, and the photo was taken as we slowly drove by in the adjacent lane that wasn’t blocked off. We were fortunate to see them as they’re only found around Easter on Sundays during Lent and during the Holy Week, and only rotated through designated areas of the city. We could have easily been in Antigua on a Sunday when they were located in a completely different area of town! Or not even been there on a Sunday 😆

Our next destination after Antigua was Semuc Champey, a nature reserve near Lanquin. It’s 312 km from Antigua and can take anywhere from 6 to 7.5 hours to drive depending on traffic through Guatemala City and surrounding area. We were travelling on a Sunday and it was predicted to take around 6 hours. We made great time and arrived in Lanquin by 1:15pm. And that’s when the frustrating part of the trip started.

We arrived in town, met our contact on his motorcycle who took us to the ‘secure’ parking lot in town where our car was going to spend the next 2 nights. We then waited there, listening to the toucans, for our driver from the hotel to arrive with his 4 wheel drive truck to take us to the hotel. The 10km mountain road leading in to our Eco Lodge and Semuc Champey is partially under construction and partially an eroded, rocky trail that definitely requires a 4X4 to navigate and feels like it will rattle your teeth right out. It’s customary for everyone to ride in the back and they’ve kindly provided bars so you can stand up and brace yourself to hang on for dear life. Photo below is actually the good part of the road.

The other complicating factor about this trip is that the road is intermittently closed for periods of time for the construction. This meant that we showed up at 2:20 and couldn’t pass through the first closure (which we thought was the only one) until 3:10. We were relieved to be flying down the road on our way to cold beers in a hammock, only to be stopped again about 10 minutes later. This time we waited for over 2 hours. And a short 15 minutes after that we were at our lodge – arriving at 5:30, just before dark.

In case you haven’t added it all up, it took us 4 hours and 15 minutes to go 10km!!! The locals definitely capitalize on all the waiting time though and so we were offered lots of drinks and snacks along the way!

This little vignette was made possible by the fact that the power was out at the Eco Lodge when we got there. And stayed out until mid morning the next day. Dinner was partially by candlelight and partially by ‘smart phone placed on a glass’ light in order to see what we were eating, which in true Eco Lodge form was a vegetarian meal (the kitchen was being powered by generator).

After a typical jungle sleep with the chorus of insects that ramp up at night and the flowing river beside us in the background, we were up and formulating our plan for visiting the gorgeous natural pools of Semuc Champey. Our Eco lodge was still about 4km by road from the nature reserve and we were told about a 45 minute walk (partly on a riverside path, but mostly on the road). The lodge offers a tour that includes a sketchy cave tour, entrance to the park and a river raft back to the lodge but we weren’t interested in the caves and wanted to leave on our own time so our plan was to walk to the pools and then meet up with the tour at 3:30/4 to tube back with them.

You know when you travel and you end up with more experiences that are fodder for funny stories rather than mind blowing adventures? Guatemala kind of ended up being like that for us.

First of all, our little 45 minute walk ended up being more challenging than we thought. The combination of the heat and the constant hills and descents over the 4km (mostly on the dusty, rocky road in the direct sun) wasn’t the shady jungle walk we had imagined. The up side of this was that the pools were probably 10X more refreshing than they otherwise should have been!

There’s no doubt this is a beautiful place with one pristine clear blue pool cascading into another. And the water was the perfect temperature! Hunger pangs finally lured us out of the water and we hiked back down to have lunch at a restaurant and be ready to start our tubing trip down the river. The ‘restaurant’ appeared to be run by a local matriarch who had young people out ‘recruiting’ customers. We had ‘Fred’ keeping us company from the moment we left the pools and agreed to come for his lunch ‘buffet’.

While we were eating, we negotiated with ‘Fred’ to take us in tubes down the river (we’d mentioned we were waiting for the group and he offered) because we didn’t want to wait the extra hour (or 2). This turned out to be a full out error in judgement on our part. I’ll fully admit I was losing patience as we stood around in our swimsuits waiting for ‘Fred’ and his buddies to inflate our tiny tire tubes and cap them with pieces of garbage bag that was supposed to hold for the entire float. We also had to carry all our stuff with us in a garbage bag (it would have gone by truck if we’d joined the group). But against better judgement we stuck with the plan and were eventually floating down the river in our unstable tubes with Leighton’s bubbling away and us praying it would make it to the end without losing all its air.

So, turns out this is a bit more technical float than we’re used to on the Pembina River or out in Penticton. There are rapids and there are ways to go through the rapids safely. The first set saw us going through mass confusion as ‘Fred’s’ limited English and our limited Spanish meant all 3 of us were completely confused by the instructions he was yelling at us and he was super frustrated. We ended up with our feet hooked in each other’s armpits to make a convoy of tubes but I was in the very back instead of him which wasn’t ideal but ended up working. He rearranged us for the next set of rapids and we navigated them uneventfully.

The third set of rapids was apparently too shallow to tube through so we portaged. Because Leighton and I didn’t have water shoes or running shoes we could sacrifice to the river, it meant hiking through the riverside gravel, leaves, sharp rocks etc. in our bare feet. Ask Leighton how happy I was and he’ll tell you he’s never heard that many ‘F sharps’ from me in all our years together. I was getting super creative at stringing together expletives over that 15 minutes or so…

Back in the water, we were soon upon the next (and as it turned out, our last) set of rapids. This one was also pretty shallow so we started navigating it in our little convoy again with repeated shouts of ‘asses up’ from ‘Fred’. Well ‘Fred’s’ tube gets caught on a rock and the next thing we see is it floating by us, just a little too far to reach. And he’s swimming the rapids behind us. I started paddling like my life depended on it to reach his tube but it wasn’t happening.

A few minutes before that, Megan had seen some rock formations that she thought she recognized from her short morning walk by the river. So when I saw a rocky beach a little ways ahead, I calculated that it must be where we needed to ‘dock’ to get to the hotel. At this point, I knew I wasn’t getting the tube, and there was no way I was going to risk floating past our hotel so I started paddling like hell for shore. I honestly don’t recall if I was just dragging Megan and Leighton or if they were on the same page as me but I was on a mission! Just as we touched shore, ‘Fred’ started calling and motioning to us from the middle of the river to keep going without him. At this point we were all in agreement – we were done with tubing and we knew the road should be somewhere close to the river despite the fact we now knew we were nowhere near our hotel.

We bushwhacked our way to a corn field (I only grabbed on to one thorny branch and stepped on a few prickly things….), skirted the edge and found a path that seemed to be heading in the right direction. I should also mention that ‘Fred’ had given up on his tube and randomly rejoined us about 20 minutes later so was at least able to confirm that we were going the right way. Shortly thereafter, we were all blissfully happy to rejoin the actual path along the river to our lodge!

We met some great people at dinner and had a good sleep in anticipation of our long (7+ hour) drive to Lake Atitlán the next morning and booked a 6:45 shuttle out in hopes of missing the construction and getting back to our car at a decent time.

Now you may notice that there are no pictures of a lake to follow up my reference to traveling to Lake Atitlán…..

We drove 2 1/2 hours from when we jumped out of the back of the 4X4 through some of the most winding, steep, speed bump riddled mountain highways I’ve ever driven on only to find ourselves parked on the side of the highway behind cars and truckloads of locals, truckloads of Brahma bulls, motorbikes etc., without a clue as to why we were stopped. We joined the line and scoped out the situation for half an hour or so before I got brave asked the woman selling snacks ‘Accidente o construcción?’. Her reply was ‘No, manifestación’ and mine was ‘Oh, gracias’. Now somewhere I recalled learning ‘manifestación’ on Duolingo but it took google and our limited service to recall that it meant ‘protest’. So we sat with that for a while and decided we needed more information.

So I started to ask everyone walking by ‘Hablas inglés?’ and was successful on my second try! A Salvadoran from Iowa on holidays in Guatemala who’d also been at Semuc Champey the day before was on his way back to Guatemala City. He was able to tell us it was military veterans protesting public programming and that they had stopped protesting at 4pm the day before but they weren’t giving any clues as to what their plan was for that day. At this point it was 1:30 and we were still 4.5 to 5 hours away from Lake Atitlán even if we got through the protest right away. We were glad to have our new Salvadoran friend there to see what he would decide to do because turning back meant 2 hours and 15 minutes on the same treacherous roads back the way we’d come. And the only other way to Atitlán would be through Guatemala City and Antigua for another 9 hours of driving from where we sat. He turned back.

We made the group decision to turn back and stay in Antigua 2 more nights and scrap our visit to Atitlán. There’s so much more to see in Guatemala that we’ll just have to come back someday! The other complication was that Megan had multiple meetings booked for the next day and couldn’t be traveling so we couldn’t just stay part way and then go the rest of the way to the lake the next day – we needed to be somewhere with reliable wifi. I was happy to go back to Antigua – it’s an ‘easy’ city with a great food scene and I hadn’t had the chance to delve into it’s history during our previous brief stay.

The 7.5 hours back to Antigua was undoubtedly the most challenging and dangerous drive I’ve ever done. Part of what made it difficult is that I didn’t wholly trust our car mechanically – the brakes were pulsating and it was underpowered for the steep climbs we were making. I had one hand on the park brake at all times going downhill. But we made it safely through the 2+ hours of steep climbs and descents and thought we were through the worst of it. Turns out not, the number of sketchy transport trucks on the winding roads through tiny towns was unfathomable. And some of them crawled up the hills at 10km/h and others were bearing down on us from behind. So I had no choice but to pass when at all remotely reasonable. Then it got dark… I also now have an irrational fear of speed bumps – the speed bumps in Guatemala are vicious. Even at normal speeds I was grinding the undercarriage off the car. I had to approach every one at an angle and even then the odd one would attack! So at night I was terrified I was going to miss seeing one and hit it at full speed!

And the sketchy transport trucks – we were discussing whether it would be better to be in front of them or behind them in the event that their brakes failed because there’s absolutely nowhere to go to avoid an accident. And these trucks look rough! Also – there are so many vehicles, commercial and private, on the road with no tail lights or even headlights! In contrast (see below) most of these trucks have been decked out in lights of all colours of the spectrum – the tail lights might not work but the ‘hot tub’ lights do!! Our conversation revolved endlessly around speculating about the motivation behind all of this and who was legislating around safety in commercial hauling!

We made it to Antigua at about 9:30pm and immediately fell into bed in the villa Megan found us at the last minute for $90 a night. The next day I slept in til 9 and then Leighton and I left Megan to her conference calls and went to explore Antigua before our walking tour at 3pm. We could have potentially day tripped to Atitlán but there was no way I was sitting in a car for even a minute again that day!

Love the colonial architecture of this city. Even though, just like so many places in the world it all came with a price paid by the indigenous cultures and was procured as ill gotten gains by the Spanish and the Vatican. Later, the Americans and the Germans resettled the abandoned city after the capital was moved and everyone left for Guatemala City. The upside of that was the restoration of Antigua as it’s definitely a gem! It’s also a UNESCO world heritage city.

I had to include at least one food picture. We’ve definitely been eating a mix of local and international food. A lot of the local food here is pretty ‘brown’ and fried and sometimes my craving for fruits and vegetables is overwhelming! We stopped at a local farm for breakfast on our way out of Antigua back to El Salvador and it was delicious! Full of fruits and veg!

After a second great sleep in our villa in Antigua we were on the road again back to San Salvador to return the car and get ready to send Leighton home the following morning. We were slightly worried about running into another protest and getting delayed or even not being able to get back to El Salvador but there were no issues and the drive was relatively uneventful. Oh, except for the part where we almost weren’t able to cross the border! Apparently when we crossed into Guatemala we were supposed to get a stamp in our passports. Now the border crossing between Guatemala and El Salvador is a mess. On the way into Guatemala, first we had to drive into oncoming traffic to go around all the trucks waiting to cross (not sure how long they have to sit there but people were waving us by). Then we stopped at immigration, someone took our passports and handed us a piece of paper. And despite looking everywhere for another ‘legitimate’ check before proceeding, one guy just took a quick glance at our passports and waved us through.

Turns out someone on the Guatemala side was supposed to stamp our passports. But none of us can figure out where that was supposed to happen! So coming back, after again maneuvering past the long line of trucks, we stopped at the immigration office and the stamp issue was brought to our attention. We were sent around the building where everyone just shrugged and finally we were waved on with a ‘no posible’ as our parting words! The next immigration officer (presumably Salvadoran) also asked where our stamps were. He spoke some English and made Megan and Leighton come with him to check the passports in the system. Everything must have been fine because he sent us on our way! Another big sigh of relief!

We finished the day by checking in at Hotel Fotherhouse and going out for dinner at Merkato close by for many cocktails and some exceptional sushi!

Oh – and I forgot to mention that one leg of Leighton’s flight got cancelled so instead of leaving at 9:45am he left at 11:30 the next night so we had him for one extra day! And it just so happened that it was the day that Megan surprised me with a spa visit for a slightly early birthday gift! So Leighton got to celebrate with us too!!! Megan totally spoiled me at the spa with a massage, facial and lunch! Super sweet!!!

And that wraps up El Salvador and Guatemala with Leighton! Megan and I are in El Salvador for another week but I’ll cover that off later.