Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala and Spa
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We visited the biggest attraction in Guatemala, La Antigua in 2017. So to find something interesting not too far from Puerto Quetzal, our choice was to go to a spa. The place is about 90 min driveLue lisää
We visited the biggest attraction in Guatemala, La Antigua in 2017. So to find something interesting not too far from Puerto Quetzal, our choice was to go to a spa. The place is about 90 min drive from the port.
So we booked a semi-private tour. We did not know how many people will be on this tour, but were happy to find out only us and our friends, Erin and Mui on probably 12 passenger van.
On the way to the Santa Teresa spa, we made a quick stop to take pictures of Volcan de Fuego. There are 37 volcanoes in Guatemala and 3 are active. We witnessed an active one.
Upon arrival to this place, we were directed to take a shower and then go for 10 min in the hottest pool of 105F (41C). After that to 75F pool, then 98F and the last one is 88F.
During this process we were given Mango and Berries smoothies.
Then we had a free time before one hour massage for $42 dollars. After massage, we were completely relaxed. The massage was amazing!
After massage we were served lunch. Boris had a hamburger and I had grilled chicken.
Full and happy, we got back in our van and drove back to the ship.
We also made a short stop at Lake Amatitlan.
Back on the ship, shower and a little rest.
By 6:00PM, Erin and Mui came to our cabin and we had Mexican white wine on our balcony. Then light dinner at Terrace Cafe. After that we watch a movie in our cabin. That was the end to our day.Lue lisää
Nach dem Besuch in der Stadt ging es zurück aufs Land. Genauer gesagt auf die Ruta de las Flores. Noch genauer nach Juayúa.
Die Fahrt war nicht sehr angenehm, denn wir mussten zuerst mit dem Bus nach Sonsonate und dort umsteigen. Leider schienen alle noch kurzfristig zu ihrer Familie fahren zu wollen und so waren die sonst schon engen Busse komplett voll und wir mussten unsere Rucksäcke auf den Schoss nehmen. Plotschnass kamen wir in Juayúa an und mussten dann noch den Hügel hinauf zum Hostel laufen.
Nach unserer Ankunft lernten wir ein paar Leute aus dem süssen kleinen und sehr familiären Hostel kennen. Die meisten davon kamen am 24. am Morgen auch mit uns auf die Wasserfalltour. Die Tour führte uns zu insgesamt sieben Wasserfällen. Wir wateten durch Wasser, kletterten Wasserfälle hinauf und schwammen sogar durch Wasserkanäle durch den Berg. Die dreistündige Tour war die 10 Dollar absolut wert, kamen wir doch an atemberaubend schönen und idyllischen Orten vorbei, die wir alleine nie gesehen hätten, da sie so abgelegen waren, dass man ohne Guide niemals dahin gefunden hätte.
Als wir zurück kamen, riefen wir unsere Familien an und am Abend kochten wir uns Rösti mit Käse, Speck und Spiegeleier, bevor wir mit fast allen aus dem Hostel in eine Bar gingen und dort etwas über den Durst tranken. Denn der 24. ist hier in El Salvador ein Tag um Party zu machen und zu saufen. Um Mitternacht wurde dann auch überall Feuerwerk gezündet.
Der 25. startete dementsprechend entspannt. Rebecca und ich gingen uns das Städtchen mit den vielem Markt- und Essensständen anschauen, liessen uns zu einer 15-minütigen Rundfahrt in einem Touri-wägelchen überreden und schauten uns noch ein Reptilienhaus mit diversen Schlangen, Echsen, Fröschen etc. an.
Am Abend gingen wir dann noch mit den üblichen verdächtigen aus dem Hostel zu einem Rodeo im Nachbardorf. Natürlich nicht ohne davor noch bei Oscar (der Bar vom 24.) ein paar Biere zu trinken.
Das Rodeo war ganz witzig und natürlich waren wir die einzigen Ausländer und wurden auch dementsprechend vorgeführt. Aber die Leute hier sind echt herzlich und interessiert und versuchen auch immer ihr bestes, mit uns Englisch zu sprechen. Obwohl es meist viel einfacher wäre, würden sie einfach Spanisch sprechen, denn dann würde ich wenigstens verstehen, was sie sagen.
Am 26. hiess es dann für uns Abschied nehmen und mit dem Chickenbus ging es nach Santa Ana.Lue lisää
Ein beliebtes Ziel in El Salvador ist die Ruta de las Flores, vor allem dann, wenn die Blumen blühen. Als wir dort waren, war davon wenig zu sehen. Auf der Route liegen mehrere Dörfer, wir waren in Juayua, das zentral liegt und so ein guter Ausgangspunkt für Ausflüge ist.
Das Highlight in Juayua waren die 7 Wasserfälle. Amanda und ich sind gemeinsam mit einer einheimischen Führerin zu den Wasserfällen, einen davon mussten wir hochklettern und das bei salvadorianischen Sicherheitsvorkehrungen (keine). Auf der gesamten Wanderungen haben wir keine anderen Menschen getroffen.
Wir sind mit den lokalen Bussen in andere Dörfer gefahren, aber so richtig viel war nicht geboten.
Wie schon in Santa Ana haben wir nur vereinzelt, wenn überhaupt, Touristen gesehen und alles war etwas chaotisch. Aber nach 2 1/2 Monaten war das auf jeden Fall eine spannende Erfahrung und das Tolle an El Salvador.Lue lisää
Bevor wir El Salvador den Rücken kehren, besuchen wir noch einige schöne Wasserfälle. Wir sind am Beginn der Ruta de las Flores und fahren zunächst zu den Los Chorros Wasserfällen. Es geht eine enge Piste den Berg hinunter bis wir vor einem Gittertor nicht mehr weiter kommen. Hier parken wir auf dem Weg und öffnen das Tor, um uns Zugang zu den Wasserfällen zu verschaffen. Einige Arbeiter, die am Weg arbeiten, sagen uns freundlich, dass wir nach zwei Stunden wieder zurück sein müssen, da dann das Tor abgeschlossen wird. Nach einigen steilen Metern bergab erreichen wir die Wasserfälle. Großartig, wir planschen und genießen das Schauspiel der Natur!Lue lisää
Nach einigen heißen Tagen am Meer sehnen wir uns nach etwas erträglicherem Klima. Der Kratersee Coatepeque lockt uns mit seinem kristallklaren Wasser und milden Temperaturen. Hier ist es leider nicht so leicht ans Wasser zu kommen, denn der See erfreut sich großer Beliebtheit bei den San Salvadorianern. Die Elite des Landes hat das Ufer fast lückenlos unter sich aufgeteilt und die einfache Bevölkerungsschicht besiedelt die andere Seite der Straße, die um den See herum führt. Wir finden schließlich ein Wassergrundstück, welches gegen ein kleines Entgelt der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich gemacht wird. Da wir uns auf dem Hinweg in der Einöde verfahren haben, kommen wir erst mit Einbruch der Dunkelheit an. Kurze Zeit später hören wir harte elektronische Musik. Es ist Samstag und hier wird heute mit anstrengender Musik die Nacht zum Tag gemacht. Wir können dabei nicht wirklich gut schlafen und tun uns selbst etwas leid. Der nächste Tag entschädigt uns dafür. Uns gefällt es hier so gut, dass wir unseren Aufenthalt noch um einen Tag verlängern.Lue lisää
Tous les samedis et dimanches à lieu un festival de la gastronomie locale, les salvadoriens apprécient cet événement.
Il devait avoir un peu plus d'ampleur auparavant.
Nous goûtons enfin le Yuca frita (manioc frit) accompagné d'une sauce piquante et salade, du yuca mais en boule de pâte moelleuse et sucré frit et une boule de maïs sucré aussi frit.Lue lisää
Before you ask, it's pronounced "why-ooh-ah". But none of us have managed to grasp nor remember this in the last couple of days we've been here.
Juayúa is one of a few villages that make up the Ruta de las Flores or the Route of Flowers, that extends 34km through the mountains of eastern El Salvador. To be honest though the area didn't particularly offer what was promised - beautiful villages filled with culture, scenery for hiking and mountain biking...and we didn't see an awful lot of flowers either. You can see that maybe it was a lovely area once upon a time, but currently it isn't really one for the memory bank.
Turning up we had no accommodation booked due to shoddy internet in El Tunco making even just loading a a news article painful so we had to make the rounds at the hostels we knew of. The first one turned us away because they were at capacity. The second one almost did too until Mike realised that Cat's name was on the booking sheet as we'd emailed them a day or so prior but had no reply (or thought we hadn't) due to the internet. So it turned out we had a booking after all. Win.
One thing this area is well known for is coffee, given the prime conditions for coffee plantations. The mountains here are covered with them. The owners of the hostel happened to also own an organic speciality coffee farm/business and considering so far we'd only seen the farms and none of the processing afterwards, we thought we'd check it out and find out more.
We piled into the back of a pickup truck headed for the hills. First stop was the the mill, where the coffee berries arrive freshly picked from the plantation. Here they go through a mixture of different
processes, depending on the quality and the ultimate destination of the coffee beans, whether it be for commercial or specialty coffee.
The commercial coffee is immediately washed and rid of the pulp of the berry, leaving just the beans - whereas the specialty coffee skips this process and goes straight to the next step which is drying. By leaving the skin of the berry on and therefore keeping the honey inside too, this means the speciality coffee beans then absorb these flavours in the drying process.
Drying also has options too. For the commercial coffee in El Salvador it's usually dried just laid out on the ground on tiles, picked up again at the end of each day and then relaid out again the next morning - repeated for about a week. Specialty coffee is usually dried using African beds. These are made of a rectangular wooden frame with mesh for the coffee to be laid out on and rotated every hour for about 6-7 hours each day before being taken in for the evening too. Given the attention and employees required to be present for this method, it's much more expensive which is why the commercial coffee is not dried this way. When the coffee has reached about 10% humidity (vaguely known by the workers but also tested by a machine) it's sufficiently dried. Once dried, the coffee is sorted again by density, the heavier the better. Defects (such a bug nibbles) are counted and/or taken out and again this decides the quality of the coffee. After all that, it's ready for roasting.
From the mill we went to the coffee plantation for one of the types of coffee beans produced by Lechuza. It's basically the end of coffee picking season here so not a lot of berries were left on the trees but we got the gist of the set-up, with wind-breaking trees either side and larger trees down the middle off the coffee trees to offer shade from the sun.
Lastly we headed to a nearby house which had a shed to the side which was almost as if it was out of some trendy home or interior design magazine and somewhat out of place in the depths of a country like El Salvador. Inside was a state of the art coffee machine, a roasting machine and some grinders. Oh and lots of coffee. The boys were somewhat losing it at this point but first we had to learn how to roast some coffee. Controlled temperatures, timers and graphs are all involved in ensuring each different type of coffee bean is roasted to perfection. It took about 12 minutes to roast 9 pounds of coffee beans, taking them from white/pale yellow to chocolatey brown and losing a pound of weight in the process.
Finally it was time to sample the coffee. First we tried the freshly roasted coffee using chemex but it was quite strong and bitter. Usually the coffee is rested for three or four days after roasting before being used or sold. Subsequent coffees were made with rested coffee and before we knew it we'd been made about 4 or 5 different coffees each. Espressos, cappuccinos, macchiatos - you name it, he'd make it. It's fair to say the boys were loving it. Cat and I aren't such massive fans of coffee so we were leaving this one to the boys for the most part!
It was an interesting excursion, realising how many different processes go into making the coffee beans reach the point to where they can be used to make a drink. I think it's made us all appreciate why coffee can cost as much as it does at home sometimes too, given the amount of people that have worked on it before it even hits the cafe or the shelves.
All coffeed out, the following day we caught a bus to one of the other towns on the Ruta de las Flores called Ataco. Unfortunately not just made of tacos as the name may suggest, it was another little village town which is essentially a bigger version of Juayúa, with many colourful murals lining the streets. It wasn't an overly memorable place otherwise but it gave us somewhere different to wander around for a couple of hours.
That afternoon we trudged to a waterfall looking for an escape from the heat. After wandering for over the expected 30minutes we were starting to wonder if we'd taken the wrong path when we stumbled across the waterfall we were after. Not wonderfully spectacular but the water was coming straight from the mountains so it offered a very fresh dip!
Our last morning in Juayúa required a revisit to a wicked cafe we'd found on our first day for brekkie, a random stop at a reptile museum which had some seriously large snakes and a quick feast at the weekend markets that were starting up. We're told Juayúa gets rather busy on the weekends due to said markets so we were happy to avoid the crowds. Time for some more chicken bus trips - this time heading for the capital, San Salvador.Lue lisää
Ruta de las Flores, the flower route.
Well we made it - in case you were wondering. It was a little over three hours in a packed, sticky, bumpy bus, with a midway change over in Sonsonate. If there was an opposite to the phrase 'no sweat', I would use it here, my spinal channel made the Waikato river look like a dried up creek.
Juayúa (pronounced why-oo-ha) is a tiny agricultural town, not famous for anything other than it's location on the (now fading) flower route. Ruta de las Flores was once a beautiful highway lined with blossoming flowers and colourful murals, punctuated with delicious coffee, intrepid hiking, waterfalls and views to die for. Nowadays a lot of the magic is gone, at least it feels that way...
As the internet at La Sombra was horrible, we didn't receive any confirmation on our accommodation booking. Therefore our first activity in Juayúa was finding a place to stay. On our second attempt we found Hotel Anáhuac. Conveniently they had received a booking in our name and we quickly got settled into two fantastic private rooms. Spacious, cool and trendy with modern art, tiled floors and white plaster walls (plus ensuite!). Probably our most luxurious accomodation since Chicago! To top it off, they had specialty coffee and an avocado tree. Great find Cat!
For the inconvenience of finding food, and the lack of appealing options during our transport, we had not yet eaten and hangry humans were beginning to appear. La Cafeta sprung itself upon us with a Sydney-esque decor and menu. We seized the opportunity for a well overdue and delicious late breakfast and as a result, moods started to turn. Phew! The remainder of the morning disappeared around the hotel, reading, swinging in hammocks and catching up on the internet and lost sleep.
Actually, there's not an awful lot to do in Juayúa, so once we had circumnavigated town we decided we better sign up for one of the two tours on offer. Coffee and waterfalls have both been reasonably well covered already so it was almost a flip of a coin as to which we chose. In the end, the scent of the local bean for sale at the front desk, combined with the prospect of unlimited coffee sampling won us over. Specialty coffee 'Lechuza Cafe' here we come.
You're probably reading this and thinking 'more coffee?? Boring!'. Well I was bordering on that same thought when we piled into the tray of a truck to depart on a private tour. At $20US pp, my head was spinning at the opportunity cost. However I'm delighted to report it was worth every penny and if you want to find out more about your daily black magic, I'm aiming to post a seperate blog all about it.
In hindsight, we shouldn't have done the tour so late. We ended up consuming a fairly hefty amount of coffee which didn't stop until around 5.30pm. It's fair to say we didn't sleep too well that night!
MERC got out twice in Juayúa. Elevation-wise the running was brutal, but the heat was slightly more forgiving than El Tunco meaning for once in a long time I actually enjoyed a run! We're yet to engage in combat with a dog, but we're (I mean Mike) very wary of their presence. We had a couple of narrow misses up in the hills here...hopefully that's the worst we see!
Ataco (cue: dad jokes) is another stop on Ruta de las Flores which we visited briefly by chicken bus. There's really not a lot to say about this place aside from some great murals and a ginormous cross. I almost felt sorry for the place, with it's dwindling volume of tourists and fading markets it felt a bit used and abused. The feeling was swiftly forgotten by the arrival of a darn good pork tortas, clearly demonsrating the extent of my emotional allegiances.
On a hot afternoon in Juayúa we trudged down to the local waterfalls and thoroughly enjoyed a refreshing dip in the man made pool. The water was spurting out of the middle of the cliff from a natural spring, caught halfway down in a man made pool, then disappearing back into the cliff to power a hydro dam. All very confusing to one who just wanted relief from the heat.
By the sounds of things we got out of Juayúa in the nick of time. Saturday brought markets and lots and lots of people. We snuck out on a very sweaty chicken bus to Sonsonate and upon arriving, met queues and queues of people waiting to board our bus in the opposite direction. SO thankful that wasn't us! We made good time to San Salvador, covering the distance in not much more than 2.5hrs at a per head cost of $2USD. Making money!Lue lisää
Zwei Tage aufm Bauernhof. Hühner, Pferde, Esel, Enten, Schafe Hunde, große Ziegen, kleine Ziegen, Zwergziegen und Babyziegen... hm, nicht eine Katze.
We made a bad call and rather than taking the scenic route we we ended up crawling through the clogged roads of Guatemala City. After a challenging 3 hours or so we finally reached the Guatemalan/El Salvador border. Then had negotiate a vehicle export and a vehicle import, which isn't easy even in your own language! On top of that it was stinkingly hot so we were pretty shattered by the end of it. We even couldn't be bothered to go to the animal section so Maya is technically an illegal alien in El Salvador!
First impressions of El Salvador, reputedly the most dangerous country in the world after Syria, are good. Roads are decent and everything seems pretty clean and modern. We drove a further hour to the nice town of Juayua (why-You-a), and had a lovely meal of ribs and veggie laguna (you can guess who had what!).
We needed to stall a day, as it can be a bit dangerous not doing some things not on the weekend when there aren't a lot of people about, so we spent the day enjoying the hotel garden, enjoying pupusas (the local delicacy), and exploring the nice little town.
In the morning we did a short walk to Los Chorros (7 Waterfalls), and we were simultaneously worried and reassured that there were 4 heavily armed army and policemen. There were a bunch of lovely pools and I was gutted I didn't have my swimmies with me. Half an hour later we were back in town and weekend food market had kicked off. Jo had an amazing massive shrimp and steak kebab (for 5 bucks!) and I had decent ribs (I know, again!).Lue lisää
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Departamento de Sonsonate, Sonsonate