El Salvador & Honduras

Most people skip El Salvador and Honduras due to their history. However we had only heard good things about them by the few people we had meet that had actually gone there! Also if you skip them it means 18-20hour minivan shuttle from Nicaragua to Guatemala for a ton of money. Honestly it's insane, El Salvador is a beautiful country and our favourite so far! 

The sunsets!  

However as the journey isn't often done it was very difficult for us to find out to get there on public transport. We refused to take a over price shuttle when we can do it for half the price. Our next destination was a turtle sanctuary near the small village of El Cuco. We wouldn't be able to do this journey in on day so we decided to head for San Miguel not far into El Salvador from the boarder to stay the night. 

Don't ask me why but we left our little hostel in Leon at least 2/3 hours later than we should have. This caused us a few problems. We had two chicken buses to the Nicaragua-Honduras boarder (El Salvador sand Nicaragua don't share a boarder). However the boarders themselves took 2 hours which knocked us off a lot. Once in Honduras we were meant to look for a mini van to the El Salvador boarder, there where none. A chap off a local coach came over to talk to us as they had a few seats left. He would charge us $20 to San Miguel, El Salvador. From Leon the shuttles are $60 so we managed the journey for $25 even with a coach. In hindsight the initial delay was a blessing, the journey took forever from this point. The roads were so bad, what should of been 2:30 hours took 5/6 to the boarder. After the boarder the coach had to go to an army search point. We all get off the bus. All the luggage is taken off and lined up. Bus is checked. Sniffer dog goes up and down the luggage sniffing away. Random selection. Of course they pick us, the only two foreigners on the bus. We take our bags into a small room and open them up to be searched.  

They obviously find nothing and then we wait around for another 20minutes after almost an hour, to get back on the bus. By this time time it's well after dark and by the time we roll up in San Miguel it's 9pm, 12 hour journey for what should have been 8hours. Exhausted we settled on a shitty motel across the road from where we were dropped. We had heard it's not best to walk around after dark in a non touristy town. The next morning we walked to the bus station, the town felt safe as anything. Found our bus super easy and off the El Cuco we go. Taxi ride later (back of a pick up) and we arrive at La Tortuga Verde. 

La Tortuga Verde is a rustic resort, most of the clients are El Salvadorian and just come in the day or weekend for the pool and beach day with a good restaurant. It is a great place to learn how to surf but we spent the next three days being super lazy. Eat. Hammock. Pool. Eat. Hammock. Beach. Sunset. Eat. Drink. Sleep. Repeat. Partly as it was too hot to do anything in the heat of the day. 

Pet pelicans.

Sadly in El Salvador the locals eat turtle eggs. The owner has started trying to educate the locals (of course a slow process they have eaten turtle eggs for generations), but he buys the eggs from the poachers and then keeps them safe until they hatch to be released on the beach. 

This is the reason we chose to come here as I wanted to see and help in a turtle release in an ethical and non touristy places. I have heard story's that in popular turtle spots you will have a beach full of idiots who step on the baby's or blind them with flashes.

There were only 8 of us on the beach just before sunset including the two volunteers who were releasing the turtles. 

After they had had all made there way to the sea we noticed one that had been pushed up the beach by a wave. We stayed with him cheering his tired self on till he was also at sea.  

After here we chose to head to El Tunco a popular backpackers spot further up the coast. Again transport here isn't very direct so we had to head in land to then come back to the sea further north. Total journey was 4 chicken busses and 1 taxi. Despite this and our lack of Spanish where no one speaks English we made it very easily and in good time. El Tunco is polar opposites of El Tunco, this town is purely for tourists and if felt good and weird to finally see someone who wasn't El Salvadorian. Our hostel was awesome with a pool, tons of hammocks, ping pong and pool tables. Also weirdly reading my brother's (Steven) blog when I got there I noticed he had stayed here 4 years when in El Salvador! Total accident. El Tunco was more touristy with tone of restaurants, smoothie stalls and night life but still had the do nothing vibe. We ended up staying long then planed (surprise surprise). We had a good small group with Ryan the Aussie diver and Alex another German . The boys had heard of a sunken fishing boat not far from the beach that is good to snorkel. The waves where very big and the current strong also the boat quite far out, so with Rad and I not being great swimmers we sat this one out.  

At the end of El Tunco beach there are some caves you can get to at high tide, so one morning we took a walk and wandered to the caves. 

Near to El Tunco there are some lovely waterfalls in a small town Tamanique. Chicken bus for 30/40 minutes and then you try and find a local guide to take you. A few people approached us quoting $5PP but we headed to the shop quickly first. Luckily a teenager came up to us offering $3PP and we went with him. 

We did need the guide as after a short road there are lots of trails trough coffee fields and people's land. First he took us to a calm bit away from other people at the first waterfall and jumping spot to take a dip and relax. Then he took us down further to the bottom of the 2nd waterfall where you could swim in the pool and right under the waterfall. To the left was a second pool and the top of the 3rd waterfall.  

Being able to lie down and look over the edge of a waterfall in such a stunning place was amazing.  

We couldn't go down any further to the bottom of that waterfall as we had not read about having to hike much to see these waterfalls and were all in flip flops. We went back to the jumping spot where he showed Rad where to jump. They were pretty high and scary as it looked like you would just get caught in the river and end up fall down the next waterfall. All in all we spent 5/6days chilling in El Tunco with the boys and they decided to come with us to our next stop. We didn't want to leave El Salvador yet and needed to break up our journey into the north of Honduras away so we stopped at Hua Jua on Ruta De Flores (a highway lined with flowers and very cute painted towns). 

Honestly apart from the few others in our hostel I don't think we saw any other foreigners during our 5 day stay. We visited another cute town on Ruta De Flores and the lake next to it. You can get trucks but we chose to walk, about half way an El Salvadorian couple driving past gave us a lift there super lucky.  

Unfortunately it wasn't the lake I had heard about a few weeks before as the boys did the research. It was very lack lustre and we just did a walk around the lake then made our way back to cook dinner and start of a bad daily habit of finishing a case of 24 beers between us every night.  

Near to Hua Jua is the volcano Santa Ana and we set of one day to hike it. Due to wrong information from either the lady at the hostel, or the guy in the bus station we couldn't make it to the entrance of the national park and the start of the trail. We got the bus she said to one town where we supposedly could get a second to the entrance. At this towns bus station we asked they said sure get on this bus. The bus went to Santa Ana the town and from there we could get the one to the park. We could have just gone from the start to Santa Ana town from Hua Jua. Unfortunately as we hadn't we had missed the bus and the next one (in 4hours time) would get us to the park to late to get a guide and do the hike. Not wanting to give up we looked on Maps.me (best app when traveling with no data) and found a trail on the other side of the volcano closer to us. We got back on the same bus to go back on ourselves halfway and find the trail. As I've mentioned we keep being told it can be dangerous here but we felt save the entire time. Our trail took us down a long path past a couple of villages where everyone was super friendly. Our trail on maps.me kind of died and so we tried to find others to the top and just ended up in the middle of corn fields with no way out.  

Frustrated we had to turn around as it had taken us 2 or 3 to get almost to the top but the sun would set in 3 hours(5pm) and we needed to get home. We didn't make it to the summit but it was a great hike with amazing views. We got back down super quick, the boys kept running the step downhill parts! After a 20/30 min wait the bus to Hua jua came along and we went home. Again got a case beers.... living up to stereotypes of Aussie Germans and Brits. I'd had enough of beer so spent a bomb on a bottle of wine. 

There are some waterfalls on the other side of town literally a 15/20 minute walk from our hostel. The lady at the hostel again said be careful don't take anything valuable so we took just enough money and one old phone. On the trail down to the waterfalls a chap pruning some bushes even told us to be careful.  

When we got there there was no one lovely and peaceful, but freezing the water was so damn cold!  

There were 3 waterfalls coming out of the cliff all about 2 minutes from each other, we did the short walk and looked at them all after swimming in the first. By the time we came back to number 1 a coach load of teenagers arrived to have picnic.  

As we left we asked another chap pruning bushes about a waterfall of the other side a fence that look great, he said it's dangerous over there are bandits. It seems in El Salvador there are good and bad areas as long you stay in the good bits you will have no trouble at all with more help and friendliness then you need. The boys left the next day but we stayed on as there was a food market on everybweekend. It ended up being bigger than I anticipated with a lot of food stalls going up around the town square and surrounding streets. We opted for pallea not something I thought I would find in El Salvador, the second I saw it i didn't care about the rest. Rad had grilled rabbit something I'd never had before. It was just like really lean chicken. 

The next day we made our way to Copan in Honduras! 

With the way the roads are the fastest route actually means going via Guatemala. Our journey included 3 chicken busses in El Salvador, boarder crossing into Guatemala, 3 mini vans in Guatemala, boarder crossing in Honduras and one mini van to the town of Copan from the boarder. Again one of those journeys that sounds really complicated but it was very straight forwards and we had lots of help from the bus/van drivers in finding connections.  

The little town of Copan is fully geared for tourism. As it was low season it wasn't so busy and the town itself is small so not a high population, so we never felt overrun by the tourism and we only stayed for 3nights. 

The attraction of Copan is the Copan ruins, the most detailed of all the Mayan ruins and our first ones of the trip! 

As the town was quite so were the ruins and you only saw people from a far. We were quite lucky as it had been raining quite badly but it was clear for our day of roaming around the ruins. 

The ruins aren't big, the temples aren't as tall as other sites however it was still very impressive. We had heard that the carvings are the best of the sites but we did not expect them to be so well preserved and detailed. 

We spent one day exploring the main site and the next day exploring a site a mile down the road, this one was mainly accommodation for the population. We had decided to only visit Copan in Honduras so our next stop is Antigua back in Guatemala!