And I thought Honduras went fast! We had 8 days left on our four-country visas, and blew through El Salvador and Nicaragua in that time. Basically, we did two things, scope out La Ruta de Los Flores in El Salvador and Granada, Nicaraqgua. I think it’s fair to say we have now technically been to those countries and can tick them off the list, but have only impressions and really know little more than we did before.
So, this story can be short. It took almost all day to leave Honduras and get some distance into El Salvador. We got to a town and spent the night in a No-Tell Motel across the road from the bus stop to continue on. No wifi, but the porn was on cable so we didn’t have to worry about bandwidth. The next day, we went to the main tourist town on the Route of Flowers, Juayua. Here’s Juayua…
La Ruta is one of the main tourist destinations in El Salvador, along with the beaches and the capital. There aren’t any more flowers along there than anywhere else at this time of year in Central America. I guess it’s catchy draw, though. What you notice immediately after coming across the border from any of the neighboring countries is how relatively colorful it is. All I know is what I saw in three days, and maybe it’s only around there, but everywhere around there is brightly painted. The people dress in bright colors. At least in a couple of the villages, mosaics are popular. All in all, I can see why tourists enjoy coming to this area.
There are, of course, flowers. Myung has taken hundreds of flower photos over the years. Here’s a few from there.
Another thing almost everyone does during their stay in Juayua is walk to this falls. It only takes about a half hour to get there on foot. It’s modified natural. The water blasts out of the rocks and from above. The pool and the artificial looking lower part is obviously man-made. It’s still nice.
On weekends, there’s a food fair. It was gourmet, by Central American standards. That red tint in the one picture is from bright sun through the red tenting over the area. Gotta love the frog on a stick.
We like ceviche.
From there, we bolted for Nicaragua. They put their best foot forward at the border post. Another thing you notice is El Salvador is more prosperous than Guatemala, Honduras or Nicaragua.
Granada was our only stop in Nicaragua. For the first 200 years of Spanish rule in Central America, Granada was second only to Antigua in importance. It isn’t nearly as preserved as Antigua. It remained an important city after time passed Antigua by. Old buildings were replaced, whereas in Antigua there was nothing happening after the capital was moved to Guatemala City, so the buildings were left to crumble on their own. It’s still a very nice city to visit, with enough of it’s colonial heritage left to give you an idea of how it was.
Granada sits on the huge Lake Nicaragua, which is the dominant geographical feature in Nicaragua. While we were there, there was a stiff breeze off the lake for the whole time, making the hot temperatures quite bareable. The east side of town features a wide prominade, lined with many mostly fancy restaurants, heading toward the water. Then you get there.
Actually, much of Granada is a bit scruffy. Here’s the market and a street off to the side. There seems to be a lot of this in Nicaragua, from what I could tell from Granada and looking out the bus windows.
The good news is they sell ceviche by the bucket-full for about $2/pound. Yum.
I don’t remember whether I was asking directions or negotiating the price of eggs, nor if she was pointing the way or stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
We had two full days in Granada and got into Costa Rica in the afternoon of the last day of our visas. So that’s it for the CA-4 countries. There is so much more to see, someday I’d like to come back.
We’ll be in Costa Rica and probably Panama for a month and a half. It’ll be nice to not zoom around like we just did after leaving Antigua. This phase of our journey will be completely different. For the first time since Africa, we have a vehicle. Costa Rica is very Americanized; we rented this puddle jumper from Alamo.
We will be looking at a lot of nature stuff and for places to maybe plunk down for an extended period. I’ll try to be timely with the posts.
Until next time, be well, all of you.