El Salvador, different day, different country
Trip Start
Oct 10, 2006
1
19
110
Trip End
Ongoing
Cara Sucia and El Bosque Imposible,
El Salvador
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
El Salvator is very similar to Guatamala in a lot of ways. The people are lovely, very helpful and trustworthy. Fortunately, these traits seem to have also extended into the police force unlike that of their neighbours.
El Salvador's landscape is also simlar to that of Guatamala, lush, rainforest-like vegetation and myriad imposing mountains with many contrasting shadowing greens underneath a beaming sun. Less rivers and lakes ply El Salvador but it would still be a beautiful country if its beauty wasn't tainted somewhat by an immense volume of litter
Jose..foto, foto, foto, psycho
. There is a huge litter culture in El Salvador and this is obviously a great pity.El Salvador also has the dollar which was very strange for us, especially when you were charged a "kwa-tah" (quarter) on the buses! I suspect that it won't be long before all Central American countries adopt it as their own respective currencies are struggling (Panama already has it as does Ecuador farther south) The El Salvadorans have the same complaints as us with the Euro..it may as well be paper with all that you can buy with it.
El Salvador also has the famous chicken buses that you find in Guatamala but most don't have the roof racks where travellers' backpacks are perilously (prob spelt wrong sorry) placed.
Anyway, it was an enjoyable solitary week there. We started off our trip in Bosque Imposible
CARA SUCIA Jan 9th 2007. No globalization really.
Just a busy, untouristy border crossing where we stayed one night so as to make our way up to Bosque Imposible the following day
El BOSQUE IMPOSIBLE...Jan 10th-12th, 2007..C'mon give us a break. It's a national park, we hardly found a Maccy Ds
the tent..and some loser
!El Bosque Imposible (the impossible forest), called so for a reason. The people in Cara Sucia were not used to tourists and even less used to, it seemed, giving info on Bosque Imposible. We eventually found a pick up the next morning to take us to what we thought was the park's entrance. But we were actually left stranded 5km below a very steep ascent-it was the hardest 5km of my life. It was steep, steep, steep. The sun glared down on my shoulders, the sweat dribbled down between my shoulder blades, I had one bag on my back, one on my front, a sleeping bag in one hand and a gallon bottle of water in the other..NOHT good as Aidin Ni D would say.
We struggled (well at least I did, Collins is a good bit fitter than me..fecking boys) and what's more El Salvadorans seem to have a serious problem measuring distance. When in Mexico or Cuba, never believe the people when they say somewhere is too far to walk to. Either they're taxi drivers or just lazy. When in El Salvador, never believe anyone that tells you some place is 3km away. Three kilometres seems to be a word that covers anything from 5km to 15. I thought we had been saved at one stage when a red pick up passed. I thumbed them down (don't worry Mum, completely safe!) They said they'd give us a lift but they were only going two more blocks. Even two blocks would be a help, I gasped severely out of breath..20 minutes later, we meet them COMING down from where ever their two blocks were...and we had been solidly walking all that time
top of the forest
.The Bosque itself was great. It was the first time in this trip that I have felt that we have gone to a land where not many people have gone before. We were the only tourists in the forest and we finally got to use Collins crappy Lidl tent after him lugging it round all this time. We didn't see many animals but it was good exercise and I think I know all there is to know (or at least all I wanna know!) bout trees. We had a freak of a guide, if you ever go there, avoid Jose Martinez. He's likely to scare you away with his creepy looks or else all the animals when he wails "fota, fota, fota" every five minutes...all I can say is thank God I had a digital camera rather than roll.
After two nights of camping in the wilderness, we headed to Santa Ana with the aim of climbing Cerro Verde the next day..thankfully it wasn't as impossible to leave the forest as get there
