Antigua

Antigua is even better the second time around.  The streetscape of the colonial town is magnificent; the vibrantly colored colonial buildings and old churches (most destroyed in the 1776 earthquake which triggered Guatemala to move the country's capital from Antigua to Guatemala City) line the street with a single facade offering magnificent streetscapes throughout the city.  The town is filled with beautiful buildings, a variety of ethnic cuisines and, my favorite, vanilla lattes.  In fact, I would venture to say they might have the best vanilla lattes in the world here.  Nights are filled with salsa dancing.  I have been taking lessons and I really enjoy it.  My dancing might be a bit better than my Spanish, but that isn't saying much.  The hostel we are staying is in a great location and after they moved us from the tiny box room with a window that opened to the neighbors sewage drain trap, the experience got even better.

Semana Santa in Antigua is the largest celebration of Semana Santa in the Western hemisphere and second largest in the world. The cobblestone streets are decorated with elaborate carpets created from fresh flowers and/or dyed sawdust.  

The carpets are an amazing display of artistic creativity and are placed along procession routes and serve as a welcome mat for the many processions celebrating a variety of religious symbols, including the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.  Thursday night was the biggest night for the creation of carpets.  Starting at midnight and going until the wee hours of the morning hundreds of people worked diligently to create beautiful carpets for Friday's crucifixion procession.

The processions include floats carried by large groups of people bearing the weight of the floats on their shoulders while walking and swaying in unison.  The main float in the procession walks over the newly created carpets and the remains are removed by a dump truck immediately following.  The floats were amazing.  There are no words to accurately describe the setting;maybe it is best represented in photos and video.  The link should be up shortly.

Tomorrow we are heading to Mexico.  We should be back at the beach in a few days.

 

Playa del Tunco and Barra de Santiago

Our week in Playa del Tunco ended with a daylong surf contest, show casing some of the best surfers in El Salvador.  Given that Playa del Tunco is home to a world-class break, the competition was fierce.  The contest was scheduled to start at noon, which meant 2 in Salvadorian time.  It finished by the light of spotlights about 10 at night.  The surfing was amazing; I will post videos as soon as I have time. After the surf contest there was a chica reef contest (reef girl contest).  The much-anticipated chica reefs turned out to be a group of  16 year olds parading down the stage in the bar.  It seems so illegal?

From Playa del Tunco, we took 3 chicken buses to a pick up truck to the center of Barra de Santiago (aka The Barra) where we asked locals where the gringa lived.  This was how we found our friend Meredith who is living in the Barra as a peace corps volunteer. 

 The Barra is amazing.  Not only are there pupusas every day of the week (pupusas are Salvador's gift to food, a thick tortilla stuffed with any combination of beans, cheese, chicken, meat and shrimp.  They cost between 15 and 35 cents each and 3 is a full meal), but there are miles and miles of unspoiled, sandy, coconut palm lines beaches and no tourists.  Lonely planet has not yet caught on to this amazing location, easily my favorite of the trip so far. Barra de Santiago is a sand bar on the Pacific Ocean.  It is no more than a quarter of a mile wide with one side being the Pacific Ocean and the other being a protected estuary with mangroves.  

The estuary acts as a lake and is full of Salvadorians doing water sports, some on equipment dating back to the original days of water sports.  We spent a couple of days on the estuary with some of the locals.  We took out an inflatable rescue boat loaned to one of our hosts by the fire department.  The weight of 7 people and a leak in the boat could not stop the fun.  We had wooden water skis, nearly an inch thick, a surfboard, for surfboard-skiing as pictured here, and an original hydroslide.  I was reluctant to believe that this 20 horsepower motor would pull up anyone, but once we evacuated most of the people from the boat, it was able to inch out the power needed to struggle up.  It was great.  The locals who took us out are friends of Merediths and are a great indicator of the generousity of the people who live in the Barra.   On our last night, there was an impromptu Peace Corps party at Merediths one bedroom house.  We strung up 10-hammocks throughout the patio, and it was clear the party was going to go well into the night.  Veronica and I were leaving early the next morning for Antigua, and wanted to get some sleep before we left.  We were invited to sleep on a second story patio at a local's house.  They were kind enough to give us small mattresses and blankets.  We could see the ocean and fell asleep to the sound of the waves, nature and the distant bass coming from the reggae-ton being played at the discoteque at the circus.  It was amazing.

 I would definitely recommend visiting Barra de Santiago if given the opportunity.  Speaking Spanish is a must for this location, but quality of people and unspoiled beaches make it well worth the effort.

Playa del Tunco, El Salvador

The beach here is amazing.  And the surf too.  Tomorrow is the beginning of Semana Santa, a week of holiday in Central America leading up to the ultimate celebration on Easter weekend.  Playa del Tunco is kicking the week off with a surfing contest.  From the surfing I've seen so far, it should be amazing to watch.  

Mi blog en Espanol (sort of)

Hoy yo tuve un autobus de pollo a la supermercado y vi un perro comiendo de la diaper.

In English:  Today I took a bus to the supermarket and saw a dog eating out of a diaper.  

Does anymore need to be said?  

A local has adopted Veronica and me and is teaching us to surf.  It is great.  Surfing is so much more fun when someone is there to tell you when to go, where the waves are and to give you that much needed push when the wave comes.  Playa de Tunco continues to be amazing.  I will post photos soon. 

Through Managua to El Salvador

We started our trip to El Salvador by dragging our backpacks across the median on the Pan American Highway to catch a chicken bus to Managua.  Our hostel in Laguna de Apoyo, Crater's Edge, drives a group of people to Granada each day.  From the laguna, Granada is in the opposite direction of Managua, where we needed to go.  We took the transportation to Granada and upon seeing the bus to Managua our driver furiously flashed his lights and honked his horn, which, surprisingly, was understood to mean that the bus driver on the opposite side of the highway should pull over and pick us up. We grabbed out luggage and made our way, frogger-style, across the Pan American Highway.  Did I mention we were with a blind masseuse who was making his way home from a typical workday? 

Managua is the capital of Nicaragua and not a place I was overly excited to see.  We arrived late in the evening and had just enough time to eat some chicken and fried cheese from a street vendor (I love fried cheese) and settle into our hostel, which was secured by bars on the windows and prison style locked down gates on all sides.  I was thankful for these features when I heard the Nicaraguan gangbangers hanging out on the street later that night.  I can't say for sure what happened but at one point, I heard a small child screaming.  When I snuck my head out the window, a gangbanger was picking up the child and the group was quickly walking down the street, on a mission.

We got up at 3:45 am to catch the Tica Bus from Managua to San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.  It took us 11 hours to go 300 miles on the Pan American Highway.  The Pan Am is a well-paved road, but the cars here go so slow our trip averaged less than 30 miles per hour.  We stopped at the Honduras border and had fried chicken for breakfast and again in El Salvador to enjoy chicken fajitas courtesy of a gas station buffet.  The fajitas were pretty good and the gas station buffet was packed, quite a hit in El Salvador.

We ended up in Playa de Tunco, a beach on the Pacific Coast of El Salvador.  It is amazing here! The town is small, the beach is beautiful, the surf is great (the waves break in a picture perfect right-hand point break) and the locals are very nice.  There are a few tourists, but not enough to inhibit our desire to speak as much Spanish as possible.  I am traveling with a friend from Quebec.  With French as a first language, Spanish comes much easier to Veronica.  At least that is what I tell myself when I can't keep up.

Ometepe and Laguna de Apoyo

After a few days of partaking in the local festivities in San Juan Del Sur, it was a welcome relief to get to Ometepe.  Ometepe is a volcanic island located in Lake Nicaragua.  There are two volcanoes, Maderas (not active and about 1,300+ meters high) and Concepcion (active and about 1,600+ meters high).  Both are available for climbing, but we chose R&R instead.  We went to Playa Santo Domingo, a small black-sand beach located between the two volcanoes.   Day one included a trip to Ojo de Agua, a small mineral pool said to either reduce your age by ten years or keep you the same age for the next fifteen.  Not sure how long one needs to spend in the water to achieve either of these, but I am hoping for the later.  Day two included beach time on the shallow beach of Playa Santo Domingo.  The water was warm and a welcome change from the salt water from the Pacific Ocean. 

 

After Ometepe, we headed to Laguna de Apoyo, a crater lake located outside of Granada.  It is amazing!  Very tranquilo and beautiful.  The lake water is even warmer than Ometepe, there are tons of hammocks, kayaks and only a few people.  The sounds of nature are amazing, the birds sound like musical instruments and it's a much better wake up call then the roosters.  This is quite possible my favorite place in Nicaragua so far.  There are only two hostel options here, one is bring your own food, and the second is Crater's edge.  The food is amazing and the atmosphere breeds relaxation along the waterfront.

Tomorrow, we head to Managua for then night in order to catch a 5am bus to El Salvador to surf along the Pacific Coast.  Somehow my 'trip to Costa Rica' has taken on a life of its own in countries north of Costa Rica.  

I added a link to more photos on the right.

I got stuck....

I was planning on leaving Friday to go to Isleta de Ometepe, an island in Lake Nicaragua, but I got stuck.  By stuck I mean sucked into the ever-interesting vortex of nightlife in San Juan Del Sur.  San Juan Del Sur is a quaint local town with a few tourists and has quite a late night party scene.   Around 10pm you can start getting a flavor for where the evening may go.  It's exactly like college spring break: Drunk girls dirty dancing to DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince and Milli Vanilli (actual Milli Vanilli, not Queen. I have heard almost as much MV here in the past 3 weeks as I did back in the day).  Guys hovering in the corners waiting for the proper time to pounce on their prey. Shots. Short skirts. More shots.  People teetering on the edge of falling off a barstool.  And lots of making out on the dance floor.  It's quite possibly the best people watching ever.  Every evening is the same.  The night starts at The Iguana or Coquito bar, then moves to the Crazy Crab (the discotheque of San Juan), which is open until 5 or 6 or 7am, not sure.

 

I only recently discovered this part of San Juan and the town is not all Flor de Cana and Tona (the local rum and beer).  Other compelling factors influencing my decision to stay in San Juan Del Sur a little longer include:

 - The seafood.  $10 for 3 fantastic lobster tails

 - Chicken Gordon Blue (not sure who Gordon is, but he's on every menu here)

 - Vanilla Latte.  There is one gringo coffee shop with vanilla lattes and wi-fi.  I am hooked again.

 - Death announcements are made from a truck, on a bullhorn.  The truck drives around town for hours notifying every one of the details.  This is kind of morbid, but the randomness makes it note-worthy.

 - I met some really great people in my final week of Spanish School, so I wanted to stick around for a bit longer.

 - Fantastic sunsets on the Pacific, my favorite.

I am planning to leave on Monday.