Goal 78: Thanksgiving in Central America

Annie and I have been on many wonderful adventures in the last few years. One of the first ones we went on was to El Salvador and Guatemala in Central America. We had been talking nonchalantly about a trip over Thanksgiving break for some time, but for one reason or another plans never congealed...until the Friday before Thanksgiving week when we booked flights into El Salvador for less than 24hrs later, and flights out of Guatemala, with no hotels or travel arrangements in between.

We arrived in San Salvador, El Salvador and made our way to a hostel we booked at the airport. The first day we found that street markets were all over, and that people don't generally walk ANYWHERE at night because the civil war is still fresh in everyone's mind--which is to say that people wouldn't say it's dangerous to walk, they would just strongly recommend against it.

Our first stop was to take a chicken bus out to the coast where we would take a surfing "lesson" and hang out on the beach.

Then we took busses across the country out along the "Ruta de las Flores" (roughly Route of the Flowers) stopping to take a hike out to see waterfalls and some fancy flowery restaurants.

We stayed in remarkable little hostels the entire time, and found El Salvador quite a lovely country. People were very apparently religious, and there were churches everywhere. All the chicken busses had bible quotes written all over, and there was endless religious imagery.

A lovely hostel we stayed in for our last night in El Salvador

It was also apparent that no one had any money. People drink water out of bags (instead of bottles) and even the nice areas of town were small and normal. There were no large buildings, no financial districts, no rich neighborhoods.

We took a chicken bus to the Guatemalan border and walked across to pick up another bus to Antigua, Guatemala.

The old buildings ranged from old, to VERY old

We once again found ourselves in a very unique little hostel that was basically in the heart of Antigua and was run by a very kind gentleman. We would set up here to take a trip out to lake Atitlan.

Skybridge Antigua

After about a 3.5hr chicken bus ride out to the lake, we found out we could actually boat across it to some of the tiny towns, and I'm not one to pass up a boat ride.

Goal 78: Go to an undeveloped Village

Now I've been debating with myself as to whether this should really count or not. In the end, my gut says that this is really what I was looking for (even if it wasn't what I was imagining when I wrote the goal).

This little town overlooks the double volcanos of Lake Atitlan

The town was only reachable by boat, and most of the homes were built of simple materials with no power or utilities. We walked all around it to see how people were living in this isolated spot without modern convenience.

We talked to some children who were hanging out

One of the most amazing things about it was just how beautiful the view was. It's really no wonder people would set up here.

Basically the entire town can be seen here

Next we took an overnight sleeper bus to Tikal in northern Guatemala. Theses Mayan ruins were beautiful and expansive with many towers and a huge plaza area.

A raccoon-type animal meanders about 

From the top of one of the towers you can see the rainforest with a couple other towers peeking out

Status: Happy to remember