I got to San Pedro Sula at 8pm and had to wait another 3 hours for the night bus to Nueva Ocotepeque. I didn't quite understand why women were let in the bus first and all chose seats in the front of the bus fairly close to each other, but I was about to find out. I fell asleep in my sleeping bag with my ear plugs on and with my backpack right next to my feet, and woke up about an hour later to check the time and to discover that my old mobile, crappy camera, cheap watch and 6€ worth of money were gone from the side pocket of my backpack. The locked pocket with my notebook, passport and credit card was untouched. The thief didn't slash my backpack and left my camera bag and my wallet, probably so that I wouldn't discover my losses before he was out of the bus. But I did, so I talked to the driver and he told me no-one had got off the bus since we took off, so there was a chance I could get my stuff back. I went back to my seat and talked to the only five guys sitting next to me, knowing that one of them had robbed me. I said I've asked them to turn off the lights again and we can all go back to sleep: if my stuff is back when we wake up we won't have to stop at the police station to get everyone's bags searched.
Half an hour later I could only find my camera batteries on the floor (the battery compartment was a bit broken so they drop off easily), but none of the other stuff. The police didn't find anything either – the thief must've thrown my things off the window when I gave him the chance to do that. A 20-dollar note hidden inside an old lip case gave me a place to stay for the night as well as a bus ticket to the border (12L, 0,5€) and from there to San Salvador (3h, 1,5$, 1€) the next day.
El Salvador impressed me right from the first seconds when the nice border officer explained why they don't put new entrance or exit stamps on your passport when you travel within Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador or Guatemala. Then I missed my camera as we drove through the beautifully decorated village of Palma, with colourfull painted images covering most of the walls, houses and street posts (Google images will give you an idea).
As we got to San Salvador, I got my first introduction to the helpfulness of the local people, as two ladies I asked about the local buses told me they were heading to Santa Tecla too and that we could go together. They told me where to get off and warned me about 'friendly locals'. The same continued throughout the country – everyone I met wanted to help, give directions or even walk me to the place I was heading to without being too pushy, wanting to sell my anything or to get into my pants. The 50 nasty sexual remarks per block in Honduras also went down to two or three happy smiling 'hola bonita's. I soon found myself walking on the streets smiling, without being afraid of getting harassed – what a wonderful feeling!
My CS host Amado showed me around in Santa Tecla and gave some ideas on what to see in San Salvador. For a guy suffering from the first stage of Parkinson's he is remarkable CSer indeed and didn't seem at all worried when after a day of bargain shopping to replace the items I had lost on my last day in Honduras I had bought an old camera (3,2MB with 16MB memory card) for 25$ at a market place that some others on the CS forum a day later did not recommend for a gringo girl travelling alone. You can thank that market place for not having to my read this blog totally without pics from now on, even though trying to enlarge them might not work too well. The sun set pics from a moving bus don't really come out right.
I met up for a vegetarian lunch twice with Lauren, an American girl I had sent a CS request to for my next target city in El Salvador, who also turned out to be a friend of Amado's and a wicked chick to hang out with.
We chatted about my home region towns she had fallen in love with five years ago in Finland and she gave me some priceless tips. I followed her instructions first to the spectacularly beautiful church of El Rosario, then to a huge second hand store in the centre of Santa Tecla selling brand new looking American clothes mainly for 1-8$ per piece (Minna and Julia would've gone crazy – I nearly did too!) and then to the lovely village of Juayúa on the famous Ruta de los flores, 'the flower route', leading from Sansonate, a 1,5h from San Salvador, to Ahuachapán close to the Guatemalan border (under 2$ on the bus).
Casa Maceta (dorm bed for 7$) Lauren had recommended was amazing; full of beautiful interior details, surrounded by peaceful garden and containing currently only two people: American Cody, a long-term guest volunteering in the area, and Jikke, a Dutch girl running the place during the owner's holidays. They first introduced me to pupusas, which is a local delicacy, a corn or rice tortilla baked together with beans, cheese, vegetables, meats or all of these, served with a small salad and some spicy sauce both meant to be spread on top of the tortilla before digging in. After three of these yummies, at the attractive rate of 0,4$ each, I was completely stuffed. 
On the following day it was time a delicious lunch at the local weekend food festival and a refreshing swim by some waterfalls a 30-minute walk away. Some of us showed their bravery, some of us their great posing skills and muscles.
Joe, who I had met in the diving centre in Panamá joined us at the hostel and the night out was ready to begin! He drove all four of us to Apaneca for some fun bar hopping and after all the bars had closed some locals invited us to follow them to another place, maybe a hotel(?) owned by a friend of theirs. One of the local guys was celebrating his 30th birthday and just before we left I decided to give him a big kiss as present and rap in the car nearly all the way home – I wonder if the tequila shots someone bought me might've had something to do with this? Well, the morning wasn't too pleasant of course, but after conquering the hangover with chocolate milk, pizza and long skype calls to Anu and Erik, it was nice to chill and watch a movie with my new friends (who are also on CS btw).
I was planning to head to Tapachula in Mexico on Monday the pick up the stuff I had left in Mexico in April, but when I heard that the package send from Mexico city by my friend Carlos had not arrived to Oscar living in Tapachula, I decided to wait a few days and see more of Guatemala on the way.
The day was long: first a bus to Ahuachapán with Jikke (1h, 1$), then off to the border (something similar) and after exchanging only 10 dollars to Guatemalan quetzales believing I'd get to a cash machine soon a four hour bus ride to Guatemala city (25q, 2,5€). As soon as I got to the city, I jumped into a local bus (1q) and arrived to the Cobán bus terminal just in time to find out that the last bus would leave in five minutes. There was no way I'd make it to the closest cash machine but to my great surprise they let me pay my journey (45q, 4,5h) with a credit card. So after a quick lunch at the border and a total of nine hours on three different buses I still had 22q (2€) left, but I was a bit worried whether that would be enough for a dinner and transport to the city from the bus terminal in Cobán. However, my extremely interesting looking, but nice, deep-fried herb dinner, Pacaya, cost only 11q and the bus left my straight at the town main square, so spending my last notes on a cold beer seemed to be in order.
I stayed at Chipi Chipi hostel (dorm 35q , 3,5€) and after a quick run to the cash machine, nice bean&rice&grilled union dinner at one of the street food stands and a big dose of wifi, I was ready to book a gringo transport straight to the place I hadn't had time to visit the last time I was in Guatemala, Semuc Champey (3h, 45q, 4,5€) and have a good night sleep.
The next morning I got on the bus and sat next to English Debbie & Chris, whose names I can still remember probably just because I said I'd forget them in two minutes, studying Spanish by listening to a course on their iPod, but letting me disturb them with my chatter. We arrived to Las Marias hotel (also 35q for dorm) at a beautiful river shore after a pretty but bumpy ride with the rest of the bus continuing to different tours at different rates - about 250q per person for transport and visits to Semuc Champey and Lanquin caves seemed a bit overpriced to me though...
The reason I wanted to get to this place was Mike who I visited the hot waterfalls in Finca Paraiso with six months ago: he told me that if I adored that place I'd love this one too. So I didn't wait too long to hit the natural pools (entrance 50q, 5€, per day) the village was known for and, Mike turned out to be right - the emerald green but cristal clear water in the different pools connected by small waterfalls that you could walk or slide through to get to the next one was a pretty cool sight!
After the last pool you came to a place where most of the river water dived into the depths of a tunnel underneath the pools, but after hearing that four tourists had already taken a closer look at the place and never been found after that, I decided not the get too close to the edge. The first Finnish(!) couple I had seen in 6 months did the same and were still to be found when we walked back to the entrance together an hour later.
After swimming around, bathing in the waterfalls and sunbathing on some rock formations in the middle of it all, I was ready to be reunited with my book for a quiet night at the hotel that shut off the electricity at 10pm anyway. (Unlike the other hostel in the village which didn't have electricity at all.)
On Wednesday I took a morning tour to the near-by caves where residents of my hotel could get the 2 hour tour and river tube the 800m back to the hotel for 40q (4€). I mainly did it for the tubing and in a way it really was the best part of the experience – bring the only part when it was easy to get away from my guide... Guides seem to have interesting ideas of lone female travellers all over Latin America and the vip tour I got was another proof of that. I made up a boyfriend (interestingly called Erik) already when I found out how the groups for this half-swimming, candle-lit tour underground were divided: more than a dozen tourists from different countries with the one guide and me with the other one. They said this was because I was going to get a longer tour since I was staying at the hotel owning the place and the others were on the day tour and in a hurry to their location, but funny enough we were the first ones out of the cave an hour later.
The caves were cool, with interesting rock formations of the walls and in the ceiling, but the guide who was being very helpful offering his hand for support when climbing up the rocks and complimenting my appearance when I sat in the dark cliffs with only a bit of candle light hitting my bikini, made me quite uncomfortable and eager to stay close to the other group skipping all possible detours he recommended. We swam across the deepest bits holding a candle in one hand and climbed from one part of the cave to another, sometimes with a help of a ladder, sometimes just finding the right places to hold your feet or hands on making our way up the slippery rocks. I hurt my legs and arms a couple of times on the rocks hidden underneath the water surface even though the guide did tried to warn about themas best as he could, on the distance of 1km that we entered into the this cave spreading out to 13km in total.
At the very end I was stupid enough to agree to taking a shortcut through a waterfall on our way out and my guide was ready to give a hand as I slipped climbing through the small hole and half of my bikini top fell out of place from the pressure of the water. Surely not planned at all. A really pleasant guide. Sorry, but I'm not familiar with tipping and good luck finding work in tourism in Northern Europe.
The tubing back to the hotel in the sun shine was a lot nicer and after sharing my experience with other ladies at the hotel pier I could even recommend the same tour for a Canadian-Taiwanese couple staying in the room next door – as long as they'd go together.
In the afternoon I returned an (unguided) visit to a view place above the caves, and walked to the gorgeous waterfalls only 15 minutes from our hotel. New arrivals at the hotel kept me company while Kanadian Tyler laid in bed sick fearing it might be malaria. It's funny that everyone is afraid of getting malaria, but no-one seems to be eating pills, like popping two, nearly free tablets a week would be so difficult. Easy to say of course when you don't happen to be one of the people getting nasty side effects.
2 comments:
So gorgeous!! I want to go there!xx
That plce is really a must! And the flights might cost you more than getting to Spain, but living expences would even it out in a couple of weeks... So, GO!
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