Our transfer from Antigua Guatemala took us to the city of Santa Ana, the transport company would have dropped us directly at our next destination in the mountain village of Juayua for another £40 but we decided to try and do it ourselves on chicken buses as it would cost less than $1 USD.
The Chicken buses here are all old US school busses that have been pimped out with sound systems, paintings of Jesus and lots of mirrors and flashing lights. They also have a constant stream of people getting on the bus walking down the center aisle trying to sell everything from fresh fruit, bags of Coca-Cola, phone chargers and anything else you can imagine. But at least they have set routes and bus numbers here which makes things easier. We had a pretty uneventful ride until it came to getting off the bus. Lord knows how people signal they want to get off, we tend to just hope Somone else wants to get on or off near where we do and try and get out then as quickly as possible. But it’s always fun trying to lift 12kg bags from the bag rails above peoples heads while standing as the bus speeds around sharp corners. I nearly killed a woman getting mine down, luckily she was very forgiving! We weren’t quick enough to get off the bus in time so we staggered to the back of the bus and hung on for dear life until a local took pity on us and did the secret whistle that is apparently the signal for the bus to stop. Somehow we had managed to get off the bus directly outside our hotel which was a bit of luck.
The next morning we headed into the centre of town to book our 7 waterfalls hike. Once we got to the tour place they informed us there was a tour we could join in 20 minutes so we rushed back to our hotel, got changed, got water and cash for the tour and then ran back, hoping the banana we managed to get down our necks would be enough to sustain us.
We joined a tour with 5 other backpackers, our English speaking guide, Andreas, and our local guide, Carlos. As El Salvador isn’t on many backpackers lists, the trails tend to get overgrown, so our local guide, Carlos, was ahead of us with his machete cutting back the route and pointing out any dangers, of which there were actually quite a few… including wasp nests, spiders and eroded parts of trails where we could easily fall to our death. So that was fun.
We were also joined by two doggie guides, Tony and Fernanda, who made the track more fun but also more deadly. They tended to run through your legs while you were traversing tricky bits of paths or to jump from ledges above you when there was nowhere to land but the spot you were standing on, or if you didn’t manage to scramble out of the way in time, onto you..
The hike itself was really fun, we climbed through steep forests and coffee plantations to reach the top of a river flowing down steep rocks forming lots of waterfalls. Then to my surprise we were told we would be rappelling/ canyoning down the waterfalls. It would have been nice to have been informed of this before hand as I have quite the fear of heights… But I was at the top at this point, and far too proud to make a fuss or let on I was scared. Something an American girl in our group had no issue with and complained loudly. I don’t blame her, as the poor girl had been telling us how uncoordinated she was and had already fallen over on flat ground when we had only just started the walk.
It was also a much longer way down than any of us were expecting and we had to do sections at a time. At points we were all perched half way down a waterfall, waiting for ropes to be reset and our turn to descend the next section, which meant we got absolutely soaked through. Luckily, with the human guides helping and avoiding the, now wet, doggie guides hindrances, we all made it down the waterfall. We were all pretty impressed with ourselves until Carlos shot straight back up the waterfall, untied the rope we were using and came back down with the rope in one arm and a machete in the other…all while wearing crocs.
Once we had made it to the bottom we waded down the river for a while, which was no easy feat. The water was running so fast it was hard to see under the surface where it was safe to put your feet. The river bed also changed depth drastically within a few steps, so that one minute you were knee deep and the next step you were waist deep. That’s if you hadn’t lost your footing and fallen over completely, which happened a few times. So we were all using the larger boulders and rocks to steady ourselves, which Carlos kept saying not to do, but with nothing else to steady ourselves with we mostly carried on. That was until he pointed out a tarantula under one of the rocks, we quickly stopped after that. Turns out getting a bit wet from falling in isn’t that bad. Grace and the American girl were not fans of the spiders and rushed past. Carlos found this hilarious and took it as his queue to point out every huge spider he saw. There were a lot.
He told me most of them weren’t venous which I passed on to grace in English, he also told me there were way more in the forest they were just less easy to spot. I chose not to pass that one on. He also told me the one that was venomous and spiteful to watch out for was the black and ??? one. Very useful, I wasn’t able to understand the second colour, the most critical info of the day and I had no idea! (Andreas later told me he was saying black widow, no wonder I didn’t know the colour!).
After Carlos realised I spoke some Spanish he had a great time chatting away to me, I’m not sure it mattered to him I was only getting about 60% of what he was saying, so I just nodded along. Although I did enjoyy when he told me about his friend that had moved to London and asked if I’d seen him about, which I thought was very cute.
The last part of the hike was the least enjoyable, we had to climb back up to where we had started but this time while dripping wet. On the plus side we got a late lunch of boiled egg sandwiches, which after a long hike tasted much nicer than it sounds!
The next day we headed into the center of the village to sample the delights of the food market held in Juayua at weekends. It was made up of loads of different market stalls selling different sweets, drinks and plates of food, and even one man who tried to sell me a baby rabbit by just placing it in my hand. As cute as it was, I didn’t fancy trying to smuggle it through airports and borders…
Interesting side fact Bitcoin (an electronic currency) is a national currency as of 2018 in El Salvador, the only country in the world to list an e-currency as a national currency. Even the market stalls in this mountain village took bitcoin which was very surreal to see.
Our first stop was a coffee for Grace which was reportedly quite disappointing as it hadn’t been strained properly and had granules floating in it. Next we tried a pineapple drink, where they core a pineapple, blend it with some ice and serve it back to you in what’s left of the pineapple. It was 50 cents more to add rum, so we figured it would be rude not to. Although it was 9am so we got some judgement from the lady running the stall, it was a good call and very delicious.
Next up we decided to try a plate of food. Grace was a bit apprehensive as she’s not keen on meat cooked in central America, and after seeing markets where it’s not stored well, I don’t blame her. But I figured the locals wouldn’t eat at the stalls if they had been given food poisoning there previously so I was going to try my luck. Once we started to stop and look at the different sample plates at the front of the stalls loads of sample bits of cooked meat on cocktail sticks appeared and they were delicious so Grace agreed to share a plate with me.
We opted for a plate that was a bit of a mix of everything. We had a chicken chorizo sausage, a thin steak, pasta salad, Pico de gallo (a mix of finely cut tomato and onion), sweetcorn, a rice and bean mix, a tortilla, spring onions and a potato with ham and cheese. All for $6 USD! And we ate every bit.
After this we were pretty stuffed, but we did want to try a local sausage that was supposed to be nice. So we brought one of these to try and asked for it without all of the extras which the woman serving seemed quite offended by, she gave it to a guy on the stall next to hers to bring over to us. We thought this was strange and that we really must have upset her, but it turned out that the guy who brought it over just wanted to practice his English on us as he had been learning for some while but had never heard an English accent before. After our chat we got down to business trying the sausage, its taste was really nice, like a corn chorizo mix, but the texture was not great, it was very grainy with lumps. We had one section each and threw the rest away. At that point the woman at the stall really was offended…woops.
We were really quite full after this so we decided to have a walk around the market to walk it off. It was interesting and we saw people selling donkey rides, a man selling turkeys and a reptile house charging a $1 to hold a snake. So of course we had a go.
We also came across a stall selling different fruits and sweets and had to have a go. The woman gave us a sample of pumpkin covered in honey which was surprisingly very tasty although extremely sweet. Grace brought some other fruits in a sugary sauce that tasted kind of like a very sweet tomato but had a pip in the centre, we think it was maybe a crab apple.
We finished off the market with another delicious pineapple drink, before wadeling back to the hostel to pick up our bags and get on a chicken bus to El Tunco.
I’ll tell you all about El Tunco soon, lots of love Alice x