slightly adventurous

So, Lulu and I decided to go and be slightly adventurous today and by ´slightly´I mean COMPLETELY and by 'adventurous' I mean LOST AS F*CK.

It all started out innocent enough last night in the bar where we went to see a local guy play some local flavor and we were chatting to the girl who runs the tourism office. Nice enough girl, but she had this weird blinking thing going on that distracted the crap out of us while she carried on her conversation. I'm talking like blinking 5 times more than a normal person!

Anyway, she recommended we go and check out the lake and mentioned that from where we are staying there's a path that runs down to the lake and from there we could join part of a loop that would take us back to Suchitoto - the town we're in (we're still in El Salvador at the moment). Cool, we thought. 'Do we need a guide?'
'No, no, no. It's easy enough.'

That lying bitch.

So we head on down to the lake after breakfast and it's a nice enough wander... nice views of the lake, a cool suspension bridge where Lulu quickly reproached me for bouncing up and down, and some nice fishermen who informed us that only 20 minutes away there was a dock where we could catch a lancha (boat) back to Suchitoto. So off we go thinking it's going to be a breeze.

WRONG!

The trail was horrendous - I've only hiked on one that was less strenuous and that was a Yak trail in Northern Pakistan - and Lulu nearly slipped into the murky water more than once. And, me being the chivalrous dude that I be, tried to help her down a couple of steep sections and was rewarded w/ a thousand ant bites on my feet and ankles. In retrospect, it would probably be pretty funny. "Come on Lulu, I'll help you down. Ouch! Hurry! Ouch! Come on, come on, come on. Ouch! Please hurry! I'm in a fucking ant hill! Ouch! Please. Ouch!" At the time, though, it f'n sucked.
And as if all that wasn't bad enough... suddenly after the 20 minutes we'd already been walking w/out site of any dock the trail simply ends. There we are. No trail to continue on, a barbed wire fence in front, a cliff to the left and the bottomless muck of the lake to our right. So we did what anybody would do - we bushwhacked to where we heard voices.
Lucky us, some farmers were carrying their TOO, TOO HEAVY loads (80 lbs., maybe?) down to their boat hidden in the reeds just a stone's throw from the place where we had decided to just stop walking and flag down the next boat that came by - whenever that may be. These guys were cool - they paddled us all the way across the lake to where we wanted to be and didn't even want to accept the paltry offering of greenbacks we forced into their calloused farmer's hands.
Quick, but hearty, hike back up the hill to the town and a shower and change of clothes later we feel almost human again.

No more 'adventures' for us. From now on we're using a guide to take us where we think we want to go on our own (and not trusting any hyper-blinking tourism "professionals").

At least, until the next time we're feeling 'adventurous' of course!

El Sal

Arrived in El Salvador just today - wow, a blog that´s on time... can´t be!!! - and we are in the north eastern part in a small village called Perquin.
I´ll get to Perquin and El Sal in a moment, but I have to tell you about this MASSIVE F´N storm we went through near the Honduras/El Sal border last night. We were watching lightning hit 100 meters from the road and hearing the loudest sonic booms ever as we took the bus to the border town of El Amatillo. I thought we were going to need the Arc of the Covenants to get us through, there was so much water coming down. Lulu, being the paranoid she is, was sort of freaking out about the lightning until I reassured her (3 times) that we were OK in the bus. Once we arrived the bus driver looked at us and made the ´last stop folks´ sign and instead of heading across the 600 meter border area into Niaragua and getting completely drenched - we headed for the nearest hotel - just 250 feet away... and got just as completely drenched. Sometimes there IS such a thing as too much rain. I think my feet are still wet as I write this today, actually.

Anyway... Back to Perquin. Perquin is near a village that saw a HUMONGOUS massacre (around a 1000 people) during the revolution (which just ended in 92!). There´s a museum here that´s really quite well put together (by Latin American standards) and is actually quite educational and informative. It should be - we´re talking recent history! I was completely ignorant that Nicaragua even had a war around the time of my high-school graduation. But I wasn´t exactly into global politics back then the way I am now. Other than this museum, there´s not that much in town - so we´re leaving tomorrow after a morning walk to a hilltop lookout where we can see the view over the town. Then it´s the next bus to San Miguel where we can get to an ATM machine!

Will update later on from somewhere else - maybe it´ll even be in El Sal!

Nicaragua!

I should really have updated this a little bit more often, but I was having simply too much fun to do so!

Nicaragua has been a great country to travel through. Lulu and I came across the border from CR and went straight to a small, thriving beach community called San Juan del Sur. We lazed around there for about 4 days and got a few of the great shots you see of children and doors on the flickr site. Click the link above to get more details.

From SJdS we traveled to Ometepe. This is the big, volcanic island in Lake Nicaragua. We had a good time there and one day we really kicked our asses hiking up Vulcan Maderas. It took us about 10 hours and I was sweating, cramping, dehydrated, unhappy and slow going for most of the way up it. And when we got there... we were rewarded w- a view of... drumroll, please... ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!! Clouds had rolled in and blocked our view of the supposed lagoon that was in the crater. Well, it was good exercise, anyway.

From Ometepe we went to the absolute highlight of our Nicaragua experience: Granada! We stayed in that oh-so-charming city for about a week all told. We were in a really nice hostel w- a verrrrrry grooovy vibe and met a lot of other travelers and we just hung out and took photos and relaxed and enjoyed getting to know the place. The ULTIMATE highlight of Granada, though, was the Laguna Apoyo. We stayed in a placed called The Monkey Hut which is owned by the hostel in Granada we were staying in, The Bearded Monkey, which is right on the water, w- a pier and a floating dock, kayaks, tubes and a very cool, chilled out environment. I was in heaven. I liked it so much I went back a few days later to chill out a couple more days while Lulu carried on to Leon.

I caught up to Lulu in Leon just in time to bring in her birthday w- a good party! Rum and good music was abundant and there was LOTS of dancing! We partied at a place called Don Señor´s until the wee hours of the morning until we were just too tired to carry on dancing so we sprinted home in the rain and arrived back at the hostel soaking wet. No matter how fast you run the rain always seems to catch you.

We´re now poised to jump over the border to Honduras/El Salvador in a decent sized, friendly, sort of boring city called Estelli. We went hiking in a park near here today and, really, it is not so remarkable.

Some of the very interesting things I´ve noticed while here are some of the highly backwards marketing tactics deployed by stores - something straight out of 1950s. We´re talking an old man, an old woman, an old car and a fucking LOUD set of old speakers on the roof blaring "Come and shop at blah-di-blah... the cheapest prices in town!!!" It annoys the pants off of me. It´s hyper loud, over obnoxious and, as far as I can tell, utterly ineffective. But who can say? I hope those speakers burn out soon, though. I´m really tired of seeing those people in every town we´re in.

Pura Vida - Costa Rica pt. 2

La Pura Vida - The good life.
Costa Ricans use this phrase to mean any number of things: Hello, yes, OK, no, goodbye & things are going great. It's a lot like the 'Insh'allah' of muslim countries in that respect.
And, in many ways it is the pure life. Costa Rica is one of the top destinations for nature buffs, attracting people from all over the world from places like Israel, Germany, Holland, the USA, France, Australia and Finland for any number of outdoor activities - whether it be white-water rafting down class IV+ rivers, surfing world class left hand breaks, hiking your tail off in incredible natural parks or witnessing an active volcano belch magma into the air and then down its sides while relaxing in a 5 star hot springs.
I've done all of this in the last 3 weeks (except the surfing), and it's been pretty darn good so far. Got rained out of a volcano today, but that's alright - today's volcano doesn't belch lava.

Other than that - there's some things that are just scary as F***! Take this thing for example:

Jesus Christ! That´s a friggin' electrocution waiting to happen! Look how you can see the wires from the wall supplying 120VAC to the top of the shower head which acts as the hot water heater heating the, hopefully clean, H2O as it comes in from the wall. In some places, if you get your hand too close to the shower head while showering you can actually feel a little voltage in the spray. And it´s like that all over Latin America - not just CR.
Tell me, somebody, WHAT were these people thinking???

And that´s been Costa Rica. The highlights for me DEFINITELY were seeing Vulcan Arenal do it´s lava thing from the comfort of Baldi Hot Springs and white-water rafting the Pacuare river (class IV+).
I leave you with this quote from the Lonely Planet guidebook
"If you are a highly experienced rafter, going to Costa Rica and not rafting is like giong to New York City or Paris and not getting insulted."