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Published: February 13th 2010
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It was a seven hour drive from Antigua thru the outskirts of Guatemala City to Guatemala’s Caribbean’s coast. Guatemala City, with over three million residents is the largest city in Central America. Getting thru the city took an hour and a half. Motorists were courteous but because the lanes are narrow, there were times we came within inches of losing our side mirrors.
The rest of the drive was scenic with a smooth two lane road - smoother than most of our roads in California anyway. We passed farm lands and tropical forests. Our destination, Rio Dulce is located on the eastern shore of Lago de Izabal, the largest lake in Guatemala. The lake empties into the Rio (river) Dulce which flows to the Caribbean. There are many sail boats and yachts anchored in the area. The U.S. Coast Guard says that this is the safest place on the Caribbean coast for boats during the hurricane season.
We camped on the grounds of Hotel Nana Juana Marina and Yacht Club just outside the village of Rio Dulce. The manager, Jean Claude spoke English well enough to communicate with us. Employees strung power cords to our rigs and offered us
water hookups as well. We took full advantage of their internet. The grounds were luxuriously landscaped and although, we didn’t use many of them, we had access to the pool and other amenities. We stayed there for five nights and enjoyed dining in their open air restaurant on the lakeshore. After the coolness of the mountains, the weather seemed hot and muggy most of the time. One night we had a huge rainstorm.
We had a great time there. Thankfully, it was safe enough for John to unhook his trailer so the four of us were able to explore the area without the hassles of using the buses. We drove west along the lake’s north shore to Finca El Pariaso where we hiked a few feet down to an incredibly beautiful spot in the jungle where a hot mildly sulfuric smelling waterfall fell into a mostly standing deep pool. Based on our hot tub experience, we estimated that the waterfall had to be well over 105 degrees. The water was cooled by fresh cold water coming out of a cave just next to the waterfall. Tiny fish nipped at our feet and legs while we enjoyed the free spa.
Another day we drove along the lakeshore to Boqueron Canyon where we hired a young woman and boy to row us upstream in a dugout canoe thru a beautiful tropical gorge hung with vines.
On our last day in the area, we took a boat trip thru a steep walled gorge, past islands inhabited only by birds to Livingston which is mostly populated by descendents of Caribbean islanders and shipwrecked African slaves. On our way back, we requested our driver take us by El Castillo de San Felipe a fortress built in 1652 to keep pirates from looting villages along the lake. After the pirates disappeared from the Caribbean, the fort was used as a prison.
One night at Rio Dulce we were joined by a bus load of 24 Germans and their driver. Their rig seems to have six rows of seats. We visited with a few of the German folks out having a smoke. They told us that they sleep bunked in cubicles about eight feet long, four feet wide and about three feet high. One guy, a landscaper and farmer from Bavaria, had been on several of these trips, India, Peru and a bunch
of other exotic places which we can’t remember. He told us Alaska (Anchorage and Denali) was his favorite.
We are now camped near a small town called Playa El Tunco, near La Libertad, on El Salvador’s Pacific Coast on the grounds of Hotel El Pacifico. We have use of the on site Parque Acuatico (water park).
We exited Guatemala and entered El Salvador via CA 10. Upon leaving Guatemala, we learned that we’d been ripped off at our entry by our helpful expediter Ramon with the assistance of the Guatemalan border officials. The biggest rip off was for our vehicle permits. The original copy stated 400 Quetsals. It was not until we left the country that we noticed the carbon which read 40 Qutesals a difference of forty-five dollars. John got ripped off for twice that amount because he had to pay double as he is pulling a trailer. We think that Ramon ripped us off somewhat for Furgie’s entry as well.
Our entry into El Salvador was very easy and strait forward after Maria, our agent, gave up trying to communicate with us and just did our paperwork herself while her co-worker helped John and Johnette.
We’d all become quite chummy by the time the formalities were complete. Both agents willingly made photocopies for us and did not charge us anything. No entry fees for the vehicles, people or Furgie. None, nada! What a pleasant experience!
Our drive down to the El Salvadorian coast was through beautiful mountains and forests with volcanoes in view most of the time. We are quite certain that we passed acres of coffee plantations with plants growing along the road and all the way up the mountain sides. As there were no beans visible, we cannot be positive that these trees are coffee but we met trucks along the road with huge plastic bags and gunny sacks full of something. Armed guards rode atop these loads.
Somewhere we read that El Salvador had embarked on a major road building effort about ten years ago. We have found El Salvador’s roads to be consistently better than either the U.S.’s or Mexico’s. Unlike Guatemala, the roads and villages here are strewn with trash. Although, we’ve read that El Salvador has a higher minimum wage, the poverty seems greater. Maybe that is because El Salvador is much more densely populated.
My
Lonely Planet says that one third of El Salvador’s nationals live and work abroad sending home contributions called remases. Maybe it is because we are now living at the beach, near some prime surfing spots, but we have found more English speaking locals here than anywhere since leaving Texas. Many of the folks staying in the hotel are El Salvadorians home for a visit from their current homes in the U.S. We talked to one guy who recently bought a home on the outskirts of Little Rock after living in the Los Angeles area for many years. Another of our new amigos is a construction worker from the San Fernando Valley. He moved from here with his family to the Los Angeles area when he was eighteen. As the construction business is slow right now, he is using the slack time to visit his childhood homeland.
The weather is pretty warm (upper 80s to low 90s) and the sand is the blackest we’ve ever seen. The pace is slow, traffic is light. Only the major highway thru town is paved. The rest of the roads are just the black sand. We’ll be here for one week. Currency is the
U.S dollar. There are more American products available here than we’ve seen since leaving the U.S. In fact, we miss Mexican products such as flour tortillas and refried beans which we normally use on a daily basis. Prices at the local super market are about the same as at home - packaged items are higher but restaurant prices are much lower. Our favorite brand of tequila, el Jimador, sells for about $16 at home but only $5 in Mexico. We just paid $18.50 for a bottle to mix up a batch of Margaritas. Local beer costs about $1.50 a bottle in a restaurant. Diesel is about $3.00 per gallon.
John and Johnette had hosted a student, Carmen, from La Libertad about ten years ago. The program in which Carmen was participating was called CASS. They no longer remember what the acronym represents but Carmen had finished high school before she was eligible to participate. She attended a business school for two years while living with them in Wausau. After completion of the program Carmen was required to return to El Salvador to help her village for a couple of years. After she completed that obligation, she returned to the
states and attended college in Spokane. She is now working for an accounting firm in New Mexico. John and Johnette met some of Carmen’s family members this week. They will return on Saturday for a longer visit.
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