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Published: October 7th 2010
Breakfast
Making PupusasBack to Antigua
Friday 27th August
Today should be an easy relaxing day as we make our way from
Juayua back to
Antigua in
Guatemala. It's about a 4 hour drive and
Alberto is going to take us in his minibus.
We start the day with a very local breakfast of coffee and pupusas. The coffee is from
Alberto's coffee plantation.
Pupusas are unique to
El Salvador - they are like a small tortilla made from cornflour with various fillings and then cooked on a griddle. Some of the local women have come to the hotel to show us how the pupusas are made and, of course, we have to have a go at making them ourselves.
The morning is spent by most of us looking around the town again while Mark and Gemma are feeling more energetic and go to investigate a local waterfall. In
Juayua I finally manage to buy and post some postcards! Probably a pointless exercise as I'm heading home in less than 24 hours time. The post office gives the impression of being really efficient. As soon as I've bought my stamps the postcards are franked and sorted. I'm expecting the
lady to put her coat on and go and deliver them. Unfortunately I was lulled into a false sense of security - at the time of writing this I don't know if any of my postcards have reached their destinations yet.
"You can't come back in to Guatemala because you haven't left yet"
We start the trip back to
Antigua at about midday. Our first delay comes at the
El Salvador / Guatemala border. What should be a straight-forward crossing takes much longer than it should. The issue seems to be that, because our group have previously arrived in
Guatemala and
El Salvador at different times and at different points of entry, we all have different stamps in our passports. There doesn't seem to be consistency between the different border posts as to whether passports are stamped or not and Gemma has to try and explain to the officials that, despite the fact that our passports weren't stamped on exit, we did indeed leave the country and would now like to come back in please.
Ooops!....Where's the road gone?
We eventually get across the border and continue our journey into
Guatemala somewhat delayed. Our
next delay is more serious, though. We reach a point where there should be a bridge crossing the river to find out that the bridge has been washed awayby the previous day's rains and we can't go any further. The rains have been falling ever since I arrived in
Guatemala but are now beginning to have serious effects as people struggle to keep the roads open. It was only a few days after this that
Guatemala unfortunately made the international news when a bus was buried under a mud slide and rescue workers were also buried by a further mudslide. I'm told that these sort of weather conditions are fairly normal. So normal, in fact, that when we'd been stoped at a police check point five minutes before arriving at the washed away bridge they hadn't bothered to tell us that the road was closed!
There is a detour available through some dirt tracks until we arrive at a Bailey Bridge. Doug and I get quite excited at the sight of a Bailey Bridge in use - but we're probably the only ones old enough to know what a Bailey Bridge is! The river is crossed, some more dirt
tracks are negotiated , and we are back on the road to
Antigua again. There is further evidence of the damage caused by the rains as we make our way back to
Antigua with the road being completely washed away at one point.
More problems and a very nice man
We get a bit closer to
Antigua when
Alberto's minibus breaks down! The engine is overheating and we come to a halt half way up a hill. A bucket of water from a nearby house provides a temporary remedy and then another driver with a pick-up stops for us. I can't work out if he's an old friend of
Alberto or just a "very, very nice man" - he and
Alberto greet each other like they are long lost friends.
After letting the engine cool for a bit we get underway again. We have some more water for the engine on board, we have the heaters going flat-out in the minibus to try and keep the engine cool and the nice man is following us all the way to
Antigua in case we break down again.
We eventually limp in to
Antigua a lot later
than anticipated. As we arrive in town the driver who has been following us turns off and continues his journey - we don't even get chance to thank him. Some of us are heading for the airport insanely early in the morning so any last-minute plans for
Antigua {
and maybe one final attempt to get close to a volcano!} are abandoned and it's final packing and then off out for a farewell meal at a local restaurant
and home.........
So it's back home tomorrow. I had wanted to stay longer in Central America but somehow all the things I wanted to do just didn't fit together in the same trip. There's more Mayan sites that I want to visit and I didn't manage to get to
Cuba this time round. I've also realised that I have to improve my Spanish considerably (!!) if I'm going to manage to travel around more independently. So I'm flying home tomorrow with the intention of trying to find enough work to pay for the next stage of my Central American trip. When I come back I want to stop in one place for some time and make a serious attempt to
learn Spanish.
Where to go?
Guatemala? Antigua is a fairly comfortable place to stop and there's lots of language schools.
El Salvador? A really friendly place, lots of small towns that would be nice to stop in and not many travellers so I'd probably be forced to speak Spanish.
Cuba? Really keen to get to Cuba in the near future. Could kill two birds with one stone and see if I can find a Spanish course
Mexico? I didn't even get as far as Mexico this time!
The trouble with travelling is that you always arrive home with a longer list of places to visit than you set out with!!
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