tacumba

Made it to Tacumba and went hiking in Impossible national park.  The view was beautiful and of course on our way back the clouds came in.  The hike wasnt too hard.  We saw the national bird and lots of picaya and coffee plants.  Picaya is a huge produce out here.  We were sad to see our guide was paid $8 for a tour which we paid $25 each for.  Its sad to see.  Today we woke up early and went to lake coatepeque which was very pretty.  Then on the way back we stopped to go shopping at the market in anhuachapan.  A wonderful few days.  I am sad to go and see my trip through central america cut short but excited to go to my next stop.. Patagonia Chile.  It is going to be a long weekend of travel starting early tomorrow morning and hopefully arriving afternoon two days later.

Ataco

Arrived in ataco yesterday. Cute little town. Heading to Tacoba and park impossible and mama y papas today. Hopefully hiking next couple of days.

Juayua

Went on a 6 hour hike to waterfalls today. About 7 of them. We are really trying to learn to not ask leading questions. We asked if we could leave at 7 am. The person said yes. Well we were ready at 7 but the guide didn't come till 8am. It was a fun trek through trails and coffee farms. We walked through waterfalls and streams as well as up and down them. They didn't even tell us we would get completely soaked.

Juayua on Ruta de Flores

Made it to juayua today for their weekend food festival. Had fun walking around tryin food. We tried corn pancakes with sting cheese. And corn on the cob they call crazy corn (elote loco) that has mustard ketchup and cheese on it. Getting up early for some waterfall hikes tomorrow. Just tried some hot chocolate I bought from a lady at the market that made discs of chocolate right in front of us and wrapped them in paper. I will try again but with milk this time as I think it will be better. The weather up in the mountains is so nice. It gets nice an cool in the evening. Bumped into a couple I had met earlier in the trip. She recognized me as the girl from the states who looked Asian but had a fence name. I had already bumPed into someone else from that same night recently. It's interesting to see how many people you keep seeing on the gringo trail.
On another note I met a German couple with 4 kids travelling the world.. On bikes no less. Their website is globalmobilfamily.com

San salvador

Went to the modern art museum today and the museum popular a small museum that has exhibits on these clay sopresas "surprises" they started as clay eggs with figurines or surprises inside the eggs. They are really adorable. Also tried tamarind ice cream from the ice cream guy today and it has strawberry sauce on it. Took the chicken bus from the beach. Yesterday when we went to the market at la libertad we did see a woman with a chicken on the chicken bus. The market was so much fun to walk around. I bought hot chocolate that comes in thes soft discs and a papusa that was excellent. Papusa are from el Salvador thy are sold on almost every street corner. Tomorrow we had for the lakes.

Antigua

Antigua is a cute town. I went on a hike up another volcano today.  Volcan Picaya This one had steaming fumeroles. We toasted marshmellows over the holes. It was beautiful.

Some interesting observations.. a family I was staying with put sugar in the baby formula in the bottle. Things have so much sugar here. Also for some reason here they say after a meal in Spanish Bon appetite instead of before. 

Lago chikobal

I hiked lago chikobal this weekend. It was beautiful. There is a fresh water lake in the middle and when you get to the top you can look down at it as it's a deep crater then there are around 300 steps to get down to the lake in the middle. A fog rolls in at 11 everyday so when we hike to the top again we couldn't even see the lake anymore.
The bingo game the kids play here include pixies and a word describing the picure. I had to laugh when the little girl called out drunk man as one of the space and then again later when she called out kittens black man. I can't imagine a game inthe states like that.