Mar 07

Meine Güte, ist das warm hier!!! Wir haben ja schon so einiges mitgemacht, aber so warm war es schon lange nicht mehr. Wir haben schätzunsweise 35 Grad Celcius und eine extrem hohe Luftfeuchtigkeit. Die Schweissperlen rennen einem ständig von der Stirn und es ist schwer dem Flüssigkeitsbedarf des Körpers nachzukommen. León liegt in der Flachland-Küstenregion des Pazifiks und ist eine lebendig beschwingte Stadt mit Kopfsteinpflastergassen und Häusern aus der Kolonialzeit der Spanier. Es gibt wie so gewöhnlich in den Städten, die in der Kolonialzeit entstanden sind, etliche Kirchen, die wir fast alle bewundert haben. Ausserdem wird in dieser Stadt an den Graffitis und Wandmalereien deutlich, dass die Einwohner grosse Anhänger der Sandinistas waren (oder sind). Die Sandinistas führten die Revolution gegen die damalige Diktatur unter Samoza an und besiegten ihn 1979. Unter den 80er Jahren brach dann der Contra-Krieg aus, wo die USA sehr extrem die Finger mit im Spiel hatte, gegen die Sandinistas. Die Graffities spiegeln die Ansichten der Bewohner wieder.

Gestern Nacht hatten wir übrigens einen Besucher in unserer bescheidenen Behausung. Wir wissen allerdings nicht so genau was es war. Es war schwarz, ungefähr 10 cm lang und blitzschnell auf den Beinen. Wir vermuten, dass es eine Kakerlake war, obwohl wir nicht 100% sicher sind. Das finstere Etwas war eigentlich zu gross und zu schnell für eine Kakerlake. Mal schauen, ob das gewisse Etwas diese Nacht wieder zu Besuch kommt, dann untersuchen wir das genauer.

Bis denne!!!

Viele liebe Grüsse,

Sabrina und Fredrik

PS: Morgen fliegen wir Richtung Corn Islands (Nikaragua) im Karibischen See, um dort voraussichtlich für eine Woche tauchen zu gehen. Wir melden uns dann nach den Corn Islands wieder.

The trip to Perquín in the northeast corner of El Salvador was another highlight. I am especially talking about the transportation itself. The part from San Salvador to San Miguel was quite painless, even comfortable with air con and padded seats. San Miguel to Gotera was fine too, the normal chicken type of buss which you see everywhere in Central America (at least so far). Well, of course as usual, we missed the stop in Gotera by about half a kilometre or so, so we had to walk back. Not a big deal, though. At Gotera we asked for the buss to our final destination, Perquín, and finally we found our transportation which turned out to be a pick up truck with a 3 by 2,50 m truck bed covered with some metal structure and plastic cover. On this truck bed, there were already 25 people (I counted them), standing and sitting next to and over each other. Five of the 25 people hang outside the truck bed since there was no other place. Well, friendly as the El Salvadorans are, they made some space for us and we squeezed in onto the overloaded pick up truck. Well on the truck some guy was playing the guitar, so we got some entertainment. Two hours later, somewhat exhausted and hot, we arrived at Perquín.

Perquín is a tiny little village in a cool mountain setting. There you can experience the real Salvadoran village life. We had some really basic lodging and ate “pupusas” (a cornmeal mass stuffed with cheese and/or refried beans) at night and a typical breakfast in the morning (beans, rice, eggs, fried bananas, cheese and coffee). The main attraction though of this place is the “Museo de la Revolución Salvadoreña” which on Sundays also attracts lots of El Salvadorans, as we experienced. Also Perquín has a strong historical significance since it was the headquarters of the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front), the guerrilla organization. The museum displays the causes and progress of the 12 year lasting civil war (1980-1992) with photos, posters, weapons and histories of those who died in action. You get touched when you see the displays and see that it was normal people, quite many women, who fought in armed struggles for a better life in El Salvador and the fact that it ended no more than 15 years ago.

The visit to Perquín and the museum was worth it!

Bye for now!

Love,

Sabrina and Fredrik

It was not the plan in the first place to make San Salvador as our base for exploring El Salvador, but fate would have it so. We entered El Salvador on Tuesday (20/03) and the plan was to stay in La Palma, a small village in the northern part of El Salvador to see the art trend that Fernando Llort developed there. We were on the buss heading south towards La Palma and expected the guy working on the buss (money and client collector) to shout out “La Palma” at some point. The shout never came and we missed La Palma, as said by the buss guy, by about an hour. Well, we thought let’s go for Plan B then. Our second stop in El Salvador was supposed to be, according to earlier plans, Suchitoto, a laid back colonial town with a growing art scene. According to Lonely Planet the town is what Antigua in Guatemala was before all the tourists got there. (We don’t know about that since we saw Antigua only with all the tourists). Anyhow, we got ready for Plan B, Suchitoto, or “Suchi” as locals say. We were still on the same buss heading south. To get to the arty town of “Suchi” we had to change busses at Las Aguilares. And this time we were very smart and asked the buss guy (money/client collector) to tell us when we were in Las Aguilares so we wouldn’t miss our destination again. It worked perfectly this time. We got off the buss and were looking for the connection buss to “Suchi”. We approached the first buss we saw and asked it’s buss guy (money/client collector) if the buss would go to Suchitoto. We tried to not make a mistake so we asked twice, first myself I got the answer “yes” - well it was a “si” since we spoke Spanish of course - and then Fredrik asked again and he also got an affirmative answer. We got on the buss and hoped to be in Suchitoto two hours later. More or less two hours had passed and we started wondering if we would be there soon. We asked some of our fellow passengers and they said that it would be very far to “Suchi”. SHOCK!!!! “What do you mean very far?” We would need to go to the “Terminal” which was the final stop and change to another buss to get to Suchitoto, they explained. “Terminal of what city?” I asked. “SAN SALVADOR, of course” they said. Well, how interesting!!! San Salvador, according to the original planning, was our third stop in El Salvador but now it appeared to become our first. When we got to the Terminal it was dark and we decided to stay. All roads lead to San Salvador at least in El Salvador and we are not quite sure if you should trust these buss guys, at the end all they are interested in is to get as many people as possible on the buss so they get a bigger share.

We stayed for another three nights in San Salvador and made day trips to "Suchi", (not to La Palma, it was too far) and to Joya de Cerén.

Joya de Cerén, is a small Maya settlement which was buried under volcanic ash while the Laguna Caldera Volcano erupted some 1400 years ago. The intense heat of the 4 to 6 m layer of erupted material preserved not only the structures of the buildings, but pottery, plants, seeds and animal remains. It is quite interesting because it gives clues on how people lived back then. You shouldn´t though compare it with other big Maya settlments like Tikal or Palenque. Joya de Cerén used to be a simple farmer sattlement. The place is a declared UNESCO world heritage site.

Apart from our day trips, we enjoyed very much San Salvador’s shopping malls (very fancy) and cinemas. During 3 days we saw 4 movies. Not to bad, he?

Take care for now!

Love,

Sabrina and Fredrik

Ja, auf diesem Wege widmen wir Harald ein paar Worte. Harald oder Harry ist 56 Jahre alt, deutscher Sportlehrer und sehr erfolgreicher Faustballtrainer, jedoch zur Zeit eher Weltenbummler als alles andere. Seit September ist er unterwegs und in Roatan, Honduras, kreuzten sich unsere Wege. Harry war eine Woche lang unser Nachbar oder eigentlich eher Mitbewohner, Bad und Küche wurden ja geteilt. Es stellte sich heraus, dass Harry leidenschaftlicher Taucher ist, so wurden wir sehr schnell Tauch-Buddies. Ausserdem verdanken wir Harry, dass unsere Deutschkenntnise - sowohl Fredriks, als auch meine - wieder einmal aufgefrischt wurden. Wir hatten eine schöne Zeit!!!

Vielen Dank, Harry!

Liebe Grüsse,

Sabrina und Fredrik

PS: Schaut euch den verrückten Harald an!!!

As some of you might have already started to suspect we stayed a bit longer than planned on the island of Roatán.

Roatán, being the largest of the Bay Islands in Honduras, is situated about 50 km from the mainland with ferries leaving twice a day from the harbor in La Ceiba. The sea wasn’t very rough, but because of the speed it got quite bumpy and a lot of people got sick. When we arrived we got a ride on the back of a pickup and then took a “Collectivo” to the part of the island called West End. There we found a perfect little cottage in the jungle.

For you who haven’t heard about Roatán before it’s worth mentioning that it’s supposed to be the cheapest place in the world for dive certification which is part of the reason we went there. We found a nice little dive shop that is run by a Danish couple and we signed up for an introduction dive and a certification course. Even though Sabrina on and off had panic attacks and sometimes rather would have taken the “Puke-ferry” back to the mainland, we managed to get through the course and found out that we LOVE diving.

Since then we have stayed, trying to dive as much as possible. We have had quite bad weather a couple of days and on Sundays the dive shop was closed and we “were forced to” go to the beach instead, to do some snorkeling and just lie in the sun.

Now we have managed to scrape together 16 dives, i.e. one Open Water Certificate, one Advanced Open Water Certificate (allowing us to dive to 30m depth) and including among other things a night dive and a wreck dive. We have seen moray eels, sea turtles, rays of different kinds, scorpion fish, barracudas, sea cucumbers, lobster, etc, etc. It has simply been amazing and we finished off with a 32m wreck dive where we had a close encounter with a large spotted eagle-ray.

Fredrik’s birthday we celebrated with our new dive “buddies” drinking Cuba Libre and the Honduran Port Royale beer.

Roatán was perfect, incredible, amazing, so it was quite difficult to leave but if we wanted to see something more on our trip it was definitely time to move on.

We are now in Santa Rosa de Copán, a small mountain town, on the way to El Salvador where we are going next.

Lots of love,

Fredrik (and Sabrina)