Shotguns and Machetes

Upon my arrival to El Salvador I found two very interesting things. The first was that in the city people roam the streets with shotguns. The second was that in the country side people roam the fields with machetes. Despite of how this may sound the locals really are lovely people and I enjoyed my time in El Salvador.
The morning after my arrival we rented a crappy car and got with it a lousy map and thus we set out to find a place called Suchitoto. With the help of the map and some friendly locals we quickly found ourselves 30 kilometers in the wrong direction. With the help of another map and some friendlier locals we soon fixed this and were back on our way to Suchitoto.
Suchitoto turned out to be a nice, small little town, with cobbled streets and no tourists. It does however have some very interesting sign posts.


The lack of tourists was compensated for by locals on trucks. On the roof of trucks. In the back of trucks. Holding on to the sides of trucks. Many locals on many trucks.


After visiting Suchitoto and the surrounding area we made our way to Santa Anna. Driving into the lively market was probably not the best of ideas but everyone seemed to be quite forgiving. Walking into the market the following morning was a lot more fun. We went deep into the market and by the looks and laughs we got we could only assume that almost no tourists (if any) venture this far.


Our next stop was to be Lago de Coatepeque which turned out to be one of those amazing lakes you see on National Geographic and indeed it rewarded us with stunning views.


While in the area we also wanted to hike to the top of Cerro Verde but we decided to skip this when we saw that the clouds had gathered around the mountain and visibility was.... low.


The road then led us to a place called Sonsonate just in time for some more fiestas. Just our luck. We partied with the people in the main plaza to the music of some local band and then went through the market and the fair.


From Sonsonate we made our way back to the capital - San Salvador. From there Guy made his way to Guatemala while Igal and myself went to the Dominican Republic. How and why this happened will be a part of my next update.