Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Coming down from vacation

Back in La Reina after a week vacation that took me to unknown parts of the country (without my camera, sorry)  It started out in Playa Tunco with my friend Tyler.  Tyler and I planned on a week of vacation at the beach to hang out and meet people traveling through the tourist beach of El Salvador.  Well poor Tyler got dengue the second day and got himself a one way ticket to the capital for a week, pobresito.  All my volunteer friends were leaving the beach, but left me with a backpacker from Austria who just finished a semester abroad in Nicaragua and was spending time in El Salvador.  Some volunteers talked us into going on a adventure in Tacuba, Ahuachupan.  Apparently there is a waterfall jumping tour in Parque El Imposible.  So Lisi and I jumped on the next bus out there.  Arriving at night we were excited for the next day.  Our tour group consisted of a Salvadoran and his boyfriend from Cuba who live in Canada.  Two of their Salvadoran friends. Lisi, myself and Jan the 19 year old German boy.  The tour started with a bone rattling pick-up ride into the heart of El Imposible.  We began hiking down into the valley until coming on the first waterfall, a bit small but had a really cool setting.  All in all we came across 7 waterfalls.  The last two being the biggest upwards of 40ft.  I would have liked to find something a little larger, but I still enjoyed it.  At the end we had to hike back out of the valley and take the same rattling pick-up ride back to the hostel.  The hostel is called Mom and Pop's and is run by a family.  Really delicious food and a cool little town.

Lisi and I took off the next morning to meet some of my friends back at the beach for the New Year celebration.  We added on two more backpackers to our group, Matt from England (a independent pharmacist who played pro soccer in England) and Elsa (a former physical therapist from Holland that quit to travel).  We arrived at the beach and got our room squared away and enjoyed a nice relaxing day at the beach and brought in the New Year with an international crowd.

I really enjoyed hanging out with all these people from different countries.  At one point in Mom and Pop's I was sitting in a room with 7 people from 7 different countries.  It really sparked my travel bug, making it even harder to ease myself back to the reality of my 2 year commitment.  In the end it was a great experience to hear their travel stories and open my eyes to more traveling after my Peace Corps experience.  I was really impressed with everyone's stories, but it was cool to see how impressed they were with my experience.  Everyone commented on how well you get to know a country when you live there for a long time.

For now I have my January and February filled with some activities and hope that they plan out.  More news and pictures to come.

Happy New Year to everyone.