There is a reason Antigua, Guatemala is a UNESCO protected city. It is absolutely gorgeous and a lot of work has been put into restoring it. This trip, I had a particular fascination with the vast varieties of door knockers around the city. And also the gorgeous walls. There are many, many buildings painted solid,…
Anyone who has spent any time at all travelling in Latin America knows that the water out of the tap is usually not drinkable (Santiago in Chile is the only place I’ve trusted it). It is one of the key problems throughout Central and South America and it is the reason I bought my Travel Tap microfilter…
After stuffing my face at the Juayúa food festival and trying to mitigate the damage a little by hiking the Siete Cascadas, I said goodbye to Susan and headed to San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, for a few days. I usually try to avoid capital cities like the plague, but I wanted to send…
If you’ve spent any time at all in Guatemala or Honduras, you will have seen at least one (and probably several) Mayan ruins. Tikal in particular is incredible (at least that’s what my memory from 16 years ago tells me), but I have also visited Copán in Honduras, as well as several other lesser-known sites….
One of the first things I did in La Palma was ask about the availability of workshops where you could learn/experience a little more about the artesanía and artwork the town is famous for. Turns out, there is only one – at Taller Paty – so I went and had a chat with Estela about what it entailed….
From Suchitoto I headed further west and north to reach La Palma, right up near the Hondurian border. This small town is renowned for its artesanía and murals that are all done in a very specific style brought to the town by Fernando Llort (a very famous artist in El Salvador) in the 1970s. This artistic style is…
One of the main forms of artesanía in the Suchitoto region is the production of Añil (indigo ink) dyed clothing and textiles. There are a few places where you can do an Añil workshop in Suchitoto, but Luis from Sapito Tours introduced me to Irma in the Women’s cooperative as we were walking around the town…
Woke up early to catch the 7am bus out to Sitio Guazapa for our horseriding tour on Cerro Guazapa with Guazapa Tours. A 163 bus (love how buses in El Salvador have route numbers) came along at 6:50am so we got on that one and headed out along the highway. Then, after a while, the bus…
On my first day in Suchitoto, El Salvador, as I was wandering around asking about tours, I kept coming across posters for a concert by “Los Panchos” that would be held that afternoon. Although I was a bit dubious about “Mexican guitar music” (how one person described it to me), I had nothing better to…
One of the things you quickly realise when walking around a town in Nicaragua is that you really do have to pay attention! Unlike in Australia where we have wide footpaths that are largely obstacle-free, this is most definitely not the case here. Here are a few of the street hazards I’ve encountered. Many…