Cuilapa is on the side of large hill and leaving it means dropping down a long steep descent. That's splendid, but one challenge was that the highway was divided by about half a kilometer so rather than take a long circumnavigating route to the proper lane, we descended but down the lane the truck had taken us up - the wrong way. At the junction of the highways the divided highway met itself and we could get back to having cars sneaking up on us rather than face them head on. At this point a field of homogenous crop with spiky tops, but short faced us - pineapples! We grabbed some sliced pineapple for the road from a roadside stand and continued riding down the incredibly scenic volcanic valley.
We rode down at first until we crossed a river with a view of a gorgeous dam - bridge. Then we began climbing the river valley we would follow most of the morning. We had a 600m climb before stopping in Oratorio for a late morning snack. The climb continued and eventually we crossed out of the one valley into another that descended to the southeast with us. The views into this new valley were tremendous and actually made us stop our quick descent for a few photos before sinking further towards the border. Riding thru Japaltagua was a breeze given the hill but we were again driven to stop. The rarest of sights! Two other touring cycists, Nina and Sara, Nina from UK and Sara from US cycling together from Bolivia up to the border of the US. Sara had a truly wretched looking rig, though she admitted there were more quality parts in the bike than it seemed. She also was using buckets for panniers! They were going to take the mountain routes to Antigua and recommended we stay at the bomberos (firefighters) stations along the way as they had to save money through Central America.
We had more climbing to do before dropping into the river valley border with El Salvador. The views were again fantastic but our mood was soon dashed by the cretins inhabiting the Guatemala side of the border. What a surprise we had, actually two, on the El Salvador side of the border as there were no crazy money changers, and our 90 day Guatemala visa applies to the whole group of Central America - 4, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua without any further visas required. Rad. There was a large, informative map right at the border which someone ran over and gave us a replica of after we were studying it for 15 minutes. There are several routes through El Salvador named for their features: the archaeological route, peace route, sand and sun route, artisans route, and our route by coincidence - the flowers route. Coming out of the border valley put us in Los Chinemas where we found the cheapest hotel we've found in El Salvador at $10 USD. It even included use of the kitchen and we spent the evening cooking next to the family and eating with them too. Fantastic!
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